Thinkpads Forum

My T61 had the original factory Bios from 3 years ago,I just updated to the latest Bios 2.29-1.08
I believe there has been a total of 3 updates in 3 years.
I have seen no difference,what should I expect to notice?

If it ain't broke, don't fix it!

The only worthwhile BIOS update has been the Middleton BIOS, which bypasses all whitelists, adds SLIC tables, lets your hard disks work at SATA II speeds and on certain mobos suppresses the warning for thermal overload with the wrong CPU.
Available for T61/R61/X61.

It really wasn't worth it.
I had hoped it would speed things but I see no difference at all.

goraman wrote:It really wasn't worth it.

BIOS updates are normally not meant for the introduction of new features or functions. They are rather supposed to fix bugs within the firmware itself which otherwise might result in certain error conditions that could appear during normal Thinkpad operation.

As most software, even the BIOS code contains errors which are reported and eventually fixed, culminating into a to a new release version every now and then. Ideally you should never have stumbled upon any bug, and now probably never will stumble about the bug(s) which were fixed with this release. Even our well appreciated Middleton considered it a good idea to update his BIOS hack by reapplying the fixes to the latest official BIOS release.

I find it to be quite remarkable that Thinkpad users can still receive such BIOS fixes even after the warranty of the machine has expired. For the T23 a new BIOS version became available still on 31 Oct 2006. This is more than five years after the machine was introduced to the market. That's short from amazing, isn't it?

[quote="rumbero"][quote="goraman"]It really wasn't worth it. BIOS updates are normally not meant for the introduction of new features or functions. They are rather supposed to fix bugs within the firmware itself which otherwise might result in certain error conditions that could appear during normal Thinkpad operation.

As most software, even the BIOS code contains errors which are reported and eventually fixed, culminating into a to a new release version every now and then. Ideally you should never have stumbled upon any bug, and now probably never will stumble about the bug(s) which were fixed with this release. Even our well appreciated Middleton considered it a good idea to update his BIOS hack by reapplying the fixes to the latest official BIOS release.

I find it to be quite remarkable that Thinkpad users can still receive such BIOS fixes even after the warranty of the machine has expired. For the T23 a new BIOS version became available still on 31 Oct 2006. This is more than five years after the machine was introduced to the market. That's short from amazing, isn't it?

Thats why I will buy no other laptop,Think pads are just so well thought out, and it seems the folks at Lenovo never give up trying to improve them.

Well,since I got the Bios update my clock is running an hour and 15 minutes fast.
I tried to go back to pacific time but the time is still messed up.
I just rest the clock time,I hope it holds true.

See this about RTC not working OK: http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?f=29&t=98522