Thinkpads Forum

This is repost from 'official' Lenovo forums , where discussion has been going on for 3 month - all of customers who were getting their Santa-Rosa chipset-based laptops , while reading specs , honestly believed that their system can run at SATA-II speeds . As it turns out, Lenovo put a cap on speed at 1.5 Gb/s, which halfs the speed you would be able to get with SSDs ( Intel X-25E is reading at 240 MB/s) . Instead of the solution and apology all we've been getting on the forum - "the system functions as designed".

1. Mark_Lenovo gave an official statement that due to the "SATA-to-PATA conversion chip" which can't handle 3.0Gb/s speed reliably, Ultrabay will operate at ATA/133, main drive - 1.5 Gb/s SATA-I . This issue cannot be fixed via bios update.
( should be noted, that inspite of the official statement, most likely reason for lowering the speed was unreliable work of the Intel ICH8 component on the 965GM-chipset based motherboards).

2. At this point fixing this issue would require recalling all T/R/X 6xx series, equipped with PATA/SATA converion chip in Ultrabay, removing it and also instaling bios update. The costs of such recall, along with really bad PR are really hard to calculate (of course, that would be money, overpaid by customers for bad design decisions by Lenovo's engineers).

3. Because of the described above, the only way to make Lenovo to fix the product, would be through court, since official position is "system functions as designed". With the unlikely bet that it will not have to face the court and organize recall , "official" strategy of Lenovo will be "containing" the issue. This includes no more comments will be given on the topic.

4. Lenovo knew about the problem the moment it was decided to put legacy ATA cdroms in Ultrabay, therefore, making all devices in ultrbay to be connected at ATA-133 speed. None of the customers who bought laptops never saw ATA-133 mentioned in the specs of the devices - furthermore, the specs included SATA-II compliance for the main system/ultrabay.

5. Once critical threashold of the complaining customers has been reached in January, Mark_Lenovo gave an official statement that "Lenovo is looking into the problem". However, a month later, it took me mentioning the story in "Wired" to actually get any kind of statement from the company.


We'd like to make Lenovo fix their faulty product !

SENIOR ADMIN EDIT: Please do not use this forum for other than educational and support issues..
Subject line changed as i feel it was incitful..

This is 'official' Lenovo response to the issue at hand :

http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... ing&page=6

All,

I've investigated this issues at length through engineering and have received the following explaination of SATA data rates available on the Santa Rosa ('61) and current Montevina based systems (T400/T500, W500, W700, etc)...

"For Santa Rosa-based systems, the Intel ICH8 supports a SATA bus speed of up to 3.0 Gb/s. Lenovo made a design decision to prioritize maintaining compatibility with Ultrabay disk drives, which are connected via a SATA-to-PATA conversion chip which could not handle a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed reliably. Therefore the system was standardized to 1.5 Gb/s. In testing rotating media drives, our measurements show data throughput difference between 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s bus speed is less than 5% since the drive mechanics are the limiting throughput factor, rather than the SATA bus itself.
For those customers who choose to purchase an after-market SSD drive capable of SATA bus speeds up to 3.0 Gb/s, the system will interface with them at 1.5 Gb/s. Lenovo's official position is that the Santa Rosa systems are working as designed.
The Montevina based systems which began shipping last year have direct SATA interfaces for both drive bays and are enabled at a system level for SATA bus speeds of 3.0 Gb/s performance. Current Lenovo drives have firmware set to 1.5 Gb/s data rates.
Exchanging these drives for after-market drives which support SATA bus of 3.0 Gb/s should provide for the higher data rate at the overall system level. Again, it should be noted that our performance measurements show less than 5% performance improvement between 1.5 Gb/s and 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speeds for rotating drives, since the drive mechanics are the limiting throughput factor, rather than the SATA bus itself.
After-market SSDs which support SATA bus speed of 3.0 Gb/s will operate at that bus speed. Depending on the data transfer test method used, your actual data throughput from a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed should be 220-250 MB/s and about 90-120MB/s throughput when running on SATA bus of 1.5 Gb/s. This is due to the bus signaling used for the SATA bus, as well as overhead for error checking."

