BIOS Updates forum

Installed Ubuntu 10.04LTS on harddisk to the TP600 server laptop PIII 450 MHz @ 300MHz Vcore 0,90V Vio=3.12V. Initial measurement of power consumption under heavy Internet traffic: 8W. This is the same as server running on XP. Ubuntu has no virus scanning software running. I have to monitor disk act...

I managed to lower the Vcore further down to 0.90V. The trick is to connect a pull-down resistor from Vcore voltage regulator ADP3020 pin 26 to GND. To drop Vcore from 0.93 to 0.90 a 14.7kohm pull-down was found by trials (10k and 4.7k in series). I did trials as low as 0.88 but this booted but was ...

I swithed back to XP in the home server use because booting Ubuntu from CD/DVD takes 2 hours and I had to do it several times because dnsmasq-base installation does not seem to work reliably. I suspect that 256M is not sufficient memory for diskless Ubuntu. I will install Ubuntu on disk and study re...

Lowering Vcore was quite easy job. Processor voltage is controlled by ADP3420 chip on the backside of the MMC2 processor module. Vcore is controlled by resitors R92/R93 (VID4) R5/R6 (VID3) R15/R16 (VID2) R3/R4 /VID1) Coding of Vcore voltage can be found in document http://pdf1.alldatasheet.com/datas...

I managed to get basic functionality of CD/DVD-booted Ubuntu-based Thinkpad 600E home network server working: i.e. sharing internet connection in my home network. The trick was to install dnsmasq-base package sudo apttude install dnsmasq-base and allow sharing of network connection system -> prefere...

Found out that an old Thinkpad 600E is fit for running home network server jobs. It is small size, fits in closets, does not produce much noise nor heat. It has battery to run several hours without mains power supply. Managed to build a 3 computer Microsoft MSHOME home network with (1) Thinkpad 600E...

I plan to use 10G hard disk for booting and running the operating system. Application programs and application data can be on USB-memory stick.

Updated 600E XP installation with Service Pack 3. XP takes about 8GB on harddisk. Since I have only 10GB hardisk, I plan to use USB-memory stick to extend disk memory. Thinkpad 600E USB support only USB1.1-level. I wonder is it is upto the motherboard hardware cotroller Intel 82371EB which support o...

Installed Windows XP. Feels clearly faster than Ubuntu. Installed DeepSleep with W Marcus Miller's utility. L2 works by Powerleap utility. Also Huawei 3G USB modem works. Remaining problems are (1) lack of free USB ports (2) low graphical performance in showing Youtube videos. Is Adobe's flashplayer...

Managed to get the processor at higher speed via Ubuntu grub-dual booting first to WinME where I use W Marcus Miller dsleep - dos utility and then exit WinME by exiting via restart and then select Ubuntu from grub boot menu. This way PIII stays in higher speed. It is a bit cumbersome. WinME takes so...

I got the sound working by editing file /etc/module and adding following lines

snd-cs4236
snd-mixer-oss
snd-pcm-oss

OK, I installed Ubuntu 10.04 and pIIIcache and x86info gives following info: sharedoc@sharedoc-laptop:/usr/src$ x86info -c -mhz x86info v1.17. Dave Jones 2001-2005 Feedback to <davej@redhat.com>. Found 1 CPU -------------------------------------------------------------------------- Found unknown cac...

Back with Thinkpad 600E laptops after some years. I just moved to a new appartment and need to rethink the home network. I have two 600E's who have been unused for a year in outside cold storage room. First one booted ok but the second one has drained the CMOS battery and has lost all CMOS and clock...

Based on a quick datatsheet serach PM chip is 4Mbit 5 volt part and W chip is 2 Mbit 3.3 volt part so they are not compatible.

L2 contributes a significant performance difference. So run some bechmark without setting L2 on and then with L2 on.
I recommend to do the SpeedStep mod to get best performance for video playback.