TP Geniuses! How to manually set HDD parameters on TP600?

Don't ask how to hack password. (BIOS Passwords)
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jmlowe
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I am 'converting' several TP600s to digital picture frames. Am using DSL in 'frugal' mode to drive the machines & image viewer, and to periodically poll for (& load) any new images that appear on any usb drive that is plugged in.
My image works fine---now I'm replacing the IDE hard drives with IDE/
Compact Flash adapters & 256MB Lexar CF chips.

TP600 #1 works flawlessly. Removed the HDD, installed adapter & CF card, booted, partitioned, formatted, loaded DSL, loaded my code on top--piece of cake.

TP390 (OK, one is not a TP600) thought the CF card was a 3GB drive, and although I was able to partition/format & load DSL & my image---it wouldn't boot. So after lots of web searching I changed the HDD parameters in BIOS to 'user' mode, 16 heads/32 sectors/978 cyls (=256MB), turned off UDMA----then reloaded and it works fine.

TP600 #2, 2645-41U: if the IDE/CF adapters isn't seated perfectly, the machine won't boot at all---I mean, the laptop won't even POWER UP. After some fiddling, I can get the machine to power up, but the BIOS can't see a hard drive of any kind (and of course, neither can linux).
So obviously I want to modify the BIOS on this TP600 to manually enter the disk parameters---and I have searched for almost three days and cannot figure out how to do it, nor have I found anyone else who has even posted an interest in doing this.


TP600 #3 appears to exhibit this same behavior


> I cannot find any other programs that I can use instead of IBM's goofy 'Easy Setup'
> I have installed the 'IBM ThinkPad Configuration Utility for DOS' (w/ bootable CD)---but this has no options for what I need (although I did depend on it to put the machines in 'presentation' mode so that the screens wouldn't turn off after an hour)---apparently the ONLY way to do that is the PS2.EXE program
> I know how to get into the 'System Configuration Edit Utility" in Easy Setup---but can't find the info I need to know what to alter.
> Possible to load an OLDER version of BIOS on the machine? I think the TP600s always had the Easy Setup utility, I'm worried that if I try to load BIOS for a completely different machine I'm going to introduce a host of OTHER issues...?
> I have run the IBM HDD firmware update---but it doesn't see a hard drive, so...no way to update the firmware (and there's no firmware in the CF card ANYWAY, but I was desperate)
> I have taken IDE/CF adapter & CF card from a working machine and tried it in machine #2---no luck (so the problem does not follow either the adapter or the CF card)

I have done due diligence in reading everything I can find, and still no answer. Surely I'm not the only one to have needed to do this...?

Any help would be appreciated,
Regards
edwin
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moving this to the laptop forum where our IBM specialist is living.
edwin/evasive

Do not assume anything

System error, strike any user to continue...
Sharedoc
Notebook Genius
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As far as I have experience on TP600E HDD is automatically recognised by the bios during boot. Full recognition can be forced on by removing the CMOS battery for few minutes and then booting.

If it does not detect HD then there is the question that do different bios versions behave differently. So check what are the bios versions.
jmlowe
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Joined: Fri Oct 20, 2006 11:01 pm

SOLVED (or at least..."avoided")

I got nowhere trying the manual HDD settings in the TP 600 BIOS--if it can be done, I've not figured out how.

What I *did* do is try a different IDE/CF adapter---with better results.

I was using a PC Engines CFDISK.2G adapter---that worked in my TP390 frame, but none of the 600s would recognize the CF as a HDD (several would not even power up with the CFDISK.2G adapter installed.

SO---so far I can report success with the ACS-CF-IDEToCFA-SFF 44 pin Rev 3 adapters I bought from ACS in Sarasota, FL. This worked perfectly, first time---although I've been finishing the prototype load once I figured this out, I've not yet tried it in all the other 600s.

Thanks for the replies,
jmlowe
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