IBM Thinkpad 600E bios mod for processor update

Don't ask how to hack password. (BIOS Passwords)
JBDive
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Sharedoc and others thanks for the great post on upgrading these great but older laptops. My primary Mitac laptop recently died and I had to switch to an older 600e and with a CPU upgrade, BIOS mod, memory upgrade I am able to get XP running on it well enough to take over for the dead Mitac (BTW anyone got a source for Mitac parts let me know).

Second off though I have a couple of problems that I've Googled for but can't find an answer and my bet is you guys will know the answers better than IBM themselves.

1. I suspect my CMOS battery is near dead as about every 3rd power off I have to go in and redo the BIOS mod to get rid of the 127 error. Where is the battery, how hard to change, etc?

2. I have several drive bay items which all work well under Win98 but when I try to use them in WinXP and hot swap between them I get repeating three short beeps even though the drive works fine. Example I started the system with a floppy installed, changed to the CD drive and I may be able to access the drive but the system is beeping at me over and over. Same goes for any switch I make, floppy, cd, spare slim battery with sometimes I can access the drive sometimes I can't even checking device manager doesn't show the drive but the beeps just keep going.
JBDive
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Does the HackFlags registry entry make any difference when you've upgraded the 600e to a PIII600 or higher? Can XP then manage speedstep or are you still locked by the BIOS and lack of speedsteep support on the 600e?
Sharedoc
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You can find the bios battery on the underside of the 600e under the tin cover where SODIMM-memory is living. You need to open one screw. Battery is at the end of the wires, you can't miss it.
chantage
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pincellone wrote:I realised that there is an inconsistency between what Sharedoc suggests for the TP 600E upgrade and the picture I’ve found in this thread. I wonder if I soldered the 2k2 resistor to the wrong end. In Sharedoc’s drawing it seems to be C13, but according to the picture (photo) I’ve found in the forum, the resistor seems supposed to be soldered to C14. I used C13 which is located on the right side of C14

My Thinkpad 600E is a 2645 A5U, I also cut the folio at the back of the processor board, but not even Deepsleep works. The new processor is a Pentium 3 Coppermine 500 mhz Family 6 Model 8 Stepping 1 and it only runs at 330 Mhz /bus@ 66 Mhz instead of 100 Mhz. It is 100% SpeedStep capable

I would really appreciate if somebody could let me know where the end of the resistor should be actually soldered and also give me some advice on what else could be wrong.

BTW I can’t perform the 8% increase upgrade as my motherboard looks slightly different than the one depicted in the forum. Also, I eliminated the 127 error by adding 0A to position 20 of the editor, but I did not find 02 as expected, it was actually 00. I did not find a way to disable the onboard 32 mb memory, putting 81 instead of 80 is not working for me. :roll:
If the system bus runs at 66MHz, you've got an old version of TP600E. In this case, you need to hardwire the clock generator chip to generate 100MHz. I had to do this to one of my TP600E's.

This is what I did:

http://www.fayoly.net/bbs/read.php?tabl ... ects&no=47

It is most likely that you need to disable the onboard RAM on this version of system board.

For the SpeedStep mod, visit the following site for better explanation:

http://www.xabk.co.uk/

I noticed you have a P-III 500MHz. Unless it is a rare ULV (ultra low voltage) version, it does not have the SpeedStep capability. It looks like the clock multiplier is already x5. You just need to hardwire the clock generator to make it 100 x 5 = 500 MHz.
pincellone
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Thanks! Your web page is very informative. i will try the clock mod.

Francesco
pincellone
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Upgrade succeeded. I damaged my 500 mhz processor, so this time I used an 850Mhz mmc2 CPU.

The problem is that this processor looks quite different from the one showed by Sharedoc. Is it possible to perform the speedstep upgrade on it?

After the clock generator mod I'm getting 700 Mhz @100 mhz fsb. I had to disable the onboard ram to make everything work smoothly. So I have now 128+128 megs of SODIMM ram modules (pc66 working as good as if they were pc100!!!)

