Thinkpads Forum

Hi! I am new on this forum, and also not from English spoken region, so if there are any typos and grammar errors, don't be a Grammar Nazi please.

I work as a computer repairman for ages now, but I haven't had much experience with laptops. I just avoided them, since there are not too many serviceable parts in them, and repairs are rather expensive, and my target group is not so rich (I have a soft heart, I can't help it). Nonetheless, I believe that old "grandpas" can still give a pretty strong kick, and those old dinosaurs that I have revived are still in use big time!

Not so long ago, a friend (I am doing this as a favor to him, otherwise I avoid laptops) came to me, with thinkpad 600E. Now I have a problem with IBM BIOS setup. I see that "neomagic magicgraph 256av" uses 2,5MB of ram. Since it is basically integrated graphic card, shouldn't it be able to use system memory? I have a problem because IBM has it's "EASY SETUP", and not a classic bios setup where I could change amount of memory dedicated to graphic. Is there a way where I could do the same thing on this computer?

Now, why do I need graphic performance? Well, .avi files, of course! This computer has Windows XP SP2 on it, and it flies! Seriously, XP works excellent on this machine! But alas... Movies don't work good, framerate jumps up and down! CPU usage is 38-90%, ram 92MB (256 installed), so the only bottleneck is graph. I have changed desktop resolution to 800x600, framerate jumps stabilized for a small portion, and only a little bit is missing so that movies could be perfectly watchable! I need more GRAPHIC RAM! How to obtain that?!

This is a dinosaur who's life I would like to prolong for an emotional cause (I am not charging this one, this guy is my friend, and this computer is not giving up after all those years, so I WISH TO HELP HIM SO BAD!)

This "grandpa" has more internet to search, and more music and (hopefully) movies to play, before he "call it a day", and go with honors! Help me to help him!

I am afraid there is nothing you can do. The Neomagic graphics chip cannot share system memory-it's just not possible, and the system is not designed to have the graphics memory upgraded. It is frustrating as the 600 series are so durable, with arguably the best keyboard of any Thinkpad ever produced-but the fact is they are based on an old, outdated architecture that just cannot keep up with today's online media content. I have a number of 600E laptops that lie unused because of this, and I have a 600X that I ugpraded to a P3-750MHz CPU and 572MB RAM running Windows XP. Even the upgraded 600X with the factory 4MB video ram struggles with online media content. It does better than a 600E of course, but it is overall still very slow.

Ok, after typing all of that I see where you just mention playing .avi files, not specifically online media content. I still think you are out of luck, but you can try a low resource media player such as VLC if you haven't already. I wish I had better news for you and your friend, but it's just the way it is. Maybe your friend can find a more up to date laptop for a very reasonable price.

I would be betting that CPU power is mostly to blame, not graphics muscle. What CPU do you have? If I remember correctly, 4oomhz was the max processor that laptop would hold. Or just get a 600X, very affordable these days.