How-to > Bios hacks for Dell laptops to add upgrades.

by **stonent** » Thu Feb 20, 2003 11:44 pm

The Latitude CP and CPiD have the same exact motherboard but the bios determines whether or not you can have a Pentium or Pentium II. By flashing with the TR4 bios (a OEM bios) you can make it run in Dual mode. Simply install your Pentium II MMC-1 processor and boot up and then flash with the latest CPiD bios.

The CPxH/CPtV do not support Speedstep Pentium III processors. If one is installed, they will boot at the lowest speed the processor supports. To get around this, download the CPxJ bios floppy and run the bios with the /jabil switch. It will reprogram it with the CPxJ bios which DOES support speedstep.

The inspiron 3700 is the same way. Use the 3800 bios.

You can add pentium II support to an inspiron 3000 by swapping the 2 flash chips from an inspiron 3200 (purchase a dead board from ebay). Note: If you try to flash the 3200 bios into the 3000, it will kill it!.

The TR4 bios for the CP can be obtained from my website:
http://home.comcast.net/~stonent

The other bioses can be obtained from the Dell website.
The Delltalk forums are another source for good info.
http://delltalk.us.dell.com

by **stonent** » Thu May 01, 2003 10:37 am

Also you can flash the latitude bios into the inspirons in many cases so that you can use the Docks with the PCI slots.

http://home.comcast.net/~stonent/itol.htm

by **bachikho** » Fri Mar 03, 2006 3:17 am

with this info, can i updrade to p3 and how?

Code: Select all: BIOS Date: 11/07/01 BIOS Type: Phoenix ROM BIOS PLUS Version 1.10 A12 BIOS ID: Dell Latitude CPi D266XT BIOS Version: A12 OEM Sign-On: None Chipset: Intel 440BX/ZX rev 2 Superio: SMC 958FR rev 1 found at port 3F0h OS: Win2000 SP4 CPU: Pentium II 266 Mhz MAX: 300 Mhz BIOS ROM In Socket: Yes BIOS ROM Size: 256K Memory Installed: 128 MB Memory Maximum: 256 MB Memory Slot 01: 64 MB Memory Slot 02: 64 MB

by **Raven66gt** » Thu May 17, 2007 10:23 pm

The link provided earlier to the TR4 BIOS used to upgrade a Latitude CP to a CPi is no longer working. Can anyone provide the TR4 BIOS or a link to a download. It would really be appreciated. Thanks, Joe