____________________________________________
Regards/Cordialement/Cordiali saluti/Mit freundlichen Grüßen/Saludos/
Mark Hopkins

I got T61p. I want Lenovo to fix this problem.

Sorry, perhaps it´s only my (mis)understanding, but has Lenovo actually ever stated in their laptop specs that their Santa-Rosa-based laptops are SATA-II systems or rather only that they are SATA-II-compatible?

Thanks,

Marin

Marin85 : this is Tabook , official Lenovo specs on T61p :

http://ryanclark.net/tabook_excerpt.gif

Majority of the people ( myself including ) ( I got BS in Computer Science) once saw the spec , assumed that since the
chipset supports SATA-II, 3Gb/s , than the laptop will operate as such speed, since there is no reason for it not to be running SATA-II.
Turned out - no.

This is where "tactical move" by Lenovo is - the ICH8 chipset itself DOES support SATA-II, 3.0 Gb/s .
BUT , it is written nowhere , that ultrabay or main drive will operate at such speeds.

It gets even better , on this Tabook, under section "Serial ATA Disk" - it clearly says "Sata 1.5 Gb/s" , which,
of course , reffers to the speed of the main drive. And there is no mentioning the speed at which ultrabay
operates - so, whoever did the specs made a splendid job - there is nothing there that doesn't correspond
to how laptops really operate.

The other question is that it was written in such a way on purpose. But in this particular case , as I said before, -
even if all of you, customers , would come over and complain, Lenovo would still be able to prove that all of us ,
customers, just misread the specs.

Looks like a simple fraud.

Thanks for the clarification! I now see your point. As a non-Sanata-Rosa/Montevina ThinkPadder I could only wish all of you good luck with your campaign and I hope everyone concerned by this problem will eventually get it resolved!

Marin

As a starter, you may want to name the thing right.

http://www.sata-io.org/6gbnamingguidelines.asp

Can anyone offer a practical reason why this SATA-I SATA-II issue matters in the slightest in the real world? I am not asking for specs; I just want to know if there is anyone anywhere who has ever noticed the difference in using any application (other than a benchmark!) running on any laptop where the theoretical differences between SATA-I and SATA-II make any real-time discernible difference whatsoever.

For desktops and servers, SATA-II compatibility opens the possibility of hot-swapping SATA-II drives, so that may be a desired feature. But for a notebook??!!! What possible difference does it all make?

EOMtp :

SSDs - that's the reason the whole thing is going on.
Again , Intel 32GB Intel X25e costs $400 . It reads 240MB/s - it almost tops SATA-II speed ( 300MB/s) , and this is obviously just the beginning.
When I was getting my laptop I was well aware that SSDs will top SATA-I speeds soon,- so I was looking for SATA-II support ( speed and protocol)
in the laptop I was getting.
Imagine that rotating Hitachi HDs that come with Lenovo laptop tops about 40MB/s , usually having 20-25MB/s regular throughput .
Which means , installing SSD will literally decreases time to read from disk about tenfold. Noticeable difference.
Windows boot time about 1/3 of the regular drive. But everything else works 10 times faster.

Now , like myself , a lot of people on the official Lenovo board, got pretty expensive SSDs, only to figure out that as main drive they will get not
240 MB/s but only 150. Still good enough ? But , I was getting drive that read 240MB, not 150. Moreover , Ultrabay will connect at about 110MB/s
which corresponds to ATA-133 standard. Kinda sucks, doesn't it ? People wasted some considerable amount of cash (drives that max out at 150MB/s
cost about half of the more expensive ones). Plus , people continue getting expensive drives , since Lenovo didn't come out and said honestly that
there is a cap on T/R/X 6xx - like "Don't get drives that read/write more than 150 - they will not work in your laptop".

loyukfai : I am well aware that SATA refers to protocol and speed standard . That's why I am writing "protocol SATA-II" and "3Gb/s" , or "SATA-II speed".
And I guess , you missing the point, "as a starter"

kotovsky7 wrote:SSDs - that's the reason the whole thing is going on.
Again , Intel 32GB Intel X25e costs $400 .

