Thinkpads Forum

First post here. I have been reading allot of topics here on and off over the years. I have had a 600x I rebuilt about 4 years ago. I just took it out and decided to get it going again.

Its a 2645-4eu that started as a 500mhz. I wanted to speed it up a bit so I got ahold of a 850mhz mmc2 cpu. I understand this is the fastest that intel made.

I did allot of reading and wasn't sure if it would even work in my non speedstep 600x. So I take apart the laptop and installed it... It didn't get past POST with it.

I tried a bios update to the newest one from IBM website, and reinstalled it. Success!

Its working properly at 850mhz!

Since its not a speedstep motherboard if I turn the laptop on without the power supply connected, it will only run at 700mhz. It won't switch back to 850 after its powered on at 700mhz.

However if I power it up with the AC connected, it will power up at 850mhz and stay locked in at 850.

It was very worth it! the extra 350mhz really make a big difference in XP!

A few notes I learned...

- Make sure you have the newest bios installed
- Change the XP processor driver to "intel pentium" not the default one it uses
- Take off the stock heatpad from the heatsink and used arctic silver thermal compound

If you want to find an 850mhz mmc2, look on ebay for the 5000e dell laptop. They used them and are not too hard to find. This is where I got mine. The 5000e I robbed of the 850 is going back on ebay with a 500mhz in it now

Congratulations!

I had a 600X and it also had a 500mhz processor that was a tad bit too slow for me. I read threads here on the forum about the processor switch and due to financial reasons had to give it up. I really liked the build on that model as it felt very sturdy!
Thanks for sharing!

emeraldgirl08 wrote:Congratulations!

I had a 600X and it also had a 500mhz processor that was a tad bit too slow for me. I read threads here on the forum about the processor switch and due to financial reasons had to give it up.

Psh... your 600X isn't *that* slow. If anything, it was the disk that was holding it back. I've got an SSD in it now and it's actually quite usable! It's a great little machine.

ThinkRob wrote:
Psh... your 600X isn't *that* slow. If anything, it was the disk that was holding it back. I've got an SSD in it now and it's actually quite usable! It's a great little machine.

You put an SSD in the 600X Rob?!

Pretty nifty

emeraldgirl08 wrote: You put an SSD in the 600X Rob?!

Sure did. I got a good deal on a couple of old SiliconDrive SSDs (made by Silicon Systems, which later got swallowed up by WD). They're 8 GB PATA drives with SLC flash, so they're quite durable if a little small. Then again, Debian can fit on some pretty resource-constrained systems...