A21m new owner, questions

[mrmcgowan]

Hello guys, ive owned several thinkpads in my life including a 600E , and a 240. I just recently purchased an a21m. I have a few questions about it however.

1. In the bios , the CPU does state its an 800mhz P3. But inside windows xp, it shows up as a 645mhz processor. WCPUID says the same thing .. anyone know whats up with that ?

2. It has 128 megs of ram, i looked under the expansion cover and i see that it can take 2 SODIMMS, can anyone tell me exactly what type of memory i need to upgrade this, and also possibly a good/cheap source ?

3. Are there any inherant problems with these machines? something i should be carefull about or aware of ?

Overall im very happy with it, it seams to be pretty responsive, and besides having 3 red and 1 green stuck pixel , it seams great.

Thanks in advance for your help guys.

David

[hausman]

1. In the bios , the CPU does state its an 800mhz P3. But inside windows xp, it shows up as a 645mhz processor. WCPUID says the same thing .. anyone know whats up with that ?

Consider yourself lucky. Here's what WinXP says about my A21p http://www.imagehosting.us/imagehosting ... g/?id=7470

The A20m processor uses Intel's SpeedStep technology http://support.intel.com/support/proces ... 007509.htm where 800MHz on AC slows to 650 MHz on battery in order to save power.

2. It has 128 megs of ram, i looked under the expansion cover and i see that it can take 2 SODIMMS, can anyone tell me exactly what type of memory i need to upgrade this, and also possibly a good/cheap source ?

PC100MHz SDRAM up to 2 x 256MB: http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... IGR-4NVU4N

You can find this relatively cheaply on eBay but beware that you can't generally use the faster PC133MHz SODIMMs in this system.

3. Are there any inherant problems with these machines? something i should be carefull about or aware of ?

Generally rock solid but see http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=1611 and http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=2178

[mrmcgowan]

Hey thanks for your informative reply, i noticed the only driver XP doesnt get correct is the ACPI stuff. and i noticed once you load that driver it seams to stay at 645mhz, no matter if your on battery or not. Ill look into it.
Thanks