Thank you for the explanation; I understand the "math". However, my question remains unanswered: What practical difference does it make to anything anyone is actually doing on a laptop?

Most of the time, there is no reason to boot "cold", so windows boot time is a non-issue -- and the SATA-I SATA-II issue makes very little difference to coming out of Hibernate.

Further, "living" with a 32GB drive these days is far more constraining than the SATA-I SATA-II issue.

kotovsky7 wrote:Imagine that rotating Hitachi HDs that come with Lenovo laptop tops about 40MB/s , usually having 20-25MB/s regular throughput .
Which means , installing SSD will literally decreases time to read from disk about tenfold. Noticeable difference.

However, the difference between SATA-I and SATA-II is impossible to notice on a laptop. Can anyone provide a counterexample?

I am not attempting to change your mind on this matter. However, there are others here who may think that somehow they are "missing out" on some "goodness" that was denied them, and that's why I ask: Can anyone provide an example where this issue matters? I doubt it.

>> Thank you for the explanation; I understand the "math". However, you did not answer my question: What practical difference does it make to anything you >> are actually doing on a laptop?

You don't understand the math. Go through numbers again. Practical difference is whether your HD speed 20 MB/s ( regular ), 150MB/s ( SATA-I ) , or
300 MB/s(SATA-II). If this is hard to understand - than you don't really need to understand it.

32GB "constrain" is not really a constrain - my OS/applications and files I work with a lot installed there. Rest of the stuff is in the ultrabay drive.

kotovsky7 wrote:You don't understand the math. Go through numbers again. Practical difference is whether your HD speed 20 MB/s ( regular ), 150MB/s ( SATA-I ) , or 300 MB/s(SATA-II). If this is hard to understand - than you don't really need to understand it.

Well, the difference you are complaining about is not between 20MB/s and 300MB/s -- the difference you are complaining about is between 150 and 300. That's an internal hard drive transfer rate difference, and in any real computer setting, may not translate to anything measurable at the human perception level. If it's not at least 2:1, people don't "see" it, and the SATA difference you are complaining about is an internal difference which manifests itself, at best, in a 1 percent to 5 percent throughput difference at the "visible" level of applications.

You are talking about theoretical harm. My question to you was: What is the practical harm?
In any case, good luck to you!

EOMtp :

>Well, the difference you are complaining about is not between 20MB/s and 300MB/s -- the difference you are complaining about is between 150 and 300.
>in a 1 percent to 5 percent throughput difference at the "visible" level of applications.

Getting SSD that reads 150MB/s is different from HD that reads 20 by .. 750%. And this is real-world difference. Which means applications will load 7.5 times faster , not 1-5% faster. And in case of Intel X25e - the difference, if the laptop would be functioning correctly would be 11 times.

If you have a 500 MB Photoshop file and it took 500/20=25 seconds to load with HD. With SSD 150MB/s it takes 3.3 seconds ( 500/150). With SSD 300Mb/s it takes 1.6 seconds.
What exactly is not obvious ? Math is rather simple , really.

Perhaps we are discussing different items. Clarification please: Is your complaint that the primary drive location does not support SATA-II or is your complaint that the Ultrabay drive location does not support it? My comments were directed at the primary drive location. Thanks.

