IBM Thinkpad 600E bios mod for processor update

Recommended by Wim's BIOS...

Ok, great. I just got the PIII board and I installed in my 600E. I get the 127 error, but I can't seem to get to the bios setup by pressing F1. I can, however get to the setup by clicking on the test button when the error 00127 come up. I seems to freeze before I can get to the hex editor, though. I go to config, then press control-d and it just freezes there. I can boot by pressing F1 and ESC. Am I supposed to change this byte before switching processors?

I tried taking one of my 128mb sticks of ram out and was able to change it then. I then shut down and reinstalled the stick of ram and did the bios change again, this time with the ram.
Powerleap indicates that this is running at only 328, 329, or 330mhz, when it's supposed to be a 500mhz CPU. Any thought on this? Does the speed change depending on what applications I'm running?

Sorry to keep answering my own questions.
I'm guessing that it's not running at 500mhz simply because I haven't done the speedstep mod yet.

:EDIT:
It still is not booting to the higher speed even with the mod finished. I see the bus speed is at 65.80mhz and .6580x500 = 329, which is exactly what it's running at. Does anyone know why the bus isn't running at 100mhz? I also tried disabling the internal ram, but that didn't change it.

Hi, I am new to this wonderful forum. Currently I am planning to upgrade my Thinkpad 600E PII 366MHZ's processor to PIII. I found one PIII 1.13 GHZ that's pulled from a ibm r31 on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/pentium-3-1-13-ghz- ... 0064350672

is my thinkpad compatible to that cpu? Do i need to change the socket as well? is there anything else that i need to pay attendtion when i shop around?

lenevo wrote:

Hi, I am new to this wonderful forum. Currently I am planning to upgrade my Thinkpad 600E PII 366MHZ's processor to PIII. I found one PIII 1.13 GHZ that's pulled from a ibm r31 on ebay:
http://cgi.ebay.com/pentium-3-1-13-ghz- ... 0064350672

is my thinkpad compatible to that cpu? Do i need to change the socket as well? is there anything else that i need to pay attendtion when i shop around?

Welcome!

The highest possible upgrade on 600E's motherboard is an 850mhz PIII, the fastest CPU made in the MMC-2 format.

Without modification, the 850mhz cpu would only run at something like 700mhz or so because the 600E isn't compatible with the Speedstep technology found in most of the MMC-2 PIIIs. Thankfully, there is a workaround for this to bypass the Speedstep circuit and have the CPU running at its full speed.

Jamiphar,

I guess your 500MHz PIII is still running with 66MHz FSB.

Can you check what is the TYPE code at the bottom of the laptop.
Maybe you have a relative old 600E which does not switch automatically to 100FSB. There are a couple of these reported earlier.

Sure, it's 2645-55U.
I tried the clock generator mod, I posted about it here.

Propably having additional memory stick was too much for the FSB bus buffers running 50% overclocked... Bad luck.

Maybe so. But I just got a used T23 anyway. I think I'll be selling the 600E for parts.

pkiff wrote:

Wait a second, from what I can tell reading the thread, Trillium is unable to boot into Windows 98SE with the 390X BIOS installed on a 390E.

That was true with a P-III 500MHz CPU installed - I could boot in Safe Mode, but a regular boot would hang. With the P-III installed and a completely clean install of Win 98SE I was able to boot to a default display at 640x480 resolution, but as soon as I installed the Neomagic 256AV driver I just got a black screen, and thereafter a boot in anything but safe mode would hang!! And that behaviour was identical regardless of whether the BIOS was that for the 390E or 390X. So far I haven't been able to determine what's causing the problem - still trying!

However, with a P-II 300MHz CPU the system boots just fine - and does so with either the 390E BiOS or the 390X BIOS. The BIOS recognizes the CPU as a P-II at 450MHz and WCPUID confirms that, and FSB of 100MHz. The difference that the 390X BIOS made was that it correctly recognized the P-III as a P-III/500, whereas the 390E BIOS said it was a Pentium Pro/500. The 390X BIOS also gives a message saying "Re-work needed - using old RTC", but with the P-II installed it boots and runs OK.

