Thinkpads Forum

I have a 2646 and I just got a PIII 850 and a new main battery and installed the processor and fresh install of XP w/SP2. It will post with no errors; however, with the new battery in it and the power adapter plugged in, it will go no further than the flashing cursor in the upper left hand corner after the initial post screen.

If I try booting without the power adapter plugged in and only running on the new battery, it will make it past that point but lock up when the progress bar is going left to right repeatedly under the color Microsoft Windows XP startup screen.

With my old dead battery and the power adapter plugged in it boots and runs seemingly fine.

I don't have a floppy drive for the machine but I did manage to make a bootable CD with the PC Doctor diagnostics on it and it tested OK.

I didn't have the same luck trying to make a bootable ThinkPad configuration for Dos CD.

Has anyone else experienced anything like this or have any suggestions?

Exasperatedly,
Dwight

The machine is supposed to run without the battery, question did you charge the battery first?

I know it doesn't matter but i am curious.

IBM/lenovo battery of aftermarket brand battery..??
if the latter, this MIGHT be your problem..

I didn't get the battery from IBM/Lenovo however it is identical down to the yellow sticker on it.

It came charged, so it wasn't dead when I got it.

How can a person tell if it is an IBM brand battery?

Have you installed the updates and drivers from IBM, specifically the Battery Maximizer program? (Note: be sure to read the txt file to make sure that you actually install it, after you DL it.

Are you suffering from the "Fn +F2" hang?

I'm installing the Configuration Utility and the Battery Opt now.

What is the Fn+F2 hang?

Mine will quit responding completely, but the mouse still moves.

Dwight Cordes wrote:I didn't get the battery from IBM/Lenovo however it is identical down to the yellow sticker on it.

If I understand correctly, your machine works fine when your dead/old battery is installed, but freezes with your new battery, and you have not made any other hardware changes (in both cases you have a PIII 850Mhz installed). Sounds to me like Bill is probably right and you should suspect your "new" battery as the culprit.

Dwight Cordes wrote:I have a 2646...

Not enough information. The 2646 designates an entire series of models. Do you have a ThinkPad 600, a 600E, or a 600X? Can you give your full model number (2646-???) as well as the 600 designation? Did your machine start out with a PIII 650MHz? or something else?

Dwight Cordes wrote:How can a person tell if it is an IBM brand battery?

In the cases I've seen, the IBM batteries all have the IBM logo on them. Clone/aftermarket batteries may have identical-looking yellow stickers on them, but should not have the IBM logo. You could tell us which exact vendor you bought the aftermarket battery from, and some of us might have experience with similar batteries from that same battery vendor.

Phil.

Hi Phil,

Thanks for your response.

I buy 600X's on eBay that need parts or repair and this one only has 2646 on the case, which I found somewhat unusual. After looking on the EZ Setup it is a 2646-4EU.

As luck would have it, I got another one this morning and some new memory as well, so I put that one together with all new components except for my new "ThinkPad 600" battery and guess what......it does the same stall thing as the other one.

I bought an IBM Factory Sealed Battery on eBay last night so it should be here in a day or two.

I bought the questionable battery on eBay from Screamingdealsdotnet with an email address of Sales@screamingdeals.net. It had a one year warranty and I emailed them of a problem yesterday, so we'll see what comes of it.

Thanks again for all your input.

By the way, it is acting better after the Configuration Utility, Battery Miser and Personalization downloads.

Phil,

Correction 2646-8EU.

Dwight Cordes wrote:Phil,

Correction 2646-8EU.

Not a speedstep machine, and the 850 is a speedstep CPU.. When it hangs on boot-up try pushing Fn+F2 and see what happens...

Dwight Cordes wrote:I have a 2646 and I just got a PIII 850 and a new main battery

Exasperatedly,
Dwight

You will need to read this thread it is a must for you.

OK Guys,

I tried the FN+F2 and it booted with the new battery.

Phil,

I was going to tell you earlier that I have purchased several off eBay as parts/repair because I love these machines and I have had a few 600X boards go bad.

That said, after the post about this not being a speedstep board, I decided I should check out the EZ-Setup-detected model and it is a 2646-4EU, which still isn't a speedstep board. Is there a matrix on IBM/Lenovo which tells which boards/models are speedstep?

Will this thing run ok on the FN+F2 fix or do I need to look into finding a speedstep board?

BTW, I'm not really comfortable soldering the processor or the board. Is this procedure easy and I'm being a wuss or is this something I should probably avoid?

Thanks everyone for your input.

Dwight Cordes wrote:Is there a matrix on IBM/Lenovo which tells which boards/models are speedstep?

You can enter the type number (i.e. 2646-4EU) into the search box at this site:

http://www.ibm.com/help/us/en/help/

and it will return a list of hits, with the first one usually leading you to a system description for that type number.

Dwight Cordes wrote:OK Guys,

I tried the FN+F2 and it booted with the new battery.