My complaint is that both of them should support 3Gb/s , since chipset supports it.
If the laptop would function as it should've been - it wouldn't make a difference in Ultrabay or main drive - it would be doing 300MB/s in both.
(as it does do on newer T400/T500 ). With cap in place main drive will only support 1.5 Gb/s and ultrabay ( 120MB/s , ATA-6).
But because Lenovo had bunch of old components - ide cdroms , it decided that it wouldn't matter,
since "mechanical drives not likely to reach anything faster than 50MB/s anyhow". But it was obvious to me about year ago that SSDs are
coming - and they will need faster interface , it wasn't obvious to Lenovo ? I doubt it.

kotovsky7 wrote:

But it was obvious to me about year ago that SSDs are
coming - and they will need faster interface , it wasn't obvious to Lenovo ? I doubt it.

As much as I do understand the issue that you're upset about-as well as why you're upset about it-I fail to understand something else: what made you believe that you'd get away with full SATA II speeds in UltraBay since:

a) It was more than obvious that Lenovo was using the very same line of media drives that were used on T60 series (and with a different bezel on T4x before that)
b) They (Lenovo) never actually stated that what you expected was attainable. In your defense, they haven't stated the opposite either.

I have my own gripes with certain Lenovo's moves/policies/whatever, but honestly don't see the idea of a lawsuit as being a productive one. That counts just as one person's opinion, though.

On a whole another note, why don't you sell your ThinkPad and buy a machine that supports fully your needs-be it T400/500, Dell, HP or whatever else you deem fit?

If Lenono's express wording was "speeds up to 3..." and in fact the systems can never deliver those speeds--then they'd probably lose a suit against them. When a vendor says "up to" that's a red flag to me, it means "maybe in a blue moon but you're gonna get a lot less every day".

However, the goal must be possible, or else you've been mislead and arguably defrauded, and it would be up to them to show when, how, and if the stated speed was in fact (im)possible.

It is annoying that the 61-series are unable to handle more than 1.5 Gb/s in their main bays for several reasons.

1. The disk subsystem is the component that speed-wise has made the least advancement in the world of computing. The new SSD-drives are changing that and although the Intel X25-M and the Intel X25-E might be the only ones where there is discernible performance difference between SATA-I and SATA-II other SSD drives will soon follow with even better performance. This increase in performance will be lost on 61-series Thinkpads.

2. The restriction to SATA-I speeds seem to be introducing compatibility problems with some SATA-II drives (e.g. X25-M and X25-E). Check out my post with links to a user in the notebookreview forums, which experienced such problems.

http://forum.lenovo.com/lnv/board/messa ... ing&page=4

However, I like Thinkpads too much to let this problem make me blow a gasket. I would though be very happy if Lenovo released a fix that would enable the main bay to run 3.0 Gb/s even if such a fix would require the Ultrabay to be disabled (while running the main bay in "ultra-performance" mode).

Maybe someday someone will come up with a HW mod bypassing the SATA->PATA bridge for the UltraBay that seems to be the culprit of the problem and providing a modded BIOS. This way T61 could use the newer serial UltraBay devices.


Oh well, one can at least dream.

yak :

that was my point exactly . I figured out from Jeketzera's post that bridge uses Marvel chip , now I am trying to figure out if there is any way to turn off SATA-PATA conversion(or change firmware in the chip) and let SATA signal through. If such approach would work - there is a chance you can move speed up to 3 Gb/s. Sounds complicated , - but there is a small chance. (spdtool would be the tool).

hellosailor,ajkula66 :

the "arguably defrauded" could've been proved while looking at their specs : http://www.lenovo.com/psref/
But , they were absolutely correct , since they listed CD-rom/ultrabay as EIDE, which means I screwed up while looking at specs.
And , there is no chance to prove them wrong , since all of us , customers , just misread the specs.
It just hurts to see the situation in this light - since there is nothing to grip on - and there is no chance to prove
that this was, actually, a fraud, unfortunately.

