IBM R40 Banias to Dothan CPU upgrade

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malearock · #1 Post by **malearock** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 2:01 am

Hi Everyone,

I have an R40 with the original SL6F9 Banias 1.5 ghz processor.
I recently bought a Dothan 735 1.7 ghz.
Both are 478 pin and 400 mhz fsb so I thought that it would work however after switching them over, the laptop will not boot up at all so I am assumming it cant be done???

Then I looked at the bios changes made by Ibm over the years and noticed that they support the 1.7 ghz however it doesnt state which one.

Symptom corrected by version 1.14 - 1.14 (1PET46WW)

* (New) Intel(R) Pentium(R) M 1.7GHz CPU support.

Has anyone ever tried this, Im assuming the R40'S only support banias processors to the maximum of 1.7 ghz (SL6N5 1MB 400FSB)
and none of the Dothan processors.

Many thanks and greatly appreciated

#2 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:19 am

What's the Intel model number on the Dothan CPU? I don't see why an R40 couldn't run up to a 2.1GHz Dothan as long as it's 400MHz FSB. It's got to be the same system board as a T40 and they can do it. The new CPU could be defective.

malearock · #3 Post by **malearock** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:43 am

Thanks for your reply. I was thinking the same thing, it should do it
and possibily the cpu maybe faulty.

The intel number on the dothan is as follows

7435A660 SL7EP
RH80536 1700/2M

#4 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 5:11 am

I don't see any reason why that processor should not work, again unless it's defective. I once forgot to 'lock down' a CPU I was replacing in an R52

.

Terrahawk · #5 Post by **Terrahawk** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 3:51 pm

The R40 does not support the Dothan CPUs. Hardware-wise, it does support Dothan CPUs (it is pretty much the same as the T40 which will run Dothans) but the BIOS does not recognise the CPU ID and thus fails to boot. I have researched this previously for myself.

See:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=19688
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=41135
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=15345

I have a 1.7 GHz Banias CPU in my R40 and it works well.

#6 Post by **Harryc** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:13 pm

There you go...thanks Geoff for clearing that up.

Terrahawk · #7 Post by **Terrahawk** » Wed Nov 21, 2007 4:34 pm

You're welcome.

I still do have plans to attempt to hack the R40's BIOS to accept a Dothan... when I find the time to do so...

malearock · #8 Post by **malearock** » Thu Nov 22, 2007 5:26 am

Thanks so much for the advice and feedback.
Great forum

malearock · #9 Post by **malearock** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:21 am

I got a replacement cpu. Its the SL6N5 1700/1M. I have the latest IBM bios and embedded controller version installed.
It doesnt boot up to windows, all I get is the press the access ibm button to interupt normal startup and that does nothing also. The screen just stays blank.
It should work right? Everything has been covered properly this time so Im assuming its a bad/faulty cpu. I bought the cpu off ebay and the person posted it in an envelope with no electrostatic bag from America to Australia.
What do you think the problem could possibly be this time?
Many thanks

Terrahawk · #10 Post by **Terrahawk** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 1:54 am

It could well be a bad CPU.

The first SL6N5 CPU I got was bad and displayed the black screen of death, i.e. you turned the computer on and it didn't display anything. I had to buy another one before it worked. Your CPU got further than my first one did - you got to the IBM logo.

A couple of things I would try:
- check your hard drive is spinning up properly.
- if that is okay, put your old CPU back and see if things work then.

I have had the non-response from pressing Access IBM before on bootup, and that was because my hard drive wasn't pushed in correctly. Another thing you could try is booting from a Linux live CD and seeing if you can detect the hard drive from there. Someone else in the X series forums with an X20 had excessively long bootup times and that was because the partition table on the hard drive was corrupt.

Those steps will help you narrow down the possible causes of the failure to boot.

malearock · #11 Post by **malearock** » Thu Dec 06, 2007 4:06 am

My hard drive is working fine. When I try the SL6N5(1.7/1M), just the IBM logo comes up and then blank screen, no bootup.
When I put back the original SL6F9(1.5/1M), I get normal bootup to Windows XP Professional.

Would you safely assume the cpu is faulty/dead.
There is possibly nothing else you can do unless as you suggested, probably buy another one and try again.

Thanks again/greatly appreciated

Terrahawk · #12 Post by **Terrahawk** » Sat Dec 08, 2007 3:07 pm

I'd try again a few times. Maybe retry reseating and reapplying heatsink paste between the CPU and heatsink. I have vague memories of the same phenomenon on my R40 (turn it on and it displays the IBM logo then doesn't do much else) but it seemed to sort itself out.

There is one part I am a bit uncertain about - it is as to whether it sorted itself out, or if I decided to back up my data and reinstall Windows, because strangely enough one of the things I tried was popping in another hard drive and installing Windows on it.

I didn't think much about it because I thought I had caused the problem, not that it had anything to do with the hardware. However since I got it going, it has not skipped a beat.

IBM R40 Banias to Dothan CPU upgrade

IBM R40 Banias to Dothan CPU upgrade

Intel number

Regarding replacement for Ibm R40

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