Has anyone tried putting a newer (like T4x series) trackpoint on a 600/E/X model laptop? Also, wondering if anyone has tried replacing (or upgrading? not sure how) the speakers in a 600/E/X laptop.

They can probably be replaced easily by the same kind of speakers. As far as upgrading, you probably couldn't do much with the wattage and physical space those speakers use.
If you wanted to, you could probably add another stereo output using the speaker leads, but it probably wouldn't really help.

My 600E upgrades :

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=33897



W.

Has someone tried to use this kind of miniPCI to PCI adapters with 600X:

http://www.interfacemasters.com/products/pci_tools/im380/index.html

or

http://www.interfacemasters.com/products/pci_tools/mini_pci_to_pci/index.html

I know that these are not very cost effective and I already sold my 600X, but it would be nice to know At least (I guess) these would solve performance problems with SelectaDock III&PCI graphics cards.

Hello together,
im new to this Forum, i got the hint to post my question here from some friendly guys from thinkpad-forum.de (a german board for Thiunkpads).
Im overwhelmed of this very good structured and professional Forum and Members here.

So i got a 600e (Modell 550) with an P-II 300 Mhz CPU.

I got a new CPU, a Celeron with 433 Mhz MMC2 (also it must be a 66 Mhz FSB CPU) and i´m thinking of installing it to my Thinkpad.

I now wnat to know two things:

Have i to deactivate the L2 cache (like i read in several posts for P-III CPU´s?).
Or is my 433 Celeron working well without any limitations or handicaps ?

Second Question:
Does it make sense to change from a 300Mhz Pentium to a smaller but faster Celeron?
I think the Pentium has a 512 KB L 2 cache (Does it?), the Celeron has only 128 KB Cache

Best regards and thanks for any kind of answer.

Hello, and Welcome to Thinkpads.com

As your new CPU is not a PIII, you do not need to disable the L2 cache. You just have to swith the two CPUs.

The Celeron 433 has better results than the PII 300, even if the cache is smaller (in fact, the PII 300 has a 256 kb cache).

I wouldn't bet my trousers on this, but I think the difference is approximatively 15% better with the Celeron 433.

W.

Here's an oddity for folks to chew on...

I picked up an MMC-1 PII-400 for my 600 (2645-45u) on eBay recently and installed it over the weekend.

The 400 was an on-die L2 cache, from what I could tell (no big chips on the connector side of the card). From what I had read, on-die was the way to go for the 600s, since off-die didn't work too well.

So when I pull my 300MHz processor out, what do I find? big chips on the back of the module, which makes me think it's off-die L2. I'll have to reference the part number on the 300 some time and see what it says about this.

In spite of this, the 400 seems to be working beautifully.

Go figure.

Hi all,
I successfully replaced the PII, 366MHz cpu in my 600E (26458AU) with a PIII, 650 MHz. It's working fine on Win98SE, with one stick of PC133 256MB RAM, running at 500 MHz with L2 cache enabled. Then I RT#M! It says on pg. 28... "You must restore the CPU card serial number to its original number, when the CPU card is replaced." ...which I can't do unless I reinstall the original CPU. Does anyone know if evil things will happen if I don't restore that serial no.? Thanks in advance, Joe

uhm... they won't cover it under warranty?

Really, there's no technical reason for it, other than it's what technicians will expect.

Yes, i did it in a 600X, a X24 and a 770Z it fits and works perfectly.

Don't worry nothing evil will happen, you don't need the serial number of the cpu in the BIOS.

Why is the 600's ram limit so low, I saw that it was because of the early p1 chipset that the max was 256, but its a p2

Probably IBM never bothered to test the PII-based ones since they were concentrating on the 600E/600X at the time.

