Thinkpads Forum

it says 2645-A2U on the back, what can I do to it to make it faster it has 128 mb installed

Regarding improving DVD playback performance.

There is a discontinued PCMCIA Card that adds hardware accelerated MPEG decoding for playing DVDs on older laptops:
Margi DVD-to-Go

You may be able to find one through eBay for relatively cheap.

I've never used one of these, but I understand that they do in fact improve DVD performance on older machines.

I'm not sure if adding additional RAM will improve your DVD performance -- I think the bottleneck is that it takes a lot of CPU processor power to decode the data being read from a DVD and turn it into a VGA signal.

Adding additional RAM may improve your laptop performance in other areas, however.

You could also try to upgrade the CPU.

Other suggestions are to reduce your system overhead (CPU activity) so that your system is not doing anything else except trying to play your DVD. The methods for this are the same for a laptop as for a desktop: remove unnecessary startup programs, reduce desktop screen resolution and colour depth (to 600x800 and 16bit), and turn off virus scanner, schedulers, reminders, etc.

Phil.

I've just finished a upgrade to 466Mhz Celeron ($20 on ebay - shipped!).

It worked fine, doesn't require BIOS modifications, swapping out RAM banks, etc...

According to Intel this is the highest clocked MMC1 you can get with a 66Mhz FSB.

Performance is pretty much what I expected. From the PII 366 the Celeron 466 gave about a 25% increase in CPU intensive tasks (according to Sisoft Sandra 2005).

The only thing I'm noticing is an increase in CPU temp. So I've ordered a 600X heat spreader/fan assembly. Think I can shoehorn it in!

I have a virgin 600E that I'm just about to start violating I had pretty much given up on it and was all set to leave it as a router cum firewall. Then I 'found' a new battery for it lying around at work and a FDD.

So, flashed the BIOS to kingdom come - now nicely at the highest revision. Currently the pig is running a P2 366 - 32Mb Internal Ram + 1 x 64Mb 66Mhz and 1 X 128Mb 100Mhz - Nasty 6Gb HDD clicky slow [censored] - DVD SlimROM. XP

Nice stable system, considering it is almost always on now downtime due to hardware in the last couple of years

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The Plan - Never knew it was possible till I came here

I'm picking up a P3 Celeron 600Mhz or P3 500Mhz MMC-2 in the next day or two - not sure which yet aiming for the 600.

2 x 256Mb RAM already enroute

New HDD yet to decide and order

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Any advice on the upgrades would be great. With the whole CPU upgrade causing 127 post error keystroke to resume. I'm a little hazy on the work around. Do I need to HEX edit the BIOS rom file then reflash, then use the Powerleap tool to re-enable the L2?

Any considerations on choosing a HDD - ie can I just go get a nuts fast 7200rpm 80gig 2.5" and away I go?

Also is the modem in this 600E minipci? If so can I make this puppy go wireless?

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I will keep a nice detailed log of this little adventure and post the results and procedures for everyone once I'm done.

Regards

Katch

Katch wrote:Any advice on the upgrades would be great. With the whole CPU upgrade causing 127 post error keystroke to resume. I'm a little hazy on the work around. Do I need to HEX edit the BIOS rom file then reflash, then use the Powerleap tool to re-enable the L2?

Any considerations on choosing a HDD - ie can I just go get a nuts fast 7200rpm 80gig 2.5" and away I go?

Also is the modem in this 600E minipci? If so can I make this puppy go wireless?

You should start a new topic... It would be great to have your story all in one place.

I can't help with CPU issues. I couldn't get a 400MHz PII to work in a 600E (-3AU).

An 80GB 7200RPM drive should work just fine, as long as heat isn't an issue, and it shouldn't be. The 600E was designed long before 7200RPM drives, so it's not meant to dissipate the extra heat, but the newer drives have better bearings, and the metal drive caddy will help.

The 600E does not have MiniPCI. Its modem is part of the MWave DSP system.

Upgrade from PII 366Mhz to PIII 600Mhz complete.

Nice easy upgrade

http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=7427

Guide to identifying MMC Processor Specs

After buying what I thought was a 600MHz P3 w/ 256Kb L2 Cache and actually getting a Cel w/ 128Kb I thought I'd add a little guide to identifying which are which from the part numbers.

Example: PMN60001201AB

PM=Processor Module
N=Intel Celeron processor Mobile Module (MMC-2)
600=600 MHz
01=128 KB Cache
201=201 Notifiable Design Revision
AB=AB Notifiable Processor Revision

So the little 01 in bold is the bit to look for; 01=128Kb L2 Cache 02=256Kb

I bought a 600E-55S but it has a pentium 3 at 500 mhz or more, but the bios is still showing a pentium 2 at 300 mhz,and win xp too.

How can i change this? i want to see the real processor.

Can you good folk recommend a CD-R/W drive for the 600 series?

Or a CD-RW/DVD-ROM combo drive would be nice too.

I just bought a 600X off eBay for a friend, and she wants at least CD-R/W capability.

