New T60/X1400 owner, how do I hack it?

[nelson]

Lenovo just shipped me my new T60 today. 20 days from order to delivery, so far the machine looks great. I spent a long time looking for a good laptop with a gaming graphics card; the ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 is what sold me on the T60. So far so good.

I'm the kind of guy who likes to get into his system and tweak it, understand it. I'm running Windows XP. Is there a good Thinkpad FAQ for people like me? Questions I already have:

• How do I upgrade the ATI drivers? The Catalyst Mobility drivers refuse to install claiming they don't support it.
  How do I see the temperature, CPU speed, fan speed, etc?
  Is there a website that lists Ultrabay options? The Lenovo site is awful to navigate.
  Are the ThinkVantage apps actually any good? My previous experience with other company's installed software is very bad.
  It's too bad there's no S-Video output. Is there a good third party solution?

[cubensis]

Lenovo just shipped me my new T60 today. 20 days from order to delivery, so far the machine looks great. I spent a long time looking for a good laptop with a gaming graphics card; the ATI Mobility Radeon X1400 is what sold me on the T60. So far so good.

I'm the kind of guy who likes to get into his system and tweak it, understand it. I'm running Windows XP. Is there a good Thinkpad FAQ for people like me? Questions I already have:

• How do I upgrade the ATI drivers? The Catalyst Mobility drivers refuse to install claiming they don't support it.
  How do I see the temperature, CPU speed, fan speed, etc?
  Is there a website that lists Ultrabay options? The Lenovo site is awful to navigate.
  Are the ThinkVantage apps actually any good? My previous experience with other company's installed software is very bad.
  It's too bad there's no S-Video output. Is there a good third party solution?

Welcome fellow T60 owner, I just got mine yesterday.
Cant answer any of the previous questions except for the S-video out, you can get a PC card adaptor for that, there are also DVI pc card adaptors.

The ThinkVantage apps on my system seem to slow down boot time for me, but I guess the4y are needed for the fingerprint scanner.

And for the x1400 being "good" I am sure our systems won't play F.E.A.R.

[jjesusfreak01]

This ought to be fun...

First things first:
You can install desktop drivers (the newer versions too) by using a tool called DHModTool4c. You can get it from http://www.kirobyte.com/stuff/ATIMobility.rar

The Omega drivers install fine too. I cant verify that this works, but I heard that the Mobilty driver found at http://www.ati.com/online/mobilecatalyst/ will install on any machine.

On to #2, a utility called Speedfan should be able to accomplish this task, though on my system its readings are limited. CPU speed can be found with CPU-Z, a popular CPU info program. Speedfan is available at http://www.almico.com/sfdownload.php, and CPU-z from http://www.cpuid.com/cpuz.php

Dont know about #3, not my area of expertise (not that im an expert at any of this).

The Thinkvantage apps are better than most companies pre installed software. The Security app lets you use the fingerprint authentication for logon and webforms. The installer and update apps are essentially improved versions of the Windows update program. Rescue and Recovery lets you make system backups...etc. The programs are mostly worth keeping, but be wary of Access Connections. Some people have problems with it, and because it will likely come pre installed on your pc, I wouldnt mess with it, but because it didnt come pre installed on mine I stay far away (I installed it once and it took over, not letting me uninstall it without messing up the computer).

As cubensis says, there are adapters, though I would not try to use an Svideo adapter on the VGA port (this doesnt seem to work in any thread ive seen).

Now, what you want to know but were afraid to ask. Overclocking is definitely possible, see this thread. I played through a level of Battlefield 2 and the Call of Duty 2 demo today (and thats without overclocking). This system is not wussy, though I have to agree that it probably wont play FEAR (but im gonna try).

[nelson]

Thanks for the quick replies!

JJF, I appreciate the pointer to DHModTool4c but any idea what that voodoo does? Searching for that I found a tip that going to http://www.ati.com/online/mobilecatalyst/ gives you a full installer download that bypasses the system protection. Seems to have worked, games are ok. Anyone know if IBM actually adds any value to their ATI driver packaging that I've now missed out on?

Thanks also for the pointer to Speedfan. It seems to only report 3 temperatures and no fan speeds. Anyone have better luck? Is there a Thinkpad-specific utility that reports speeds and temps?

I found an answer of sorts to my question about UltraBay options: this page of T60 accessories lists about 150 things, but if you search for UltraBay you find there's a battery and three optical drive options. About what I expected, nice to know about the battery option.

