IBM Thinkpad 600E bios mod for processor update

Don't ask how to hack password. (BIOS Passwords)
Raceboy
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It could be most likely the DC/video board, not the system board. I saw this DC/board in e-Bay couple of days ago for like 20$ or sth.
Smeghead
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Does the 100mhz bus speed overclock the other devices like the video card?
Raceboy
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No, because 600E utilizes the BX chipset, which is rated to 100MHz FSb, and AGP runs in this case @66MHz, in specs, so does PCI bus, which is running in 1/3 FSB= 33MHz. Even in 133 MHz FSB, the PCI bus runs at 33MHz because BX chipset has an 1/4 divider for PCI bus too, AGP runs in this case still at 1/2 FSB = 89MHz though. For AGP, BX chipset has only 1/1 and 1/2 divider :cry:
Sharedoc
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I am running my 600E now 766MHz (127,7MHZ fsb). This is the highest I can run so that it still boots fom harddisk with DMA33 mode.

I wonder if it is possible to activate 1/4 divider for PCI within bios boot before loading the OS from harddisk.
zverina
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This is my first post on this forum, but i have been reading it for some time and it's very helpfull.
Let's get to the point. :)

I have TP 600e 2645IB1 originaly equiped with PII 400MHz. Some time ago I deceided to upgrade the CPU and at that time I found this forum.
I have bougt PIII 650MHz CPU of TP 600x and put it in my 600e. I have followed all of your instructions and avoided 127 error with BIOS mod.
However, the CPU is not runing at full speed (becouse SpeetStep technology wich is not supported with the TP 600e systemboard) and I have deceided to make the SpeedStep mod.

With the reference of the instruction posted here I have found out that the CPU I have bought is slightly different as the CPU on the pics.

I wonder if the mod would still be the same regardless the differences between these CPUs?

Thanks for your help! :)

PS: I would post some pics I, but I don't know how. :(

Rok
Billy the Squid
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Whilst trawling for some anwers I stumbled upon this thread and seeing some skills here I thought I'd jump in with a question.
I've got an old 600E with a DVD drive and no floppy. The battery is dead, hold no charge at all, machine will not boot from battery but rund fine on AC power and that suits me.
It's been in a cupboard for years and I recently dragged it out for the kids to use - I put a 64Mb RAM upgrade in and installed XP - it worked fine.
Suddenly it started to fail to boot if the battery was installed, took teh battery out it worked OK, until now. I get a blue screen that tells me there's a hardware failure yet it would boot to safe mode.
Research so far seems to suggest a BIOS update could help, I figured out how to make a bootable CD with the BIOS update on it but of course the utility wants a charged battery and AC powerto upgrade the BIOS - please HELP :!:
I've found a few references to this problem but noe so far that I've understood - I'm not that knowledgeable on these things.
Thanks
fdsafdsa
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I've already upgraded my 600e from 300Mhz to 600Mhz, though only runs at 500Mhz (for now), fixed 127 problem, etc., and upgraded memory to 512M and got the L2 cache to enable on boot in XP, thanks to this great thread.

Have actually been using this for school for about 4 months, but needed to upgrade the hard drive. A 6Gig IBM drive is almost useless to WinXP with all the security updates. XP along with windows versions of OpenOffice, XAMP, and Eclipse only leave about 1G of storage.

Now needing to load .NET and MSDN, so need to upgrade my drive. I bought a 40Gig Fujitsu, and was able to clone the drive from my 6Gig using a version of MaxBlast4 from Maxtor. I can see the data on the drive and the drive passes the HDD test in the BIOS, but the 600e gives me this error: "A disk read error occured Press Ctrl+Alt+Del to restart".

Any clues? Can the 600e support non IBM drives? Could this be a BIOS issue like hitting some hard drive size barrier that a later BIOS supports? Any other BIOS issues? Should a BIOS update solve the problem?

Any help would be appreciated.

600e BIOS version: 1.10, INET25WW
IBM Model: DARA-206000 - 6G, 4200 rpm, DMA66, 418K? buffer
Fujitsu Model: MHT2040AH - 40G, 5400 rpm, DMA100, 8meg buffer

PS: The 6G won't go to waste. I plan on installing Linux on it and buying another caddy so I can use the drives just like you would pluggables in a desktop system.
fdsafdsa
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Oh, forgot to mention, I did a clean install from XP disk and got the same error. The install could not actually complete because after XP install copies over the files, it reboots. This is where I got the same error. This is why I think it's a hardware, BIOS, or incompatiblity issue. All indications are that the partition, format, file(s) copy went smoothly for both the XP install and clone methods I tried...up until the 600e had to actually boot.

Thanks.
Sharedoc
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fdsa,

I haven't run across any observations that there is 600E harddisk size limit <40G. Did you check http://zurich.ai.mit.edu/hypermail/thinkpad/ ? These guys sure know if there is a limit.

Did you already try to partition the hardisk only 20G?
Sharedoc
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Billy,

Bios update without battery is discussed a lot
http://zurich.ai.mit.edu/hypermail/thinkpad/

other possibilities
- to borrow a battery
- cheapo battery from eBay
Sharedoc
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Zverina,

I have never seen the 650MHz PIII, so I cannot say if and how much it is different from 700MHz PIII.

Need pics.
Billy the Squid
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Sharedoc wrote:Billy,

Bios update without battery is discussed a lot
http://zurich.ai.mit.edu/hypermail/thinkpad/

other possibilities
- to borrow a battery
- cheapo battery from eBay
Thanks Sharedoc - haven't seen a cheapo battery from any source, they are all more than the thing is worth really :-) I did try and look through http://zurich.ai.mit.edu/hypermail/thinkpad/ but it got the better of me and I got confused! I'll persevere for a bit - any other pointers would be great.

Thanks
zverina
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Sharedoc wrote:Zverina,

I have never seen the 650MHz PIII, so I cannot say if and how much it is different from 700MHz PIII.

Need pics.
Here are the detailed pictures.

Image

Image

Image

Image[/img]
Sharedoc
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650MHz-PIII-printed-circuit-board looks to be identical to 700MHz. SpeedStep controller chip seems to be labeled "JAPAN AI GCL 04309".

Original SpeedStep mod applies.

Figure 1a:
http://www.manifestos.net/pkiff/thinkpa ... _fig1a.jpg

Figure 1b:
http://www.manifestos.net/pkiff/thinkpa ... _fig1b.jpg
Sharedoc
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Billy,

http://zurich.csail.mit.edu/hypermail/t ... /0344.html

>yes, i have a method which can upgrade the bios without a fully charged
>battery..
>first of all ,you need to make a bios-update floppy disk and another
>clean bootable disk with no config.sys and autoexec.bat
>then copy the following files from the bios-update disk to the bootable
>disk: phlash.exe and $0179000.FL1 $0179000.FL3.
>and rename the $0179000.fl1 to bios.rom ,$0179000.fl3 to platform.bin
>finally use the bootable disk to reboot. And turn to driver letter
>a:>,just type "phlash<enter>",this program will automatically search for
>the file platform.bin(the manufacturer specific initialization file) and
>use the default file bios.rom to update bios. everything will be done
>just as using the bios-update disk. And this method will not detect
>whether you use a AC adaptor/battery nor not.
>warning:
> take the risk with your own...this is NOT a safe way to update the
>bios which IBM recommended.though it really works
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