Will PentiumM 1.8 400Mhz (dothan 745) be compatible with t40

[Pawelek]

I have a spare processor with FSB 400Mhz. I dont remember the type of socket in my old T40. Will this Dothan fit that motherboard. The BIOS is 2.11 an Embedded Controller is 2.04.

Thanks in advance
Pawelek

[dr_st]

Yes. T40/T41/T42 share the same socket, chipset and FSB.

[underclocker]

I've done that upgrade several times, no problem. You should probably upgrade your BIOS and EC prior to installing the processor. They are several versions (years) old.

[beeblebrox]

BTW: The Dothan 745 is GREAT for overclocking in the T40.

I have several of those and a 735 that run at 533 Mhz in a T40 and t41.
(This weekend I'll try a 755, which should bring me 2.67 Ghz in a T41)

[jimgard]

So if you were to quantify the basic upgrades to a T40, where would a Dothan 745 rank? I upgraded to a 5400 rpm hard drive, and I've just bought 2 sticks of 1 gb RAM... I figured those would be the most beneficial. Does a CPU upgrade make as big of a difference as either of those?

[RealBlackStuff]

Only if your current CPU is an old Banias, will an upgrade to Dothan make sense.
Dothans have 2MB cache, while Banias only have 1MB cache.
Sweet spot for most T40/41/42 is the Dothan 1.7GHz Pentium M 735.

[Pawelek]

Thank you for your support. Can someone tell me since which versions of BIOS and EC T40s are compatible with Dothans. Assuming I wolud have to make software update which way is the safest one - from the OS itself or maybe through pendrive?

Thanks Pawelek

[RealBlackStuff]

AFAIK only versions from BIOS 3.04 and newer (with ECP 3.01a and newer) support Pentium M [Dothans].

Are you sure about your BIOS and ECP versions? They seem to be very old!
BIOS current: 3.23
ECP current: 3.04
An update would certainly be highly recommendable!

I would suggest to get a USB floppy drive to make the BIOS/ECP updates, rather than in Windows.
Making a bootable USB pendrive is rather complicated and may not even work!