Adding Type-C USB port to an Older Laptop

[Kryptyle]

Hi Everyone,

 

TL;DR

I have a slightly older laptop that's still pretty decent. I'm looking into whether it would be possible to mod a Type-C port onto it, giving it the full featureset for USB 3.1 Gen 2 including Power Delivery, DisplayPort Output and the other basic features like networking etc.

 

Longer Story:

 

I currently have an awesome PC, I use it to game as well as to do some light Photo Editing as well as Casual use. I also have a slightly older Laptop with me I use from time to time as a secondary device, for travel or on the bed use.

 

It's a Gigabyte P34W v4, a pretty good Gaming Laptop at the time spec wise. It has an i7-5700HQ, a 970M as well as 16GB Ram.Internally, it has an mSATA slot where I have a 128GB SSD, and a Sata port where I have a 1TB HDD in. The only issues are damaged hinges and a battery that won't hold a charge.

 

I first considered buying a Surface Pro 7 as a light secondary device, but I've of late been interested in repairing the minor physical damage, replacing the battery and running the laptop itself. But I would like a Type-C port.

 

My idea, is to wire in a Type-C port where the current power barrel jack is. Then, and this is all thery on my part since I don't know what the Pin layout for Type-C looks like yet, I would solder the power pins from the Type-C port to the internal power pins that the barrel jack used. That would handle Power Delivery.

 

For the actual USB Video and Data functionality, I was wondering if I could adapt either the mSATA slot or the SATA port internally to a PCIe and then add in a PCIe card that does Type-C so I could get me the data functionality, and solder those pins in so I could have a complete solution.

 

If anyone has anyone has any experience doing anything similar please let me know! I couldn't find anything like this online as far as I checked and was curious as to what the community thought.

 

Cheers!

 

[Firewrath9]

No you cannot adapt SATA to pcie.

 

[Eigenvektor]

11 minutes ago, Kryptyle said:

mod a Type-C port onto it

It might potentially be possible to exchange a USB type-A port for a USB type-C port. This, on its own, will not give you additional capabilities. The port is just a physical connector and not directly linked to the generation of the USB protocol that runs over it. It would definitely require some deeper understanding on how the wires inside the port are connected.

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giving it the full featureset for USB 3.1 Gen 2..., DisplayPort Output and the other basic features like networking etc.

No, since this would require an USB 3.1 Gen 2 controller/chipset and drivers and potential upgrades to other parts of your laptop's chipset/motherboard.

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including Power Delivery

Definitely no, since this would require additional wiring to allow power to go from that port to your battery.

[Bombastinator]

TLDNR: you’re 100% SOL
 

Way back in the day there used to be slots that would allow “cards” with things like ports on them to be added.  Things haven’t been that way for a long time now.  You’d need more than just a port.  You’d need power and you’d need a controller and you’d need it to be integrated enough to work.  None of those are possible without doing more work than it would take to earn the money for a new laptop.  None of them are likely doable at all, but if they were it still wouldn’t be worth it.

[Kryptyle]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

It might potentially be possible to exchange a USB type-A port for a USB type-C port. This, on its own, will not give you additional capabilities. The port is just a physical connector and not directly linked to the generation of the USB protocol that runs over it. It would definitely require some deeper understanding on how the wires inside the port are connected.

No, since this would require an USB 3.1 Gen 2 controller/chipset and drivers and potential upgrades to other parts of your laptop's chipset/motherboard.

Definitely no, since this would require additional wiring to allow power to go from that port to your battery.

I appreciate the answer, though I understand this would require additional functionality. This is why I'm looking into how to adapt something internally to PCiE and then use that to add in a PCiE Type-C card.

 

As for Power Delivery, I have found a few projects online of people getting this to work, replacing their barrel connectors for Type-C ports that do only power delivery without any of the data functionality. If I can solder the right pins onto the Type-C output of a PCiE card I think this should work.

 

5 minutes ago, Bombastinator said:

TLDNR: you’re 100% SOL
 

Way back in the day there used to be slots that would allow “cards” with things like ports on them to be added.  Things haven’t been that way for a long time now.  You’d need more than just a port.  You’d need power and you’d need a controller and you’d need it to be integrated enough to work.  None of those are possible without doing more work than it would take to earn the money for a new laptop.  None of them are likely doable at all, but if they were it still wouldn’t be worth it.

I miss the expansion slots too, life was good then. I completely agree, it would definitely be more cost effective Time-wise to just get another laptop,.I just think this might be a fun project since based on the condition it's currently in, I can't really sell this laptop.

 

13 minutes ago, Firewrath9 said:

No you cannot adapt SATA to pcie.

 

Good to know, I was looking at the internals and noticed the WiFi is an add in card into what looks like an M.2 slot. I know Linus has experimented with running GPUs off of these ports in the past through PCiE, this might be another route to take. I know I'll lose WiFi and will have to use an external adapter, but I've seen some Nano WiFi Dongles so I could live with it.

 

 

[Eigenvektor]

2 minutes ago, Kryptyle said:

I appreciate the answer, though I understand this would require additional functionality. This is why I'm looking into how to adapt something internally to PCiE and then use that to add in a PCiE Type-C card.

