Thinkpads Forum

Hey everyone.

I finally found a 600X on Friday and have been fussing with it nonstop ever since. I'll try and give a full run down of everything I've done and describe the issues as best as possible. Thanks ahead of time. With the Laptop I got a 20GB hard drive. The BIOS is ITET54. I also pulled the 450MHz CPU and put in a 750Mhz.

-I managed to load PCLinuxOS on it but it wouldn't boot properly Something about font issues.
-I wiped it and tried Linux Mint; it loaded the LiveCD and installed fine, but upon boot it locked up about 3/4 of the way in and after some juggling saw that it was at the "Saving VESA State" script. I played with that ALL day yesterday and decided just to wipe when I couldn't find any help and load XP (I tried 5 other Linux distros and the only one to work was Sabayon, but its a little intensive for this box).
-The XP install disc starts and would boot through a couple of the checks and then unexpectedly shut down.
-I pulled the RAM and swapped it with new (known to work in a 600E) and tried again... no change.
-I swapped an old 6.4GB hard drive into it and it seemed to work. So I figured maybe if I just install on another machine and swap the hard drive in it'll work.
-Installed XP on my 600E and then swapped it out... this is where it gets really weird. During boot in the Microsoft Windows XP splash screen the progress bar would freeze, but when I would go to shut it down (hold the power button) it would start again. So I would just tap the power button whenever it would freeze (many many times) until I got to the desktop.. but that got old fast... I also found that FN-Backspace (toggling sound) also did the trick.
-I swapped out the drive again and used a DIFFERENT 6.4GB drive with XP installed on it and it did the same thing (HITACHI DRIVE)
-So I went back to the 1st 6.4 drive (IBM) and it seems to work fine, except that it doesn't seem to spin down. I closed the lid to put it into hibernation and then opened it back up and all was fine (mouse was a little less responsive), but fine nonetheless.

The screen is failing, its pink on startup for a few seconds and then is fine. So I'm thinking of swapping the screen and the CPU and testing others that I have sitting around... unless someone here can point me in a more logical direction. My thoughts are that its:
1. A BIOS issue
2. The screen
3. The CPU

Thanks and sorry about the long-windedness.


BOTTOM!

You are changing too many things at one time. Go back to the 450 MHz CPU and then update the bios.

<1.11 - ITET55WW>
- (New) Windows XP Support
- (Fix) OS installation failure with CD-ROM boot

Then install XP and if it works ok try the faster CPU.

Okay. I'll pop the 450 back in and try to update the BIOS. I don't have a floppy, is there a way to bypass this? Or do I need to install to a floppy on another machine, then copy those files to a cd and reboot?

Thanks.

I've always used a floppy but a bootable CD made from the floppy image reportedly works. See http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=11244 for details.

I just saw that IBM has a Flash Utility that upgrades the BIOS from Windows. Has anyone used this before? Is it safe? I'm having some issues trying to figure out how to make a floppy image into a bootable CD...

Thanks.

That utility is safe, I've been using it for years.

RAM that works in 600E will not necessarily work in 600X, since 600E uses PC66 RAM by default, but can run with PC100. 600X must have PC100 or low-density 133 to be able to boot.

That extremely slow start-up happened once to me on a 600X.

Temporarily removing the main battery did the trick.

Thanks for the vote of confidence AJ. I've been staring at the icon for a while now...

I actually went back and installed an old copy of 98 I had sitting around... I was worried that the utility would have issues with XP and since I was already getting some spotty performance, I wanted to be safe. So 98 is up and running now and I guess all I need to do is update the BIOS. Well... hopefully my courage will hold out.

See you on the other side... hopefully.

BTW. The RAM I was using was all PC100, so I'm all but 100% certain thats not the issue. I also ran Memtest last night for a while and no issues.

Okay

I started the utility and then it started shutting down and now I have a blue IBM screen... but there are NO OPTIONS to continue, no menu NO NOTHING!! WHAT DO I DO?

Please HELP. THanks.

The 600X locks up in many OSes because you put a SpeedStep CPU in a non-SpeedStep board. You'll need to generate an ACPI event to get the machine to wake up. My favorite way is to press Fn+F2, which normally does nothing.

