701c: Upgrading from CT-65545 to 65548/65550?

[Cooler22]

Hey guys,

I'll be receiving a new motherboard soon and was thinking of testing out a video controller upgrade on the 701c. Although the upgrade would be small the 65548 seems to yield higher clock, and the 65550 would provide the same amount of clock, an extra MB of RAM as well as added features apparently. Looking at the datasheet the pinout appears to be the same on both upgrades and am planning to test out both of them. Here are the chips I will likely be using : http://www.ebay.com/itm/F65550B-QFP-208 ... 4b1a42bce4 or http://www.ebay.com/itm/1PCS-F65548A-En ... SwepZXS6cv

Do you guys think it is even worth trying though? Either way I will test it for other users who want to upgrade their 701c's but I would like your input.

[Thinkpad4by3]

What task on a 701C would require the upgrade? Are you going for an ultimate 701C build?

[Cooler22]

What task on a 701C would require the upgrade? Are you going for an ultimate 701C build?

Pretty much, I want to give the 701c its peak performance. The upgrade will help in any video/3D related tasks by a decent amount.

[Cooler22]

Well I got the AMD 133 mhz motherboard with 64 megabytes and the motherboard is modified by badabumm. I vouch for him 100% and he is a great guy! Anyway so as soon as the CT-65550 arrives from China I will try swapping them out on the stock motherboard. I also found out that the MVB version of the OPTI chipset will allow EDO ram and other benefits so that might be swapped.

By the way does anyone know if the 701c ever got a Cyrix upgrade? I recall they produced a SQFP version of the 100mhz. It should be a interesting upgrade since the BIOS supports it AND it is nearly a Pentium.

I also want to figure out the Pinout on the SQFP-208->PGA adapters like the evergreen AMD-X5, in order to streamline CPU swaps (and run the Overdrive 83) to maybe retrofit an adapter like the PC-9801 486SX accelerators. I wish those could be used but sadly they are for the 168 QFP layout and are way too bulky.

There is also an IPS upgrade that was mentioned by Thinkpad4by3 which could fit if the CCFL tube is either replaced with LED's or a lower consumption version but the timings may be incompatible and bezel might need to be reproduced.

[Thinkpad4by3]

You can check out panelook's advanced search fir 10.4" 640x480 LCDs. There are thousands of them!!

[Ghostdog]

Hello Cooler22,
I'm planning to upgrade a CPU on my 701cs to AMD 5x86 133 and also want to upgrade RAM with 64 Mb module. But I have some doubts regarding RAM, if it will work at all or if there will be an issue with colors in Windows95/98. So I wanted to ask you if 64K colors mode works for your laptop or only 256 colors mode ? Do you use additional driver TP701MEM.SYS in config.sys ?