All kind of cd/dvd/RW drivers can work on the laptop. The problem is that you may need to cut just a little of the plastic front cover of the cd in order to fit inside the laptop.

I just spotted a swappable DVD+/-RW for the TP 570/600/600E/600X series listed on eBay for $99.95

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?Vi ... %3AIT&rd=1

Caddy is not included, but you can use the caddy from your old cd, dvd or cdrw/dvd drive. Installation is very simple:

- Remove 6 screws to take caddy out

- Put it back on your new drive

Takes about 2 minutes to do and you're good to go.

With 95 of these units available, I doubt you'll have trouble getting one.

Regards,
~JS~

You can get this same item at newegg.com and other sellers on the internet a few dollars cheaper and they are not refurbished. The NEC drives at Newegg are the current model and dual layered.

I finished my upgrade a couple weeks ago, figured i'd finally post it. Thinkpad 600e 2645-5bU. PII-400 w/ 32meg pc66 onboard. Base DVD-Rom Drive. Upgraded to a PIII-750 (600mhz without Speed Step) and 512meg PC100 (Crucial low density) Also installed a DVD+-RW. Upgraded the 10Gig to an 80Gig too. Video is still the only holdback on this machine. I'm going to try the MargiDVD card in the ZVslot. Shame my 770 Machine (PII-550, 512meg, 40gig 7200rpm) plays DVD's and Divx movies fullscreen with perfection.... while I can't even fullscreen movies on this one without them getting choppy. I figure the MardiDVD will help somewhat with the video cards lack of performance. http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=7427 is the topic to see if you want to do this upgrade right.

Nate

ndoggfromhell wrote:Video is still the only holdback on this machine. I can't even fullscreen movies on this one without them getting choppy.

Probably a stupid question, but I'll ask it anyway. Have you checked in device manager to verify that the DVD drive is using DMA mode, and not PIO mode? Look under IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers > Primary IDE Channel and Secondary IDE Channel > Advanced Settings. Normally the hard drive is on the Primary IDE Channel, and the DVD drive is on the Secondary IDE channel.

If you can't change the mode here, uninstall the IDE ATA/ATAPI controllers, then reboot Windows. Windows should reinstall the drivers and make the repair. This happened to me once.

I use CyberLink's PowerDVD. There is a setting in this software for hardware acceleration. Also, if you change the Color Profile from Vivid (the default) to Original, you use less system resources and decrease choppiness. I had a 400Mhz 600E that played full-screen DVD's quite well. Only occasionally in high-action scenes was there some choppiness visible.

OK, I am new here and for the most part new to altering PC hardware but I am experienced in building Frankenmacs and want to work on this 600 2645-31U that I was given recently. Can someone verify I have the following correct, I've tried to read through the boards as best as I can:

PMF36602002AA is for PII 366 MMC1 board that will work in my 600. They do have 400mhz but they are very hard to find and apparantly expensive (curious, how much?) and a few people have had unrealiability issues.

I can install 2 128MB 144pin SODIMMs to make 288 but they must all be 66mhz.

Hitachi's larger Travelstar drives, such as the 60gig, 7200RPM, will work but right now are in shorter supply.

I'm not sure if adding additional RAM will improve your DVD performance -- I think the bottleneck is that it takes a lot of CPU processor power to decode the data being read from a DVD and turn it into a VGA signal.

Adding additional RAM may improve your laptop performance in other areas, however

The L2 cache Is what will improve DVD performance.
The L2 is Ram that's on the CPU that the CPU can acess vey fast.
I noticed that when I disabled the L2 in the BIOS hex edit. DvD's
where CRAP!

SnakeEyes wrote:Can someone verify I have the following correct, I've tried to read through the boards as best as I can:

PMF36602002AA is for PII 366 MMC1 board that will work in my 600. They do have 400mhz but they are very hard to find and apparantly expensive (curious, how much?) and a few people have had unrealiability issues.

I can install 2 128MB 144pin SODIMMs to make 288 but they must all be 66mhz.

Anyone?

After searching the web nearly endlessly, I finally found a way to update the thinkpad 600 bios without a working system battery.

(Found originally here)

I have found a working solution WOW on the other forum:

*** This is NOT a safe way to update the bios (disclaimer) ***

* First you need to make a BIOS update floppy disk (from the bios file from IBM - place disk in a: drive, run app and answer Y to the agreement) and then format another disk by right clicking on A: - format - make system bootdisk (assuming you have another machine spare)

* Copy all the files from the IBM Boot disk - in my case
$0029000.fl1
$0029000.fl2
FLASH2.EXE
PROD.DAT
UPDTFLSH.EXE
updtrom.exe
USERINT.EXE
UTILINFO.EXE
to the other clean bootdisk.

* Ensure that there is no config.sys and autoexec.bat so it just runs straight into DOS.

* Place the disk into the Laptop, reboot and allow the machine to load via the floppy

* At the command prompt, type "FLASH2.EXE /U" with no quotes then press enter.