PS: I didn't buy the laptop to play F.E.A.R.; I'm satisfied with World of Warcraft and Azeroth looks just fine I found this mobile graphics card comparison very helpful when shopping. End result was very few manufacturers made laptops that had a serious GPU and yet weren't 8 pound desktop replacements with only 30 minutes of battery life. I'm hoping this T60 is a good compromise.

[Badger]

Speedfan only sees three temperature readouts, at least on mine. Go to the ThinkPad Utilities section of the thinkpads forum and look for TPfancontrol -- it gives you readouts of everything.

[Liam_]

Hi Nelson,

I just recieved my brand new T60p today. To answer some of your questions:

I think the ThinkVantage software is very useful. It works flawlessy out-of-the box and makes life really easy. The fingerprint software is really fun to use. I liked most of the apps that came with it (preinstalled).

Gaming will be no probs. I just tested Oblivion on my T60p and it works fine, just like Call of Duty 2. I don't really play more games than that, and I know you have a different videocard (x1400 vs FireGL 5200) but then again, I think you can play most games without problems.

Good luck with it, and enjoy!!

[nelson]

Well, I may have spoken too soon on the success of installing the new video drivers. My system isn't recovering from various power managing states very well; corrupted video on wake from sleep, crashes after power management turns the screen off, etc. Does the stock Thinkpad have these problems too? I'm going to try to reinstall Lenovo's video drivers and see if that improves things.

[jjesusfreak01]

Well, I may have spoken too soon on the success of installing the new video drivers. My system isn't recovering from various power managing states very well; corrupted video on wake from sleep, crashes after power management turns the screen off, etc. Does the stock Thinkpad have these problems too? I'm going to try to reinstall Lenovo's video drivers and see if that improves things.

For the record, I have had no problems with either the desktop drivers or the Omega drivers.

If you want to try the modtool, ill give the brief instructions. You simply make sure the C:/Ati directory is deleted, then run the desktop installer. After it fails, open the ModTool program, click " Make Mobile", and then it restarts the installer (without the failure) and the drivers install (though windows will ask you to verify the unsigned driver, no problems though). Once its done, you have the latest desktop drivers, the Catalyst control center, but still Powerplay with all of the mobile settings.

Ive been running in this configuration for a long time now. It plays all of my games fine (currently BF2/1942, COD2 Demo, AOE3, FEAR Demo, and FarCry Demo). I would recommend it, though I will likely switch over to the Omega drivers when the newest ones are released (they are two versions back at the moment).

[nelson]

After rolling back my video drivers to what Lenovo installed on my machine I can sleep and resume just fine again. The rollback wasn't easy; I had to uninstall the ATI drivers by hand, reboot, then use the "ThinkVantage Software Installer" to install a driver from some mysterious place on my hard drive (version 8.204-051220a1-031127C-Lenovo). Lenovo has some older drivers for download (79d141ww.exe) that I didn't try.

JJF, how different are ATI's desktop drivers from the mobile drivers? The mobile drivers I tried definitely were causing problems. With your desktop drivers can you put the laptop to sleep in the middle of a game, resume, and have the system come back fully working?

I may have overstated my need to hack. Right now the Lenovo video drivers are close enough to ATI's latest that I don't feel a big need to upgrade. I guess I'll see how good Lenovo is about issuing updates...

One other loose thread: I'm in contact with the SpeedFan author to help him add more Thinkpad support.

[jjesusfreak01]

JJF, how different are ATI's desktop drivers from the mobile drivers? The mobile drivers I tried definitely were causing problems. With your desktop drivers can you put the laptop to sleep in the middle of a game, resume, and have the system come back fully working?

Hmm, ive never tried that. I suppose it would pose some problems normal standby doesnt. The desktop drivers are a little different in that they have a VPU recover option (restarts the graphics driver if it crashes), and they are supposed to be better for gaming. The Catalyst interface is almost exactly the same otherwise, and has all of the mobility options like Powerplay. It doesnt really feel much different in use, though you are using the newest drivers, rather than the older Lenovo ones.

[nelson]

Sorry JJF, I wasn't clear. By "sleep" I mean "standby" (not Hibernate). What you get by default when you shut the lid. I'm curious to hear if the ATI desktop drivers support resuming from sleep fully; that was the problem the mobile drivers I installed had.

[jjesusfreak01]

Sorry JJF, I wasn't clear. By "sleep" I mean "standby" (not Hibernate). What you get by default when you shut the lid. I'm curious to hear if the ATI desktop drivers support resuming from sleep fully; that was the problem the mobile drivers I installed had.

Right, I wasnt being clear. By normal standby I meant from Windows without a game started. Well, BF2 doesnt work, but only because it keeps an online connection to the account server, therefore you get knocked off when you enter standby. It didnt lockup the system though.