Phil,

I was going to tell you earlier that I have purchased several off eBay as parts/repair because I love these machines and I have had a few 600X boards go bad.

That said, after the post about this not being a speedstep board, I decided I should check out the EZ-Setup-detected model and it is a 2646-4EU, which still isn't a speedstep board. Is there a matrix on IBM/Lenovo which tells which boards/models are speedstep?

Will this thing run ok on the FN+F2 fix or do I need to look into finding a speedstep board?

BTW, I'm not really comfortable soldering the processor or the board. Is this procedure easy and I'm being a wuss or is this something I should probably avoid?

Thanks everyone for your input.

You don't have to solder anything you can run it at 700mhz in the link i posted earlier there are the instructions that will help you solve your problem.

But if you really want to run it at 850mhz well then you have two chioces that i know motherboard replacement and some soldering and deepsleep utility.

Dwight Cordes wrote:OK Guys,

I tried the FN+F2 and it booted with the new battery.

Phil,

I was going to tell you earlier that I have purchased several off eBay as parts/repair because I love these machines and I have had a few 600X boards go bad.

That said, after the post about this not being a speedstep board, I decided I should check out the EZ-Setup-detected model and it is a 2646-4EU, which still isn't a speedstep board. Is there a matrix on IBM/Lenovo which tells which boards/models are speedstep?

Will this thing run ok on the FN+F2 fix or do I need to look into finding a speedstep board?

BTW, I'm not really comfortable soldering the processor or the board. Is this procedure easy and I'm being a wuss or is this something I should probably avoid?

Thanks everyone for your input.

Off the top of my head I 'THINK' there's 2 600x speedstep machines..5fu and 9fu..

As far as I know there's no way around the fn+f2 boot..Someone can correct me if I'm wrong but I think when a non speedstep machines tries to start up in the higher speed, in your case 850Mhz you need the fn+f2 boot boost, if it starts at 700Mhz it should boot normally. Again I'm just going from memory but the speed it tries to start at is determained by if you are trying to boot from just the battery, the AC adapter or both. I'm not sure which combo does what though..I'm sure there's posts on this forum with more detailed info, or just experiment for yourself.

Once it boots even if you use the fn+f2 boot it should run fine.

BTW If/Once it boots at 850Mhz you'll probably have problems with it coming out of standby mode also.

I have found 4 models referenced on the IBM site for speedstep machines in the 2645 category, which are 5Fx, 5GU, 5HU and 9Fx, running on board 08K3110.

I started looking for a replacement and although I haven't looked at all the parts suppliers, it looks like it's in the $250 range.

I'll boot with the FN+F2 until I can find a speedstep board.

Thanks again to every one for your help and insight.

Dwight

HI,

Change the processor driver. It will run perfect with the Intel-processor driver.
There is a bug in the Intel PentiumIII driver.

Cheers

Thanks for the advice, but I found and purchased a factory sealed speedstep board on eBay and its on it's way.

Ok,
I have the 450MHz non SS board and it runs like a dream with the 750Mhz SS proc with SS functionality.

Just for the record, and to help me and others who have other boards and SS processor combos, which driver did you use?

Do you have a file name that I should search the intel site for?

Thanks,
Dwight

Calvin & Hobbes wrote:Ok,
I have the 450MHz non SS board and it runs like a dream with the 750Mhz SS proc with SS functionality.

Are you sure it is that easy? I try that on my 770Z but it didn't work.

Still with the intel processor driver ( the second on the list ) the 650mhz PIII is running at 500mhz.

Have you tried the SS-mod or Deepsleed? It will not get you the SS functionality but full throtle from start!

My only experience is from my 600X 2645-BBG eventhough IBM says its a 600E. (1st owner, 600X sticker, 64MB Ram, original equipped with 450MHz etc...they don't fool me!)
I started with the SS-mod on the MMC-2 assy, then I intalled the deepsleep software to force the proc to go only on high speed. It worked well for me but the power consumption on DC was high And of course FN+F2 toggle. Then I stumbled over new information regarding the driver and after a SS-mod repair and removal of the deepsleep utility it runs great.

The driver is the second one as you wrote "Inter-processor". Everything I'm refeering to is available from Wim's BIOS forum.

Calvin & Hobbes wrote:
The driver is the second one as you wrote "Inter-processor". Everything I'm refeering to is available from Wim's BIOS forum.

I read that post but i not so confident in trying it, i am not sure if the locations of the resistors and capacitors are the same in all the SS processors.

I think all assys is covered with diffferent picks in the tread.
I would be suprised if you find one that differs from the known.

Anyway it is a little tricky with the cut and soldering...

Calvin & Hobbes,

THANKS!

I got a PIII 750mhz off ebay and i did the speedstep mod to it.

Following your suggestion i change the driver from intel pentium II to intel processor but no chage in speed, I twas running at 600mhz.

But i give it a try to the third driver the "processor driver" and now it's runing at 750mhz!!! Great! now it feels faster.

Thanks for the advice.


Carlos.