As I mentioned in another thread, it appears that you can take a regular 600 to 2x256+32 by finding pc66, CL2 sticks. Finding that particular kind of RAM, of course, is the real trick.

the thinkpad 600e will accept the celeron433 no problem run its cache without any bios mods needed,it will be detected as a pentium 2 433 in the bios ,however once in windows it will run with 128 l2.i found it a worthy upgrade from the 300-366 cpus
and on par with the 400p11.

the 600 can run up to 425mb max even with an ol bios.
it will run with quality cas 222 pc 100 ram
1x 256+1x128mb does the trick
2x256mb and it will still run 425mb anyway.
still more than enough to load and run vista,500mghz does the job ok,i'm keen to try the 600 on vista
with 366 mghz +imagine a 9yo laptop
still cutting it today

hello,

after having a couple years with my trusty TP600, and gotten my kids onto TP600s to use for their schoolwork, I have just obtained a 600e (2645-55U) that I am looking to, ummm, tweak a bit... max memory, new cpu, and so I pursue the newbie path of looking first.

I found this upgrade thread (good reading, thanks you pioneers!) and have studied a bit...

A couple questions:

firstoff, the bios, which my machine tells me is IHET47WW, and is the latest for the TP600e, except on this thread the version of INET36WW is advertised as the latest.

Hmmm, so poke these two bios ids into the lenovo website, and yup, they're both TP600e latest version, but I can't tell which or why they apply to the myriad of product numbers,,, they have the same release date...

Has anyone already solved this problem for me? Do I need to change IHET47WW to INET36WW?

Second question, for those who have already upgraded, when the mobo detects the new CPU and decides to change the FSB speed from 66Mhz to 100Mhz, do I need to have the faster RAM already installed, or can I limp along on the 66 stuff for a few days?

General upgrade observation: in upgrading the smaller HDD (travelstar 6.4GB/512kb buffer) with newer, bigger (travelstar 20GB/8MB buffer) I found that the 8MB buffer on the new HDD seems to make a BIG difference in how fast the machine boots (WinXP) even with no other tweaks.

Thanks for a very friendly and informative forum.

dabard51

Welcome to the Forum!!

You have a different 600E than the regular ones....give me a second to find my thread on upgrading the 55U...

EDIT: Here it is.

Thanks for the pointer, so the -55U is a distinct subspecie which does not upgrade as easily... okey-dokey, so it's a challenge.

Much to read and digest in the morning, before coffee...

Thanks again,

--dabard051

hello,

Part I (happy ending): so I found an MMC-II PII 400, deftly inserted it into my trusty 2145-55U, and viola! 400Mhz lickety split!

Part II (not so happy ending): having acquired a PIII-750 chip, now I want to figure out how hard or easy it is to swap the CPU on the MMC pwba. First, I discover that the metal cover is snap-fit to two metal posts, so by being brave I pop da top, unclip the end, and find the brains.

Now, I gently, and sometimes less gently, begin to pry what I believe is the cpu (300MHz deschutes) off the PWBA, and after half an hour, it pops, umm, sorta free, revealing a crushed R5 and leaving a couple dozen pins still firmly embedded into the pwba.

So I now have a dysfunctional MMC-2 PWBA and dead Pentium. The patient died on the table, doctor.

So, is changing the cpu on these mmc-2 boards always this frought with peril? or is there a trick to liberate the CPU that is not apparent to the newbee? Pointers would be appreciated... or do I start contemplating the use of P-III chips as ornamental jewelry?

Thanks,

I think that you went further than just about anyone in this forum....we normally just switch the boards (which we consider to be the entire CPU).

I just bought a TP 600X 2645-5FG on Ebay and before receiving it wanted to find out more about it, but this submodel is not listed in twbook.pdf and I've only been able to find a "bare bones" description on the IBM/Lenovo website:

Original description: PIII 650MHz (256KB) 64MB RAM 12.0GB 13.3 XGA TFT 1024x768 6X-2.3X DVD, Win98

Does anyone know more about this submodel or have a technical data sheet for it? I have the HMM for the 600X series, but the 5FG is not mentioned there either.

I've read here that the 650 MHz models of the TP 600X are upgradeable to 850 MHz, but the only price I've seen for the new CPU (around $100) was prohibitive - I only paid EUR 112 or around $145 for the laptop itself.

Is this kind of upgrade - from 650 to 850 MHz - even sensible? Is the difference before-after so pronounced that it's easily "felt", or is the improvement only marginal?

The 'G' just means it is the German (keyboard) version, the letter is different for other languages. Usually the whole series is then refered to as '2645-5Fx' in the documentation.