Even if it's possible, I wonder if 850mhz would be a stable and reliable upgrade for my old 600e 2645 A5U

Thank you
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Last edited by pincellone on Fri Dec 23, 2005 12:41 am, edited 1 time in total.
zandirgator
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Has anyone had experience with lowering the vcore of the PIII 750Mhz MMC-2 to 1.35v? I have been reading through the thread but the only information I can find is for the older design MMC-2 PIII.
Olli
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hello,

first of all thanks for so much initiative on this subject and sharing your knowledge.
sorry for maybe asking the same question over and over again:

what exactly needs to be done to use cpus >500mhz on a TP600E?
here are some system-specs:

CPU Type: Mobile Intel Pentium II PE, 400 MHz (6 x 67)
Motherboard Name IBM 26458BG
Motherboard Chipsatz Intel 82440BX/ZX
Arbeitsspeicher 192 MB (SDRAM)
BIOS Typ IBM (11/20/99)

is there some kind of FAQ/wiki for this?

thanks and merry x-mas to everyone :)
zandirgator
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Found the information, I have my MMC-2 750 running at a Vcore of 1.48V. I did this by removing resistors R3 and R14. This .12V drop is totally stable so far but a .2V drop is not at all stable and causes a blue screen in windows every boot.

Shaving this .12V off Vcore reduces the operating temp ALOT.
poge
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I've upgraded my 600e to a 500mhz p3 that has no speedstep and I want to enable the l2 cache but Ive read this entire thread (well skimmed it) and I cant find the program anywhere. Can someone link me to the program and give me directions on how to do this? Thanks.
poge
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Oh yea I've tried the "PowerLeap Cache Config Tool" and it just crashes me or gives me the blue screen, so am I skrewed? :( Also I bought a cd burner/dvd player combo drive and it wont boot it gives me the "looking for disk" logo. :-\
poge
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I am officially the biggest retard ever, sorry for the triple post, I guess it was on the 1st page, didnt think to look there. :oops:

Hey, I found the edit button. :) Anyway, what do you think I can do with my 500mhz p3 with 600e mainboard? I have a dead 600x motherboard I'd donate to the cause if its still needed and someone paid shipping.
Ripa Rapa
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poge wrote:Oh yea I've tried the "PowerLeap Cache Config Tool" and it just crashes me or gives me the blue screen, so am I skrewed?
My blue screen problems with PowerLeap ended when I disabled the internal 32MB memory.
Thinkpadder
poge
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I just did the 108fsb mod and now my p3 500 runs at 540mhz. I disabled the onboard memory, but I havent tested it to see if it works at this speed yet. One problem I'm having is when I boot, 4 out of 5 times I get error "108" at post, and it just hangs. I saw that someone else was having this problem also, is there any way it can be fixed? Thanks.
Sharedoc
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I have been working on a stupid small ASM proggie to compute CPU speed. I am using the same logic as in W Marcus Millers DeepSleep utility.
I can't get the program accurate enough, though.

Has anyone reverse engineered bios code, how Award/AMI bios computes the clock speed at bios boot?