The program will automatically search for the files *.FL1 & *.FL2 and load the bios first then the platform file.

The program will automatically update and perform erasing on the rom and then finish with "Update complete".

* Now reboot.

* Hold F1 down as you turn the laptop back on and go into Easy Setup under "Config" click on Initialize to ensure defaults and settings are error free.

* Save and exit...

This works, and doesn't make you jump through too many hoops.

I suppose, if you don't use 2k/XP, you could try FreeDOS, or maybe strip down a 9x boot floppy to make room, but I haven't tried this.

Hopefully, this will save someone some time.

-SU

Windows XP can make an MS-DOS boot floppy. Open Windows Explorer, click on the floppy drive (with a diskette in it), click File, Format. Check the Create an MS-DOS startup disk.

OK, I'm a little nervous now that I just wasted some money...

I have a 600x (2645-4EU) with a 500MHz chip right now.

I read about the mmc-2 upgrades, found an 850MHz one on ebay which should be here in a couple of days.

THEN I dug deeper and discovered the two tiers of 600x's, and now I'm concerned that mine won't actually support the 850 and I've wasted my money.

Is this the case? If I have to hunt down a later system board on ebay and swap out, I'm starting to get to the point where it's not worth the money and I should just save up a little money and pick up a T-something and sell off the 600x.

Advice, please?

You are correct to be worried. The 850MHz chip will run at 700MHz on a system board that does not have SpeedStep unless you hack something (the board, the CPU or both, I don't know, but the info is here, as you've found).

OK... what I was afraid of.

However, will it damage it to run at 700 until I can find a SS 600x? I got mine from a friend who deals in surplus electronics, and he'll keep an eye out for one of the SS models for me to swap with.

I have a Pentium III 750 SpeedStep CPU on it's way to me and I have a few questions I want to ask about it.

Since there are people out there who have put PIII's in their 600E's, I was wondering, am I forced to run that CPU at the lowest speed or is there a way (BIOS hack or cpu board hack, maybe?) I can set the CPU to work at the normal speed.

Either way, if the PIII board works, I'llbe getting a significant upgrade to my 600E but nonetheless, I'd like to see if I can get the advertised value.

Alpha...

Just remember that since you have one dead ram slot,....this performance increase will make you lose the 32mb onboard ram (via the BIOS hack for using a PIII chip), causing you to drop from 160mb to 128mb, unless you add a 256mb PC100 low density ram chip.

Yikes, I just thought about that. I've read about a bunch of 600E's that were able to withstand the onboard memory overclock but that's a chance I'm taking. I'll just have to see how things work when the chip gets here and if the memory does need to be disabled, I'll decide whether or not to keep the PIII installed based on whether or not the extra mhz and the SSE instructionset can offset the 32mb RAM loss in my everyday work.

Sounds like a good choice. Just remember which changes you made incase you need to reverse them.

Well, I just recieved my Pentium III 750SS MMC2 board in the mail today and I installed it immediatley. The onboard RAM in my computer took the overclocking very well (since my computer was made in 2000, it's very possible the PC66 chips were down-labled PC100) and after performing the BIOS mod to disable L2 then installing Powerleap to re-enable L2 cache, my ThinkPad 600E now runs very happilly at 600mhz. The speed boost in going from 366mhz to 600mhz is very significant.

EDIT: Before the upgrade, my ThinkPad 600E had a bad second memory slot thus limiting me to the first slot and the onboard RAM for memory. I decided to try putting a RAM stick into the slot today just to see if it would work and to my surprise, it did. I'm not sure if replacing the board was directly linked to this or not but I did think that this is worth noting down. I'm thinking now maybe either the Pentium II 366 MMC2 board wasn't seated completely and/or the northbridge chip on that module is dying. Well, whatever the cause was, it's now gone and I now have both RAM slots fully functional.

I just wiped my hard drive and installed a fresh copy of Windows 2000 and to my surprise, my Pentium III is no longer detected as a 600mhz part. It's now detected as a 750 and when I run the clock checker on WCPUID, it shows my system as running at the full 750mhz. This is with no modification to my computer or the CPU board and yes, my chip is a speedstep part.

AlphaKilo470 wrote:... This is with no modification to my computer or the CPU board....

Same with me, just the bios mods for the cache and onboard ram. I stuck a 650mhz cpu to my 600e and it went to the full speed pronto. XP reports it to be Celeron (surprise) running at 648mhz. Mobilemeter reports 666mhz. Idling temperature is in the 40's but when I play DVD's it jumps to over 80. At 256mb ram and Powerleap fired, dvd/divx playback is jumpy. My 600x P3-500mhz, 128mb ram does the same task smoothly. In fact the original P2-400mhz cpu fared better than this upgrade.

Ideas are welcome.

Cheers,
Rick

Update: I guess the display driver is taxed to its limits with the new FSB. When set to medium resolution (16-bit), dvd/xvid playback ran smoothly. The cpu also ran much cooler now at <40 degrees C idling, and <80 degrees playing dvd. I have not run benchmark tests yet vs. the 600x though.