Thinkpads Forum

hi @ all,

first of all: sorry for my poor english. i´m german and i have nothing except my old school english.

i want to upgrad my tp600E as far as it would be possible. it is a 2645-510.

which processor and ram is the maximum?
have also a 20gb hdd.
the bios only recognizes 8 gb. w2k itself detects the full 20 gig.
is there a bios which detects the full 20 gig´s?

i hope anyout here can help me and answer my questions.

thanks a lot guys and greetings from munich, germany,
the capital of beer

red.schumi

Hi, welcome to the forum!

First, for the upgrades that you are talking about, take a look at the 600 upgrade sticky at the top of the 600 Conference.

As for recognizing more than 20GB, update to the newest BIOS. You don't have to do it in increments...you can go straight to the latest version.

Also, I would read through the Hardware Maintenance Manualfor instructions on how to replace each part of your system.

the capital of beer

You're already my favorite poster...


You can put any MMC-2 CPU in a 600e. The MMC-2's go up to 850 Mhz, but since the 600e's are NOT speedstep machines the CPU speed will be 700 Mhz.

Good Luck!!

BillD wrote:

the capital of beer

You're already my favorite poster...


You can put any MMC-2 CPU in a 600e. The MMC-2's go up to 850 Mhz, but since the 600e's are NOT speedstep machines the CPU speed will be 700 Mhz.

Good Luck!!

But you can also run the processor at 850mhz follow the link.

Speedstep mod.

Works with 600/650/750/800/850 MMC-2 processors.

@BillD,

if i´m in country you will be invited next year to the oktoberfest.

@others:

thanx for the hints, but i have another question.

bought a 600e 2645-450. is it possible to use 256mb/133mhz ram-modules?

thanx to all

red_schumi

red.schumi wrote:is it possible to use 256mb/133mhz ram-modules?

if my memory serves me right, i used a 256mb pc133 stick in a 600e. it must have 8 chips on each side (low density), but that alone doesn't mean it will work. it will run at 66mhz.

The 600E's are wonderful notebooks. If you do upgrade your 600E I would do two things.

1) Be extremely careful removing the keyboard and bezel. I was not and ended up having to replace the keyboard and the and the speaker. The two ribbon cables are a bit on the fragile side and are easy to break.

2) If you are going to upgrade the CPU to a PIII I would also replace the CPU heatsink with the one that is used in the 600X series. The PIII's run a bit hotter and the 600X heatsink is better equipped to disburse the extra heat. (this is not manditory of course)

Thread hijack time.
1) Where to find a compatible PIII?
2) What is the maximum usable amount of RAM you can use?
3) If I insert you insert a 20 GB hard drive, and BIOS only sees the first 8 GB but the OS sees the rest, is that a problem? What is the max hard drive size you can use, with the latest BIOS upgrade?

nitro2k01 wrote:Thread hijack time.
1) Where to find a compatible PIII?
2) What is the maximum usable amount of RAM you can use?
3) If I insert you insert a 20 GB hard drive, and BIOS only sees the first 8 GB but the OS sees the rest, is that a problem? What is the max hard drive size you can use, with the latest BIOS upgrade?

1. eBay - Make sure that it is a PIII (not celeron) MMC-2 CPU
2. Depending on the model 600E, you can have upto 544MB ram (256+256+32 onboard).
3. Update the BIOS to the latest version, and you can use the largest PATA 2.5" hard drive available. (currently 160GB, I believe)

tfflivemb2 wrote:3. Update the BIOS to the latest version, and you can use the largest PATA 2.5" hard drive available. (currently 160GB, I believe)

This should probably be qualified with the following:

While a 600E will recognize a drive that big, your Operating System may not - Windows 98, for example, maxes out at 137GB (due to FAT32). XP seems to not have hit its upper limit yet, and since it's primary filesystem is NTFS, that suggests that 2000 and possibly NT do not suffer the same limitation.

tfflivemb2 wrote:2. Depending on the model 600E, you can have upto 544MB ram (256+256+32 onboard).

If I would insert 2*512 MB chips, what would happen? Would the computer refuse to start, or would it only use the lower 256 MB of each chip. (Ie, not use the 29th address pin)

Initially, i would have said that it wouldn't work, since there aren't any PC100 512mb sticks. Recently though, people have been able to get PC133 (Low density) sticks to work....so, maybe it would read only 512mb, of the 1GB.....but in all honestly, I would say that it wouldn't read them at all.