At the time I posted that information the floppy drive wasn't working - (showed in Windows Explorer as a 5 1/4" drive??) - and neither were the USB and serial ports. But everything else seemed OK and stable. Just yesterday, thanks to Sharedoc's input, I've resolved the floppy/USB/Serial port problem, and now the system's running fine with the P-II at 450MHz. The revised hardware mod, with a photo of the clock generator chip part of the systemboard, is at http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic7639-30.html.

My remaining problem is with the P-III as it still hangs in the boot even with the new hardware mod. And the other puzzle is that a Celeron 466, which runs OK at a FSB of 66MHz, won't do ANYTHING with the FSB at 100MHz - just shows the power light, but no BIOS, no video! Perhaps the Celeron 466 can't handle the 100MHz? Yet in the other thread, borc2m reported a Celeron 300 running OK at 100MHz FSB? Has anyone any ideas?

"Re-work needed - using old RTC"

I wonder what this means? At what time of the boot does this come?

With the 390X BIOS installed in the 390E system the following text appears immediately after the screen displaying the IBM ThinkPad logo, and the message "Press F1 for IBM BIOS Setup utility", disappears:

Re-work needed, using old RTC chip.

ISB055WW
CPU = Pentium (R) II processor 450MHz
640K System RAM passed
63M Extended RAM passed
0256K Cache SRAM passed
System BIOS shadowed
Video BIOS shadowed
UMB upper limit segment address: E8B1
Mouse initialized
Fixed Disk 0: IBM-DARA-206000-(PM)

and at the bottom of the screen:

Press <F1> to enter SETUP

With the 390E's BIOS (version R01_C9) installed, there is no text displayed after the logo screen disappears - the next thing to appear is the "Starting Windows 98..." message.

I'm guessing that RTC means Real Time Clock, and that the message must mean the chip in the 390X is different to the one in the 390E (Cypress CY2285-2); does that make sense?

As I've indicated in recent posts, the system with the 100MHz FSB modification boots successfully using either BIOS when a P-II 300MHz CPU is installed. With a Celeron 466 I get absolutely nothing! With a P-III 500MHz CPU the boot hangs, even though the 390X BIOS recognizes the CPU correctly as a Pentium III/500. (The 390E BIOS says it's a Pentium Pro/500.) While I'm unable to fully boot to Win 98SE, the system does boot OK to DOS, and the program CHKCPU confirms the CPU information - here's a photo of CHKCPU's output: http://img88.imageshack.us/img88/8862/chkcpupiii500tp390egx1.jpg . I don't know what's causing the regular boot to hang, and while I can boot into Safe Mode I'm not at all expert, and am not sure what I can do in safe mode to identify the problem - any pointers to debugging the problem would be greatly appreciated!

[cp]

the celeron 466 (6*66.6) won't boot because it can't take the 600MHz (6*100). ~550Mhz is the limit for the mendocino core. a few lucky ones took the celeron 466 to 600 but with insane vcore and watercooling.

Trillium,

"I can boot into Safe Mode" this means Windows 98SE Safe Mode?

Could you check what WCPUID utility (or similar) shows for processor L2 cache state

Sharedoc,

Sorry for the delayed reply - I've been away a few days. Yes, I mean "Windows 98SE Safe Mode". I ran WCPUID and on the Cache Information screen it says:
Level 2 Cache - 256K byte cache size - 8-way set associative - 32 byte line size
I captured the different screens as images, and the one for the main screen is here: http://img327.imageshack.us/img327/2664/wcpuidmainlb1.jpg

As you can see, the CPU is shown correctly as a P-III running at a nominal 500MHZ, with the system bus a nominal 100MHz. With the correct BIOS for the 390E (R01_C9) installed, this CPU is detected as a "Pentium Pro, 500MHZ", but with the BIOS for a 390X installed (ISB055WW) it is detected correctly as a "Pentium III, 500MHz".

The P-III won't fully boot to Windows 98SE, but will boot to DOS or Windows 98SE Safe Mode. But I've just noticed that the floppy doesn't work with the P-III in safe mode! If I switch the CPU to the P-II 300MHZ unit that came with the system, it runs at 450MHZ with the 100MHZ FSB and everything works, including the floppy. I've no idea why it doesn't work the same way with the P-III.