There is one point : on my ultrabay HD adapter I have "1.5 Gb/s" label - since they knew that ultrbay connects only at ATA-133 , it would be a fraud
to put a label that reads 1.5 Gb/s ,- but they could say it refers to max speed the drive in the adapter connected, not the speed the adapter connected
to the motherboard. Unless this adapter handles 3.0 Gb/s - which there is no way to test , since they changed the interface to connect ultrabay to laptop.
(which could've been tested on T400/T500 series , for example).

i am watching this thread..
this is an educational and support forum..
it is NOT a place to incite to riot or to use extortion..
do not use this venue to attempt to embarass lenovo..
they have made their position clear i think and thats it..

nor am i accusing anyone of using such tactics but when "lawsuit" and "fraud" are used it sure starts to smell that way..

edited to add the word "extortion" which word i don't use enough to remember it at 5:30 am
all changes are in bold

Bill ,

>> But , they were absolutely correct , since they listed CD-rom/ultrabay as EIDE, which means I screwed up while looking at specs.

that doesn't look like an attempt to embarass Lenovo , or does it ?

The fact that they made their position clear doesn't forbid us from looking into the situation ,
and my honest believe is that they did defraud the customers , since too many of us misread the specs,
although I admit , that we all misread the specs. No ?

Moreover , instead of pointing us to the specs and making it clear to all customers , that we were wrong to assume
laptop supports SATA-II, they do issue quite a cryptic statement about the situation.
Moreover , instead of stating that we , customers , should read the specs more carefully , and warning us that we should
take caution and do not buy SSDs faster than SATA-I - they still issue a statement which reads "system works as designed".
Not really a proper PR move and/or way to handle the situation where you have a LOT of people complaining.
What's up with that ? (hypothetical question ( doesn't require an aswer ) ).

ps. thanks for changing the topic - it really corresponds to the situation.

BillMorrow wrote:i am watching this thread..
this is an educational and support forum..
it is NOT a place to incite to riot or to use extortion..
do not use this venue to attempt to embarass lenovo..
they have made their position clear i think and thats it..

nor am i accusing anyone of using such tactics but when "lawsuit" and "fraud" are used it sure starts to smell that way..

edited to add the word "extortion" which word i don't use enough to remember it at 5:30 am
all changes are in bold

As I stated in my previous post, I will not blow a gasket because of this issue since I like Thinkpads too much.

However, I do not think that Lenovo has been forthcoming and their stated position is factually flawed. Mark/Lenovo offered the following reason for the throttling of the main bay SATA-port:

"For Santa Rosa-based systems, the Intel ICH8 supports a SATA bus speed of up to 3.0 Gb/s. Lenovo made a design decision to prioritize maintaining compatibility with Ultrabay disk drives, which are connected via a SATA-to-PATA conversion chip which could not handle a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed reliably. Therefore the system was standardized to 1.5 Gb/s."

To me the above explanation does not make any sense (I disclaim any stupidity from my side).

The Ultrabays of the 61-series Thinkpads are connected to the PATA-port of the ICH8 chipset. In order to run a SATA HDD in the Ultrabay, one must use the Ultrabay SATA adapter. The Ultrabay SATA adapter contains a SATA to ATA bridge chip which "translates" the SATA traffic into "PATA" (in order for the SATA disk to be able to function in the Ultrabay).

The above is also the reason why SATA HDDs perform worse in the Ultrabay than in the main bay. In the main bay a SATA HDD is running in SATA-native mode at 1.5 Gb/sec. In the Ultrabay a SATA HDD is running at a maximum speed of 133 MB/sec and its data traffic is being converted from SATA to PATA which likely also introduces other latencies.

Since the Ultrabay is running over the PATA-port (with likely is 133 MB/sec maximum speed) it does not matter if you run a SATA HDD in 1.5 Gb/sec or 3.0 Gb/sec mode in the Ultrabay (both modes will be throttled down to max 133 MB/sec). Furthermore, any speed conversion is performed by the bridge chip in the Ultrabay adapter.

Therefore, the "compatibility" or "reliability" problems (as stated by Mark) with running SATA HDDs in the Ultrabay at 3.0 Gb/sec are completely unrelated to the main bay SATA-port running at 3.0 Gb/sec.