Below the working code



CPUSPEED: ; This program displays the processor speed in Megaherz
; Author: Sharedoc Justlink Date: 11.12.2005 - 7.1.2006
; Oulu, Finland
;
; Phase 1 - Read time from MSDOS real-time clock service
MOV AH,2CH ; INT 21H = Real-Time Clock, 2CH => get time
INT 21H ; DH= seconds, DL = 1/100 of seconds 0...99
PUSH DX ; store Real-Time Clock 1st reading in stack
;
; Phase 2 - Get CPU start cycles count
RDTSC ; Get cycles_count
PUSH EDX ; push initial cycles count to stack
PUSH EAX
; Phase 3 - Big delay loop
MOV EAX,0FFFFFFFH ; We can adjust the delay by initial loop count
DELAYLOOP: NOP ; begin loop
DEC EAX
JNZ DELAYLOOP
; Phase 4 - Get CPU end cycles
RDTSC ; Get cycles_count
POP EBX ; Get initial cycles
SUB EAX, EBX ; subtract low 32-bits
POP EBX
SBB EDX, EBX ; subtract high 32-bits
PUSH EDX ; Push resulting cycles consumed
PUSH EAX
; Phase 5 - read real-time clock 2nd time
MOV AH,2CH ; INT 21H = Real-Time Clock, 2CH => get time
INT 21H ; DH= seconds, DL = 1/100 of seconds 0...99
MOV CX, DX ; store 2nd real-time clock reasing into CX
; ;
POP EAX ; Phase 6 - calculate time used
POP EDX ; EDX:EAX containing cycles consumed
POP BX ; Get 1st real-time clock reading
; subtract 1st timeslots from 2nd to get time difference
SUB CH, BH ; whole seconds gone?
JZ ONLY100S ; if not, then only hundreths of sec passed
ADD CL,100 ; if yes, add 100 to hundreths
DEC CH ; check if over 2 sec
JZ ONLY100S ; nope
ZERO100S: JMP TIMEERROR ; measurement time error
ONLY100S: SUB CL,BL ; we calculate duration in hundreths of seconds
JZ ZERO100S ; if it is zero, then timing error
AND ECX, 0FFH ; otherwise we pack it in to 32-bit unsigned binary
;
; Phase 7 - calculate MHz as cycles/time used
DIV ECX ; EAX contains no of cycles, ECX duration in 10ms units
MOV EDX,EAX ; copy 32-bit result from EAX to EDX
SHR EDX,16 ; DX:AX contains now 32-bit dividend
MOV CX,10000 ; get into megahertz scale
DIV CX ; ->AX contains megaherz countas binary 16-bit unsigned value
;
; Phase 8 - Convert from binary to decimal for display
MOV CL,10 ; divide by 10 to get
DIV CL ; megahertz units as remainder in AH
ADD AH,'0' ; convert to ASCII character
MOV BL, AH ; 1st digit of MHz ASCII string into EBX
AND AX,0FFH ; AL contains megahertz tens
DIV CL ; divide by 10 to get
ADD AH,'0' ; tens, convert to ASCII character
MOV BH, AH ; 2nd digit of MHz ASCII string into EBX
SHL EBX,16 ; move to higher 16 bits of 32 bit doubleword
AND AX,0FFH ; AL contains megahertz hundreds
DIV CL ; let's divide by 10 to get
ADD AH,'0' ; hundreds, convert to ASCII
MOV BH, AH ; 3rd digit of MHz ASCII string into EBX
AND AL,0FH ; Test if 4rd digit of MHZ ASCII string is 0
JZ BLANKO ;
ADD AL,'0' ; reminder is thousands, convert to ASCII
JMP NONBLANKO
BLANKO: MOV AL,' ' ; reminder is 0, convert to ASCII space character
NONBLANKO: MOV BL,AL
PUSH EBX ; push ASCII digits to stack
;
; Phase 9 - Display
MOV DX,SP ; MS-DOS memory-pointer now points to the MHz string
MOV CX,4 ; we will output 4 bytes
MOV BX,1 ; open-file handle for standard output is 1
MOV AH,040 ; function number for MS-DOS write is 040
INT 33 ; write the string to standard output
POP EAX ; pop string off the stack
MOV DX, MHZTEXT ; MS-DOS memory-pointer now points to the MHz string
DISPL: MOV CX, 11 ; Display of fixed strings, we will output 11 bytes
MOV BX,1 ; open-file handle for standard output is 1
MOV AH,040 ; function number for MS-DOS write is 040
INT 33 ; write the string to standard output
MOV AX,04C00 ; MS-DOS function-number for successful exit
INT 33 ; go back to the operating system
TIMEERROR: MOV DX, ERRORTEXT ; MS-DOS memory-pointer now points to error print string
JMP DISPL
MHZTEXT: DB ' MHz(about)'
ERRORTEXT: DB ' TIME ERROR'
Last edited by Sharedoc on Sat Jan 07, 2006 9:12 am, edited 2 times in total.
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