Successful upgrade of T42 with Crucial M4 128 GB mSATA SSD

[irus]

Two years ago !!! A few Linux upgrades later the old T42 is still going well. Lately it has been spending its time as a music server.
Hope everybody's T42 is still finding a productive purpose in its old age.

yes using it as my main non work laptop even now. no problems

[Mac-Chatter]

Hi folks!

I just inserted in my T41 a 128GB SATA SSD with PATA adapter to replace the Samsung drive. Now I also face the UDMA 33 issue. The tool DriveInfo states the SSD supports up to UDMA 6. For he controller there is only a "yes" for UDMA 2. I did the reinstallation of the driver without success.

What is your recommendation:
- change the PATA-SATA adapter (For some reason I have a second spare one)
- update BIOS and enabler (btw:is the enablre automatically updated with the BIOS update?)
- any other, simpler way to enforce UDMA 5+ ?

That's what I have:
- My Bios is original 3.05a with corresponding enabler (3.01?).
- Controller 82801DBM Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 24CA;
- Driver: 4.0.1001.0 (by DiskInfo)

OS: Windows XP by consecutive cloning from the original Disk. Still the old company XP with full Office '97 is installed. I have no install disks.

Looking forward your comments & thanks, Mac-Chatter

[RealBlackStuff]

Welcome to the Forum.

Your BIOS is rather old.
Follow the Drivers link at the top of this page to get the latest BIOS 3.23 and EC 3.04 for your T41
They need to be updated separately, EC first, then BIOS.
I'll leave the drive-talk to others.

[automobus]

Tag Mac-Chatter!

That's what I have:
- My Bios is original 3.05a with corresponding enabler (3.01?).

Do me a favour, and help us all (You will be adding to public community knowledge!), by trialling intermediate BIOS revisions before you install 3.21 or newer. Install one or more revision from between 3.14 and 3.20 inclusive, then observe PATA bus speed and let us know result.

[Mac-Chatter]

Moin,

Thank you for your warm welcome! I progressed, but I'm not done yet.

Updating to BIOS 3.2.3 and Enabler 3.0.4 helped. The controller states a UDMA5 connection. ChristalDiskMark shows some 80MB/s for 512bit access and over 20MB/s for 4KiB access. This read/write performance is well acceptable I think.

Sorry Automobus: I have read your post too late and updated directly to BIOS 3.2.3 and Enabler 3.0.4.

I continuously struggle with "Suspend to RAM" and "Suspend to Disk"
even though I performed a complete Checkdisk. The 'shut down' of "Suspend to RAM" and "Suspend to Disk" seem to work as normal. But, the wake-up after "Suspend to RAM" ends with a dark screen (no light a all) while the "On-Sign" next to the battery symbol is bright. The cooler fan also runs. Restarting after "Suspend to Disk" the screens finally stops and shows the ANSI windows bar when the hypernation file is entirely loaded - and a final beep sound occur. Both suspend issues are not a result of the BIOS update. I never had this kind of troubles with my earlier mechanical Samsung HDD.

Any ideas how get the "Suspends to RAM/Disk" working?

Thanks, Mac-Chatter

[RealBlackStuff]

Hibernation (suspend to disk) should be switched off and set to "never" if you use an SSD.
Sleep (suspend to RAM), if you do this while on battery, you risk losing any unsaved data if the battery gets empty.
Fn/F4 puts it to sleep, pressing the Power button should wake it up.
If your screen stays dark, check your Powersaving settings.
Windows XP is rather old, replace it with a Linux distro.

[Mac-Chatter]

Pressing FN/F4 for sleep mode and press POWER for wake-up is eactly what I have done.
=> What particular powersaving settings shall I look for?

Linux is not an option for me

Btw. on a different vintage Laptop with an IDE SSD "Suspend to Disk" works very well
(and of course "Suspend to RAM" too).

Thanks, Mac-Chatter

[Ervee]

Hi , I just upgraded my very old T42 1.5Gb RAM . I used a adaptor IDE to mSATA with mSATA module of 64Gb. All 'made in China' . About 10 days delivery time (China warehouse to front door in Belgium....)
Re-installed latest 32bit XUBUNTU 18.version .
Startuptime (from power on to shortcuts display) was 1min and 20sec with IDE HDD . Now with the mSATA adaptor it reduced the startup time to 45sec.
Tomorrow I expect my 1Gb Chinese RAM module to replace my 512Mb RAM module

So, for arround 26€ (32$) , I got an adaptor, 1Gb RAM and 64Gb mSATA

IDE mSATA adaptor : https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32991511 ... 4c4dAHDKsm
mSATA : https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32910210 ... 4c4droQBML
RAM : https://nl.aliexpress.com/item/32575114 ... 4c4droQBML