Twisting the Thinkpad T30

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brokencase
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I'm starting a new thread to discuss the possibilities (and my own progress) of enhancing the performance of the Thinkpad T30.

This will be similiar to the 600e PIII upgrade thread. The goals this time will be to provide enhanced performance
in the desktop mode while still maintaining a usable battery operated mode.

Topics to be covered:

1)Enhancing the cooling to get better performance.
2)Overclocking the T30 - I have successfully accomplished this.
3)The creation of a T30 specific utility to overclock and tweak memory parameters.
4)Will a Prescott SL7X5 processor work in the T30? - I've ordered one and it is on the way, so we will see..
brokencase
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It looks like a SL7X5 cpu swap does not work on the T30.

I picked it up on Ebay for $20. No big loss...

The SL7X5 fits, but the heat spreader raises the T30 heatsink a few mm.
Just a black screen on powerup. I suspect the BIOS reads the version/stepping and does not like
what it sees and just quits.

My hope was that it would still boot up but without hyperthreading configured.
I could live without hyperthreading, but I really wanted the extra cpu cache and higher fsb potential.

Right now I have a SL6WY (2,5 ghz) cpu. I have been able to overclock this to 2.635 ghz.
I suspect those who have upgraded to 2.6ghz cpus could go to 2.75ghz or more.

I will discuss how to overclock the T30 in my next post. I am in proccess of writing a cross platform app to
make it easy.
brokencase
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The PLL on the T30 is a Cypress C9827.

Th CPUFSB utility works with this chip -->http://www.podien.de/FSB.HTM

Unfortunately it won't work on the T30. The reason is that the PLL and DRAM SPD's need to be uniqely selected
into the PCI config space via the T30's Superio chip.

If you use something like the Winring0 library you can write to this special register and the the CPUFSB utility will then work.
Likewise you can also set it up so that the CPUZ utility can correctly read the SPD's of your installed dram.

This is how I presently alter my fsb, but I will have my own fsb utility completed soon that makes this more convienent.
I have also added the relevant i845 memory timing adjustments.
brokencase
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After doing a little more reading last night I determined that I need to do a BSEL mod in order to get the
SL7X5 cpu to work since it is looking for 133mhz clock (for 533mhz fsb).

It looks like I need to pull up BSEL0.

I will give that a shot this weekend.
brokencase
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No luck with the bsel mod. What I did was renoved the two bsel pins and then pulled them hi and low
by using a circuit writer pen an connecting them to adjacent Vcc, Vss pins.

Still does not boot.
brokencase
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I've noticed that when overclocking, the PLL also shifts up the PCI and AGP clocks.
So the reason I can not go higher than 105.4mhz (421 fsb) is most likely because the AGP is frezzing at
around 70mhz.

So my next step will be to strap the C9827 (Cypress PLL) so that it generates 133mhz fsb (while still maintaining the correct 66 & 33 mhz agp/pci clocks).
This is a board mod. We will be pulling SEL 1 of the PLL high.

The problem with this is whether or not the Sl6WY cpu (2.5ghz 25xmultiplier) can handle the 133 fsb. I doubt it but we will see...
Atze007
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Hey,
did you get your SL7X5 running on the T30? I'm also planning to upgrade mine to this speed, could you give me an (easy) description what steps need to be done for this?

Thanks a lot!!
decamposem
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I'm also keen to see what your findings were :))))

I have a T30 2.4 Ghz w/ 2 GB Ram and interested at what you found :).

I have also been trying to research if it would be possible to remove the Radeon 7500 chip and upgrade ...still hav'nt really found anything
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