Thinkpads Forum

I am getting a FREE HDD upgrade soon and I wanted to know, what difference I can expect between a WD Scorpio Blue 5400RPM 8MB Cache and a Scorpio Black 7200RPM 16MB Cache.
Would the SATA Modded Bios make any difference?
TY!!!!

The 7200 RPM drive will be noticeably faster in everyday "normal" usage than the 5400 RPM drive. The SATA mod, on the other hand, will make no difference whatsoever in "normal" usage, notwithstanding that it is easy to construct a benchmark that would suggest otherwise.

Thank you for that succinct answer (to a similar question I asked a few weeks ago).

I shan't bother with the Middleton bios in that case

Walter

Read the description of what else Middleton's BIOS can do for you.
Dismissing it out of hand as you do, is (pardon my French) stupid and extremely shortsighted, to put it mildly.

@RBS -- this is a little off topic, but kinda on topic

I used the Zender bios mod late last year in order to use an N wireless card in my 1951-CTO T60. It was a reasonably straight-forward process, or I wouldn't have been able to accomplish it as my skills with my ThinkPads only cover HDD/SDD, RAM, Wireless, and sometimes I have added Bluetooth. I did accomplish changing a screen on a T41 once because it was an older ThinkPad and I was willing to risk bricking it. When I flashed the bios in my T60, I had made the decision to try it, knowing I had a good chance of turning it into a doorstop. The bios mod succeeded, and it now runs wireless N.

I recently acquired a second T60 (2623-D7U) and I would like to change the wireless card to N. I'm a little on the slow side, but I have googled every way I can think of -- and I have gone over and over (400 pages) My Digital Life Forums trying to find a bios mod for my T60. Some of the links are dead -- some appear to point to a download, but I have hesitated as I don't know if any T60 widescreen bios mod will work on my machine (or only a bios mod specific to my 2623.) There is a form for requesting the bios mod on My Digital Life Forums, but I have noticed many posts requesting mod info and the answer being to redirect the poster to search the Forum for their machine... leaves me dizzy...

Would you suggest I stick with my ABG wireless, or do you have some pertinent info on the correct way for me to search for the bios mod for my particular T60?

@emtee3511:

There's a "N" card that works with factory BIOS (must be a recent one though) on T60 and related machines, FRU 42T0825. I've been using it in several T6x/R6x/Z6x machines and am very pleased. As always, YMMV.

Hi George
I have that card in my spare stuff -- guessing it may have come from my X200 when I upgraded the wireless card, but not sure -- I may have traded something here on the Forum for it and forgot

Thanks very much for the info -- going to put the N card in my new T60 right now

Just in case, modded BIOS for ALL T60/T60p machines except widescreen: http://www.datafilehost.com/download-7bc68cf8.html

Thank you RBS!!!
Question -- my 14.1" screen means my T60 is a widescreen?

emtee3511 wrote:Thank you RBS!!!
Question -- my 14.1" screen means my T60 is a widescreen?

No.

A widescreen would be a 15.4" unit when it comes to T60/p, with a model number starting in 63xx or 87xx.

oops a little knowledge is a dangerous thing...
I've been looking for widescreen -- duh!
Thank you so much -- Again...

ThinkPad T60 (2623-D7U)
T2500(2GHz), 512MB RAM, 100GB 5400rpm HD, 14.1in 1400x1050 LCD, 128MB ATI Radeon X1400, CDRW/DVDRW, Intel 802.11abg wireless, WWAN, Bluetooth/Modem, 1Gb Ethernet, UltraNav, Secure chip, Fingerprint reader, 9c Li-Ion batt, WinXP Pro

14.1in 1400x1050 LCD = SXGA+ Standard 4:3

Ok... still working on my T60 --

George, my 42T0825 N card gave me the 1802 error in my T60 -- not sure why, but I put my original ABG back in for the time being and proceeded to try to mod the bios.

RBS, I downloaded the file at http://www.datafilehost.com/download-7bc68cf8.html, but so far I haven't been able open it.

Originally, I downloaded the file and then burned the downloaded file to CD, but it didn't boot my T60. I'm thinking I need to open the file and then burn it, but so far I haven't found the right program to accomplish it. (Tried WinZip, and WinZip-Extractor and WinRa -- so far no go.)

Right now I'm googling how to open and/or burn a rar file, but sorta wandering around in the dark -- any advice would be appreciated.

You need winrar to open it.

Here are some more to try (all this info is in the T6x forum...):
T60/T60p (4:3 displays only) latest actual mоddеd biоs is here:
Flash from Windows (32-bit only!): http://www.technosphere.in.ua/diff/ibm/t60-x86-227.zip
Flash from CD: http://www.technosphere.in.ua/diff/ibm/t60-cd-227.iso

@RBS -- thank you!! I was able to use the last link you gave me for 'flash from CD' -- it updated my old 2006 bios to the 2011 no whitelist bios, and I am now using my wireless N --I never would have figured it out on my own -- I appreciate very much the time (and expertise) you gave me --

@George -- I am now using the 42T0825 N card in my T60 (with the modded bios) -- thank you so much for the info on that card -- it was with my "stuff" and I thought it was ABG -- getting 300 mpbs downstairs (closer to the router) and 130 mpbs upstairs --

So for those of us running the Manly version of Windows 7 (i.e. 64-bit) we have to go the .ISO route?

Since I don't have blank discs handy at the moment that wouldn't work for me. So I removed the DVD Burner and installed my 2nd HD which has a bootable XP Pro system installed on it. I then installed the BIOS mod as referenced here:

RealBlackStuff wrote:Put your old CPU back in, then apply Middleton's BIOS: http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo- ... ost6501443
You need the 5th BIOS.
When done, try the new CPU again.
If still no go, it's a dud.

From this thread: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=105169

Upon rebooting into 7, yeah it's a heck of a lot faster. I was prepared for it be a minimal increase in speed, but this HD is pretty fast. WD Scorpio 320GB Black Edition SATAII. The HD score on the WEI jumped from 5.1 to 5.9. Nice.

@Temetka:
Correct, 64-bit OS cannot update BIOS from within Windows.

Your applied logic was a bit confusing here since we were talking about T60 drives/BIOS and your machine is a T61!
But the analogy was correct (substitute CPU with OS), glad to hear that it worked for you.

Yeah.

Keep in mind when selecting harddrives that rotational speed isn't everything. I'm sure you could find a modern 5400rpm drive that outperforms some 7200 rpm drives. The faster rotational speed does give it a potential for better performance, but only if the drive is well designed to actually use the fast rotation. 5400rpm drives can have advantages too. Many draw less power, spin up faster and if you have a battery optimized system that powers down the harddrive often, the speed in which it spins up will be more important then the rotational speed. Having a bigger cache is important though and they usually put more cache in the higher priced drives, but it would be nice to see some 5400rpm drives with bigger cache.

I also believe that the 5400 drives have a longer service life. I rarely see them fail. I don't have any specific data to back this up, but from my experience they just seem to last a lot longer. Another good analogy would be if you were shopping for sports cars and spend the same amount of money on a Ferrari and a Dodge Viper. The Ferrari would have an engine that easily revs past 7000rpm where the dodge viper is a low revving engine not going much past 5400, but in the same price range the Viper would blow away a Ferrari.... the driver of the Ferrari would see his tachometer revving upto 7000rpm as the taillights of the viper get smaller and smaller on the horizon. Of course if you want to spend ten times as much you can find a Ferrari that will beat the viper, but my point is that just like the high revving performance engines, a high revving drive will be more expensive, and higher maintenance, where a good well built low revving engine can give you amazing performance and reliability without spending a lot of money.