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The G50 and the R40 do not accept Meroms/Dothans

R30/R40, A30/A31, G40/G50 and Z60/Z61 Series. NOT for AMD-Ryzen.
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Screamer
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The G50 and the R40 do not accept Meroms/Dothans

#1 Post by Screamer » Sun Nov 18, 2018 2:30 pm

It seems like the BIOS is not the only software blockade, when it comes to running 'unsupported' processors on a platform that supports them.

I used HxD to add the required microcodes that did not exist in their respective BIOS images, so it should have worked in theory. This doesn't seem to be the case, which is rather odd. Here are the results for the modifications done to their respective BIOS images:

G50 [0639-A14] - No visual output, just a blank screen. The backlight is not powered on, either. The LEDs do light up as per normal, while the fan spins up and slows down as usual. Afterwards, it would then leave all of the LEDs powered off, with the exception of the lightning or the 'Z' LED. I would also like to note that the 'Z' LED was simply powered on (green), and was not randomly blinking in a special sequence.

The processor that was installed in the G50, was a Core 2 Duo T7600 (PGA, 6F6 B2 stepping, SL9SD). Also, the Core 2 Duo T7600 was running warm during the experiment (felt the heatsink's heat with my hand), which means that it is functional.

R40 [2724-DU1] - No visual output, just a blank screen. The backlight is also not powered on. The LEDs do light up as per normal, but it eventually left all of the LEDs powered off with the exception of the lightning or the 'Z' LED (did not blink, still a green light). The fan was also spinning up just fine, and slowed down as usual.

The processor that was installed in the R40, was a Pentium M 765 (PGA, 6D6 B1 stepping, SL7V3). It was also running warm during the experiment.

Well, there you go. The experiment was a failure, due to a component that possibly does not support them. My first guess would be the embedded controller, since it performs a lot of functions that goes hand-in-hand with the BIOS. This is also further supported by the fact that the 15" 4:3 R61/R61i's embedded controller was not able to support any Penryn processor (Santa Rosa platform) with its stock firmware, but with the 15.4" 16:10 R61/R61i's embedded controller and possibly its BIOS image, it was able to boot up with the aforementioned processor.

That is why I believe that it may be the embedded controller that is holding them back, but I am still not sure if this is truly the case. It could also be Intel's voltage regulator down revisions, but I would not expect such a standard to exist in a notebook.

EDIT: Completely rephrased the entire post to add some missing information, and to reduce confusion at the same time.
Last edited by Screamer on Fri Feb 15, 2019 3:49 am, edited 2 times in total.

dr_st
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Re: The G50 and the R40 do not accept Meroms/Dothans

#2 Post by dr_st » Sun Nov 18, 2018 4:16 pm

You are a bit confusing here with the title...

What you meant to say, it seems, is that:

R40 does not accept Dothans
G50 does not accept Meroms
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Screamer
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Re: The G50 and the R40 do not accept Meroms/Dothans

#3 Post by Screamer » Sun Nov 18, 2018 7:21 pm

My apologies, I did not intend to make the title seem confusing for anybody.

Yes, that is what I wanted to tell, but couldn't do it effectively without making the title uncomfortably long.

kfzhu1229
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Re: The G50 and the R40 do not accept Meroms/Dothans

#4 Post by kfzhu1229 » Sun Nov 18, 2018 11:24 pm

Screamer wrote:
Sun Nov 18, 2018 2:30 pm
For the R40, I used a B1 stepping, Pentium M 765 (SL7V3). The CPUID signature of this processor is 6D6, and should still use the microcode that I have also added into the R40's BIOS image. Unfortunately, it did not boot up. The same LEDs light up, the fan spins up, but it does not POST and proceeds to also leave the same 'Z' LED lighted up.
Which R40 systemboard do you have? There are R40 computers that only work with the Pentium M's and there are the ones that only work with Pentium 4-M's. The latter one would obviously not work because the architecture is fundementally different. The first one may work with the newest BIOS update for the thing.
Dell Lat CP MMX-233 64mb 40gb W2k
600 PII-266 416mb 40gb WXP
T23 PIII 1.13ghz 1gb W7
Precision M4300 X9000 8gb 160gb WUXGA Ultrasharp fp W10
T530i 15.6" i7 16gb fp W10
UXGA:
A30p PIII 1.2 1gb W7 (IDTech)
T43p 2.26 2gb fp W10 (Sharp)
Lat C840 P4-2.5 2gb 60gb W7 (Ultrasharp)

Screamer
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Re: The G50 and the R40 do not accept Meroms/Dothans

#5 Post by Screamer » Mon Nov 19, 2018 10:08 am

Boy, that is another important thing I forgot to state in the original post...

I have the Pentium M motherboard (FRU: 91P7283), and it does not work with the latest BIOS applied. The latest BIOS update only has microcodes for Banias and that is all, no microcodes available for Dothan.

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