On a money/speed-increase basis (and depending on how much money you have) the upgrade to 850MHz is probably not worth it, but I do not take such mundane matters into consideration when dealing with my 600X.

Björn

Robbyrobot, I immediately noticed the speed increase from 650 to 800MHz. Only you can decide what price is worthwhile for you, but you do have a few options.

- 800MHz MMC-2 PIII modules can be found pretty cheap
- a brain transplant from another laptop

You can find parts laptops on eBay all the time. If you can find one that has an 850MHz MMC-2 module, it may cost less than the CPU alone. Finding out which machines have those modules (if not an IBM) can be very tiresome.

@Grey Area:

"The 'G' just means it is the German (keyboard) version"

Many thanks! That helps me already.

@whizkid:

"800MHz MMC-2 PIII modules can be found pretty cheap "

OK, I'll be looking. Have to do my homework

Sorry to bother everyone again, but in the meantime I've received the TP 600X 2645-5FG I mentioned, and have another question...

The "original description" on the IBM/Lenovo website specifies a 650 MHz CPU, and in fact the computer BIOS provides the same information.

However, when I check the system with Dr. Hardware, I get a CPU frequency of 498.3 MHz, which would indicate a 500 MHz CPU.

This is puzzling and I'd appreciate it if anyone could explain the situation: do I have a 650 MHz or a 500 MHz CPU, and if the original description and the BIOS information are both correct, why is Dr. Hardware showing such a low CPU frequency (or do you call that a cycle time in English... I'm uncertain)?

Presumably everyone except for me knew the answer to my previous question.

Naturally the computer has a 650MHz CPU, but it also has "Speedstep" and that reduces the CPU speed depending on the load. So a program like Dr. Hardware, that measures the actual CPU speed at any given time, isn't going to provide information on the _peak_ CPU speed, i.e. the nominal CPU speed.

In the meantime, I've used the diagnostic program NSSI (www.navsoft.cz) to get information on laptop systems, and it provides the nominal CPU speed. This is freeware and very good for such purposes.

The 433 will run sweet as, cache enabled n all,you could do the 8% fsb and it will run @466mghz which gives no glitches whatsoever.

re: posts about problems extracting the Powerleap PIII cache utility PLEAPCCP_V5_1_0_0_1.exe

I tried downloading several times, and was not able to get it to work by itself.
It always failed (error -113) during a data move early in the extract process.

Fix: use Winzip to extract the contents (the file is a self-extracting archive) to your destination folder
THEN run extracted file setup.exe in that folder; the install goes smoothly (at least it did for me).

question: is there any documentation for this program or its companion cacheutil.zip in someone's archive? I'm interested in getting the PIII cache initialized earlier in the boot process to speed things up... any progress on that front?

Thanks in advance,

I wrote a site a little while ago to help modders of the 600E called Mod the Pad. My old URL expired while I was away travelling but the site is still available here;

http://www.katch.dsl.pipex.com/mtb/

For info only, no longer updated or maintained. No idea how long it will survive at its current host - anyone who would like to mirror it is welcome to.

This is an excerpt of my post in wimsbios forum:

http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/topic4046-930.html

"Well, today, having all the morning and a good light, I decided to start with the upgrade.

The two things I had planned to do were the hardware modification for having my very old motherboard giving the 100MHz and, having the laptop opened, also the FSB to 108MHz mod.

I went till taken out the CPU MMC2 board and tried to find the two places to do the modifications. After some time (the motherboard is slightly different to the ones in the pictures I found in different places in the internet), I was able to find where the capacitor and the resistor of the FSB to 108MHz were.... But no way to find where the IMI SG577 clock generator circuit is.

Looking again to the different posts and info related to this mod I could find, I feel to have read something like "take off the motherboard....".

Does this imply that the IMI SG577 circuit is in the "back/lower" side of the motherboard, in the opposite side to the MMC2 connector, and that I will have to full take it out of the laptop (with all the things that have to be taken out before it)...?

Please, can anyone confirm it? I'll put some PM and mails to try to confirm, but if anyone could urgently reply in this thread to me will be very much appreciated. I don't want to do all the work of fully taking out the motherboard and related things (with the risk of breaking something it implies) without the confirmation I have to do it. "

Can anyone answer my question ?

Thanks !