Another user offered the hypothesis that the reason for reducing the main bay speed to 1.5Gb/sec on the SATA-port was due to the Intel chipset being unable to manage SATA-communications at 3.0 Gb/sec at the same time as it had to handle communications on the PATA-port. However, this is unconfirmed and Lenovo has not yet offered any further comments.

First of all, one thing I do not fully understand - everyone here complains that the Santa-Rosa / ICH8M Thinkpads are crippled, but isn't the situation the same with the Napa / ICH7 models (T60/R60/X60/Z61)?

Looking at the Tabook, you will notice that the ICH7M chipset does support SATA300, and yet the hard drive clearly states the same SATA150 limit as in the ICH8M models. Since it takes the same modular ultrabay ATA drives, I'd expect that the same PATA/SATA bridge is used, with the same limitation on the overall bandwidth.

I would like for someone to clarify this issue to me.

Edit:OK, browsed the forums a bit, and looks like the ICH7M limitation to SATA150 is caused by the chipset itself, not any design choice of Lenovo. Even less reason for them to advertise it as SATA300, as they clearly did.

While I don't necessarily hurry to scream things like "fraud" and "class-action lawsuit", I do consider that Lenovo was a bit off in the way it brought this situation to pass.

Not being a hardware design expert, I still have to wonder why the use of a PATA-SATA adapter on the Ultrabay, even if the adapter itself can only function at 1.5Gbps, requires the whole southbridge to be slowed down to 1.5Gbps. I am not familiar with the internals of ICH8M, but I would expect that there would be some way to make it so that the ATA drives don't limit the entire system, either by using a different bridge, or a clever workaround, or by downright implementing a dedicated ATA controller, like they do on modern desktop motherboards, where native ATA support is long gone from the core chipset.

I am confident that Lenovo could have done this if they tried. What I believe happened was a long term strategic blunder. At the time these laptops came out (late 2005 / early 2006 for the first ICH7M models), the bus limits were purely theoretical, because SSDs were nowhere in sight. It seems a clear case of "it will never happen within the lifespan of these machines, so why worry about it". Clearly the Lenovo head engineers / planners were wrong here.

Second, once decided to install the bridge and force the speedcap on the entire chipset, they should not have left SATA300 anywhere in the specs. For example, even though theoretically the ICH7 chipset can see 4GB, Lenovo never claimed that their ICH7 laptops can utilize 4GB, and were flat out honest that 3GB is max. They should have done so with the SATA situation, I believe.

kotovsky7 wrote:Marin85 : this is Tabook , official Lenovo specs on T61p :

http://ryanclark.net/tabook_excerpt.gif

I have to agree that since Lenovo lists the spec for the T61p in Tabook as:
ICH8M Enhanced I/O Controller Hub (SATA 3.0Gb/s...

And on the same Tabook page lists the optional solid state drive:
128 SSD SATA 3.0Gb/s 1.8" (2.5" cover)

At least the main hard drive slot of the T61p should work at SATA 3.0Gb/s bus speeds. If the main hard drive slot will not operate at the 3.0Gb/s bus speed, then the 3.0Gb/s spec should never have been listed in the Tabook for the T61p. To list the 3.0Gb/s spec (without a disclaimer) on that Tabook page, and not deliver, is clearly deceptive. [Mark Hopkins states that: "the system was standardized to 1.5 Gb/s", so I take that to mean 3.0Gb/s bus speeds are not possible on the T61. It is possible I am misreading what Mark said.]
http://forums.lenovo.com/lnv/board/mess ... ing&page=6

Lenovo is clear that the Ultrabay Slim drives only operate at 1.5Gb/s bus speeds, as stated on that same page in Tabook.