Pretty sure you'd run out of room pretty quickly. You'd need some form of self-contained USB controller that can be connected to PCIe and is small enough to fit inside the laptop. The controller would also need to support power delivery and a way for you to connect it to your battery. Oh and it would also have to supply the correct voltage to the battery.

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As for Power Delivery, I have found a few projects online of people getting this to work, replacing their barrel connectors for Type-C ports that do only power delivery without any of the data functionality. If I can solder the right pins onto the Type-C output of a PCiE card I think this should work.

That doesn't sound like "real" power delivery though, since this requires more than just running wires from the port to your battery. PD includes a protocol where the charger and chipset negotiate how much power should be delivered. PD also has a range of voltages that may be outside the range of voltage needed by your laptop's battery.

[WereCatf]

11 minutes ago, Kryptyle said:

As for Power Delivery, I have found a few projects online of people getting this to work, replacing their barrel connectors for Type-C ports that do only power delivery without any of the data functionality. If I can solder the right pins onto the Type-C output of a PCiE card I think this should work.

No, you can't just solder pins to get power-delivery working. You need an active IC to perform the USB-PD protocol handling.

[Kryptyle]

16 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

Pretty sure you'd run out of room pretty quickly. You'd need some form of self-contained USB controller that can be connected to PCIe and is small enough to fit inside the laptop. The controller would also need to support power delivery and a way for you to connect it to your battery. Oh and it would also have to supply the correct voltage to the battery.

That doesn't sound like "real" power delivery though, since this requires more than just running wires from the port to your battery. PD includes a protocol where the charger and chipset negotiate how much power should be delivered. PD also has a range of voltages that may be outside the range of voltage needed by your laptop's battery.

Space wise I'm thinking of removing the hard drive, it's true it still probably wouldn't be enough unless I can find a tiny enough board and even then I'd probably have to trim the PCB to get it to fit.

 

16 minutes ago, WereCatf said:

No, you can't just solder pins to get power-delivery working. You need an active IC to perform the USB-PD protocol handling.

 

Agreed, I've definitely oversimplified when I said it's just soldering the pins, I haven't looked at any of the diagrams from the other project but will update once I verify what they'd done. Another issue I foresee is that being a gaming laptop, the input voltage and power were quite high, potentially higher than what the Type C spec would support and I'm not sure what I'd do in that case. 

 

As you can all probably tell I'm still thinking through the project and whether it can be done. So far it doesn't seem impossible. Just seems like a massive pain, but at this point still interesting to me at least.

[WereCatf]

1 minute ago, Kryptyle said:

Another issue I foresee is that being a gaming laptop, the input voltage and power were quite high, potentially higher than what the Type C spec would support

The USB-PD - specification maxes out at 100W.

[Eigenvektor]

3 minutes ago, Kryptyle said:

Agreed, I've definitely oversimplified when I said it's just soldering the pins, I haven't looked at any of the diagrams from the other project but will update once I verify what they'd done. Another issue I foresee is that being a gaming laptop, the input voltage and power were quite high, potentially higher than what the Type C spec would support and I'm not sure what I'd do in that case. 

 

As you can all probably tell I'm still thinking through the project and whether it can be done. So far it doesn't seem impossible. Just seems like a massive pain, but at this point still interesting to me at least.

Depends on what they did. You can certainly remove the power barrel jack and solder its cables onto pins of a USB port and then do the same for the connector. This would, visually, replace the connector and port of your laptop's charger with "USB-C". This would not be actual PD though and would not work with a standards-compliant USB charger. The charger would not be able to "talk" to your laptop and would refuse to charge it.

 

If you run that combination e.g. through a USB-PD capable USB hub I'm not sure things would go smoothly since you're possibly running a non-standard voltage over those pins and are unable to talk the protocol. To be standards compliant you'd need an IC as @WereCatf said and you might need to transform from PD voltage(s) to whatever your laptop's battery needs.

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Space wise I'm thinking of removing the hard drive, it's true it still probably wouldn't be enough unless I can find a tiny enough board and even then I'd probably have to trim the PCB to get it to fit.

That would certainly give you some room, if we're talking 2.5" drive. I've found something that looks slightly larger than that, though and does not include networking and display output, which would most likely require additional room. I'm not sure how you'd integrate network/display with the rest of the system either.

https://www.cypress.com/products/ez-pd-ccg4-two-port-usb-type-c-controller-power-delivery

[Kryptyle]

2 minutes ago, Eigenvektor said:

That would certainly give you some room, if we're talking 2.5" drive. I've found something that looks slightly larger than that, though and does not include networking and display output, which would most likely require additional room. I'm not sure how you'd integrate network/display with the rest of the system either.

https://www.cypress.com/products/ez-pd-ccg4-two-port-usb-type-c-controller-power-delivery

That's a very good point, I'd forgotten about that, routing the internal display output would certainly be what I'd call too much of a pain, let alone routing the networking.

 

Thanks for finding that though, I'll certainly look into it, but realistically with Display and Networking being highly complex I doubt I could manage it. I'll keep digging around, don't want the dream to die just yet lol.