For XP, you can change the CPU driver and the machine will be happy. I've tweaked it in Linux too, but don't remember how at the moment. It would then require the Fn+F2 once at startup, but was then fine from then on.

I would also try one of the popular Linux distributions as they get more testing: Ubuntu, Fedora, SuSE. I'm a fan of Fedora, and have put that on several 600X's.

The 600X currently has two bugs in Linux. 1) Sound doesn't work after suspend-resume. 2) The video is a little wacky. Dragging a windows off the left side of the screen and downward makes one pixel-worth of that window appear on the right side of the screen; also, after suspend-resume, the text console goes wiggly.

Okay

So it seems the speedstep CPU might be the cause of some issues. How might I go about fixing this? Which CPU driver should I use? Should I just go to the IBM website and install the CPU driver or Speedstep utility there? I can always Fn-F2 to get to the desktop until I update the driver, but I just don't want to have a bunch of issues.

Right now the 750 is running fine in 98 (despite some standard 98 bugs... some odd random crashing. But since microsoft doesn't support it anymore, I'm probably dealing with a buggy install until I can get things figured out. I've had Linux installed on my 600E for a while and I know what a pain in the butt it was to get the sound going... but the video was fine in Xubuntu.

My big concern now is how best to address this BIOS update. No matter what I do I can't seem to get it to work. I've downloaded the Utility, double-clicked and followed through until it resets and then I get an IBM splash but there is nothing there to do. Pg Up and Down don't work, not Enter or ESC either. I've left it sitting like that for several minutes (maybe 10) but nothing ever changed. Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks.

What's the condition of your main battery? Bad/dead battery can block a BIOS update.

Its good, it holds a charge for up to 2 hours... but normally around 1.5. Should I try and dig up a better one? Its fully charged though.

No, that sounds fine...your issue is someplace else, I'll post again if and when I actually figure out where...

Thanks AJ, I appreciate the help.

Something that keeps coming up, the machine randomly goes into suspend mode... sometime DURING boot... It also did it several times while installing the OS (Win98). Is this another sign of the Speedstep?

I went into the Power Control Panel and looked at the Suspend options but I don't see an option to address this. I selected the "never go into suspend, even when LCD is closed." As long as the monitor sleeps and the Hard drives spin down, than thats fine.

However, right now, the fan has been going for a while.... I need to put the 450 back in don't I...? Crap.

Ok.

I finally got the BIOS update to go through and Hooray! It worked. Now onto the Speedstep mod. I'm not overly upset about putting in a 500Mhz processor if I have to, I'd just love to be able to use this 750 or 650 that I've got sitting around. I could also go back to the warehouse where I got the machine and get another one (and hope my girlfriend doesn't kill me for bringing home laptop #7)

Anyway, if anyone has a good mod for either Linux or XP to enable Speedstep (or bypass it) it would make me very happy... (not that you should care).

Thanks again for all the help and support.

I'll keep searching, but so far my luck has been limited (zero).

First of all, sorry about carrying on a conversation with myself, but I think (I hope) I've stumbled onto a potential work around/answer.

I just reinstalled Linux Mint(ubuntu-based) and after Fn-F2/Fn-Backspace I loaded in and once in I went into Synaptic and decided to see if it was just as easy as "I wonder what I'll find if I type 'Speedstep'". Well 3 packages came up and one of them cpufreqd... (the middle one) gave a description of "meant to be a replacement for speedstep...". So far, since installing I haven't needed to Fn-F2 at all!!! I'm going to reboot and make sure it loads on boot and that it makes it through a clean boot.

I'll keep you updated.... oh and if you already knew this, sorry. I still need to get the power figured out, it burnt through my battery in 30mins... and try to lean down the OS.

edited out. Moved to new thread.

pikaia wrote:Ok. I just keep renaming the thread so I don't fill up the board with new ones.

Bad plan, IMO. You should start a new thread each time, with a correct title so someone looking for information in the future will have an easier time.

Good point.

I'll try to cut out this part and rename the thread what it was...

Thanks.