I have now made some research i.e. looked into the Intel Datasheets for the ICH7(M) and ICH8(M) chipsets and the following is stated:

The Intel ICH7M is not capable of 3.0 Gb/sec (only the desktop version of the chipset is). This is stated on page 191 in the datasheet for the chipsets

http://www.intel.com/assets/pdf/datasheet/307013.pdf



The Intel ICH8M is capable of 3.0 Gb/sec This is stated on page 196 in the datasheet for the chipsets.

http://www.intel.com/Assets/PDF/datasheet/313056.pdf

On the same page, the following note is shown:

“SATA interface transfer rates are independent of UDMA mode settings. SATA interface
transfer rates will operate at the bus’s maximum speed, regardless of the UDMA mod
reported by the SATA device or the system BIOS.”

GomJabbar wrote: Lenovo is clear that the Ultrabay Slim drives only operate at 1.5Gb/s bus speeds, as stated on that same page in Tabook.

Technically, that statement is also incorrect since the Ultrabay operates at a maximum of ATA-100 speed (i.e. 100 MB/sec).

On page 507 of the Intel datasheet for ICH8(M), the Speed Allowed Serial ATA Control Register is specified:

Speed Allowed (SPD) — R/W. Indicates the highest allowable speed of the interface.
This speed is limited by the CAP.ISS (ABAR+00h:bit 23:20) field.
All other values reserved.
ICH8 Supports Generation 1 communication rates (1.5 Gb/sec) and Gen 2 rates (3.0
Gb/s).
Value Description
0h No speed negotiation restrictions
1h Limit speed negotiation to Generation 1 communication rate
2h Limit speed negotiation to Generation 2 communication rate

On the same page the following is stated:

Address Offset: BAR + 01h Attribute: R/W, RO
Default Value: 00000004h Size: 32 bits
This is a 32-bit read-write register by which software controls SATA capabilities. Writes
to the SControl register result in an action being taken by the ICH8 or the interface.
Reads from the register return the last value written to it./b]

I wonder if a BIOS-guru would be able to see if the BIOS writes the value 1h to this register and modify it to write 0h instead.

kotovsky7 wrote:I figured out from Jeketzera's post that bridge uses Marvel chip , now I am trying to figure out if there is any way to turn off SATA-PATA conversion(or change firmware in the chip) and let SATA signal through. If such approach would work - there is a chance you can move speed up to 3 Gb/s. Sounds complicated , - but there is a small chance. (spdtool would be the tool).

As I understand it, the Marvel chip is the SATA-PATA bridge found in jketzetera's UltraBay SATA HDD adapter. It is there to convert signals from the T6x UltraBay PATA connector to the SATA harddrive connector. This tells us nothing about the bridge sitting on the other side of UltraBay's connector, in the T61 (it doesn't have to be Marvel). I would be surprised if it's firmware could be updated, to keep the cost down these things tend to be normal chips without built-in flash memory that would be needed to keep the updateable firmware.

Personally I think that such hardware modification (bypassing the bridge inside T61) is too complicated to be performed by end users and as such will never happen. You will probably have to get over it and get a T400/500.

Jketzetera :

misspelled name of the tool to use, it would be 'Bar_edit' , not spdtool.

With that tool you would be able change the value of the Control Register. But I would think it has to be done while initializing , since BIOS usually does it , not while running in windows. Probably , would give you undesired consequences, if modified while connected ( or nothing would happen ).
But anyhow , since either their Marvel chip or ICH8 is faulty, it would still probably bomb out after such attempts.

I wonder , since they stated that they have faulty Marvel chip , if we would be able to make them change the faulty component anyhow.
Since this opens Pandora's box and would require some hardware testing to prove that at least something in laptop is faulty, and they
'honestly' admitted it.

If either Marvel chip or ICH8 would be functioning as they should - they wouldn't have to lower the speed to 1.5.
My guess, since ultrabay and main drive are on different SATA channels , it is still ICH8's fault ( they removed PATA support in ICH8 in desktop version).
But , of course , they'd still be 'covering up' Intel's faults.