Thinkpads Forum

Grrr... Stupid error 127.

I bought two Celeron 600MHzs on eBay the other day and got around to installing them. I thought I would not need to bios hack to get it to work (I've read that the bios hack only needs to be implemented on the PIII processors). So I open it up and slot the cpu in. I had to reseat it cause the first time it was loose (common problem when changing processors on these machines for me....).

So I finally get it to boot and it throws an error 00127.... lol.

Apparently I had to set the first byte at Offset 20 to 0A from 00 (I dunno why it was at 00, it just was). Now the bios detects the Processor as working, but as a Pentium II at 400MHz. What gives? They are supposed to be 600MHz Celerons! Or is there something more I have to do? I haven't installed an OS on it yet (new hd, 100GB for 60 was too good of a deal to pass up), so I can't run any OS utilities atm (but I'll be triple booting WinXP if I can get the tv video drivers right, Debian or Fedora and OpenBSD).

Anyone have any idea as to what might be the problem?

It is most likely a speed step issue, which is generally a 150-200MHz difference.

What is the full model number for the 600E? (ie. 2645-xxx)

2645-57U

Celeron's have speed-step! News to me.

Dark Savant0 wrote:Now the bios detects the Processor as working, but as a Pentium II at 400MHz. What gives? They are supposed to be 600MHz Celerons!

I assume that the problem is just that the BIOS is misreading the chip and/or cannot display the correct chip info on that BIOS screen. The Celerons are not after all Pentium chips and so even if it said "Pentium III 600MHz" it would still be wrong. I would certainly be surprised if it said "Celeron"...something or other. I vaguely recall something weird about how my 770Z displays the CPU info in the BIOS as well, but can't verify quickly at the moment.

I doubt that this will have any effect on the actual speed you can achieve using the Celeron in your 600E.

Is it possible you need to "Initialize" the BIOS before it gets recognized correctly?? (You'll have to re-edit the Offset 20 byte again after doing this).

I personally would recommend the Pentium III chips over the Celerons as candidates for 600E/770X/770Z CPU upgrades as I understood that the PIII chips of that era run faster (due to ondie cache or something) and cooler (due to architecture or something). But there are folks who have successfully upgraded a 600E to a Celeron.

Phil.

My understanding is that the Celeron is based on the Pentium core but has half the cache and in some cases a lower FSB speed. The fastest Pentium II era Celeron I know of is 466 MHz. A 600 MHz Celeron would almost certainly be based on a Pentium III core. The usual changes required to use a Pentium III with a 600E should apply.

Edit: If you have a 57U it is the oldest 600E version, originally shipped with a 300 MHz CPU with separate cache chips running at half speed. It may be more difficult to run a Pentium III in that version of the 600E than in later versions that natively use 366 or 400 MHz CPUs.

Hrmmm... Well, I disabled the onboard memory, but that didn't help as I cannot find the power leap control panel. Does anyone have it?

Well, I re-enabled the L2 cache, but it still reports 400MHz Celeron. Checking CPU-Z, it tells me that it has a Core speed of ~400MHz, but the Specification is indeed 600MHz. The bus speed has stayed 66 MHz. Is there any way to manually edit that?

Dark Savant0 wrote:The bus speed has stayed 66 MHz. Is there any way to manually edit that?

Not that I know of. But for some folks this seems to have had something to do with problems with their 66MHz onboard memory not wanting to speedup to 100MHz. Is the onboard memory still disabled in your current config? Are you using any other 66MHz memory in your slots?

Phil.

I swapped out a 64MHz stick to a 128, but can only confirm that one of them is PC100.

I still have the onboard disabled, and even re-initialized (then re-editing the values).


Reading through the wiimbios thread, it seems I have to make a hardware mod on the processor. If Katch still lurks, I'd like to hear what he did to make it work.

Also as a note, the pc makes like squelching staticy noises sometimes. I think it is something on the board. Any ideas? I have another 600E I can bash into oblivion to test any of your odd desires as well (and have a hard drive to slot in it to test installs as well...) so don't hesitate to suggest things.

Dark Savant0 wrote:Now the bios detects the Processor as working, but as a Pentium II at 400MHz.

Just checked my 770Z that has been upgraded from a PII 366MHz to a PIII 500MHz, and the Easy-Setup BIOS on it reports that it is a Pentium II running at 500 MHz. The machine runs fine in XP/2000/98SE at the designated 500MHz and the CPU is reported as correctly as a PIII using a number of different CPU ID tools despite the misreporting in the BIOS, so I wouldn't worry about the BIOS misreporting your CPU.

Unfortunately, I don't have any further suggestions for sorting out your other CPU speed / FSB issues.

If you want to contact katch, I would recommend trying to do so directly, as I am pretty sure he/she does not check in on this forum very often.

Phil.

Hmmm... I have another 600MHz Celeron to violate, so I just might... In any case, CPU-Z reports it correctly, as does any other CPU reporting tools, just not the bios.

Stupid Core Speed/FSB. At least DVD Playing will be smoother, and it should run better than a PII 366MHz (I previously upgraded...).

I did some googling on Katch, remembered I had his site on my blog, found his site, searched the name in the copyright, and found his email on google. I will see what I can dig up for the rest of you.

Dark Savant0 wrote:2645-57U

Celeron's have speed-step! News to me.

Ah, missed that...must have typed too quickly, as this speed difference comes up quite a bit.

For the record, my processor is PMN60001201AB.