T61/X61 SATA II 1.5 Gb/s cap - willing to pay for a solution

Hi everybody,
in last 2 days I've been trying to find any possible information on this topic. Quite a few I found on this web and also on the lenovo forums. However, it seems to me that this problem hasn't yet been solved.

And I think there are quite many T61/X61 which where the original HDDs are being swaped for SSDs. And therefore quite many of us unhappy T61/X61 customers who would even be willing to pay few $$ to someone being able to hack the BIOS to enable the SATA 300.

I'm sure I'm not the only one. If someone spends ~$800 on a fast SSD drive and cannot actually use it at full speed, I think everybody will bi willing to spend a bit more fore someone who will be able to unleash the full SSD potential on the T61/X61

If Lenovo is not willing to do this for us, we should find our own solution. And the one who makes it I'm sure he can make profit on that.

dubak

 

7-22-2010 PROBLEM SOLVED!! Patched R61/T61/X61 sata-II bios available here.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Just today I've posted a request on thinkpads.com for a hacked bios fix solution. All that is necessary is decompressing the bios, disassembly, altering the offending byte(s), repack and distribute to the enjoyment of users. T61p worthy of the time investment.

T61p bios hack for ICH8M SATA-II 3Gbps (+history), quoted below:

 

This is the way it's going to be. Despite my misgivings, I'm going to allow this thread to move forward, but as soon as this thread devolves into the merits of doing this or a discussion of Lenovo's decision to cap the T61 era machines, this will be closed. If you have anything to contribute to the subject, please feel to post. I would also add you're doing this at your own risk. If you brick your machine or void your warranty, you're on your own.

 

I think it can be done! Come on people!

 

There is a guy who made a BIOS modification that swaps the FN and CTRL button functions in the lenovo forums. Perhaps one of you could contact him to see if he can tackle your SATA2 cap problem.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T5...hinkPad-T400-T500-keyboard-SOLVED/td-p/199662

 

Mark's explanation sounds a lot more believable than what I thought was the "company line." I mean Lenovo capped it in order to save power.

That's a new wrinkle for all Thinkpad users, not just 61 generation users So my Thinkpad's original hard drive had the same (barely noticeable) cap. Oh well, at least I don't want to worry about that. The 7K200 has been relegated to my UltraBay.

Did Lenovo ever offer the T or X61 with a SSD as default? If so I guess they would have to have a firmware flash. I just doubt a 2007-08 era SSD (besides the original X-25M and Lenovo only used Samsungs back then) would saturate the SATA 1 speeds. Ok, the people who need this are also bringing their own SSDs to the party anyway

 

only as a CTO option (and a very expensive one at that )

 

Nando4,

The Mydigitallife forum has a quite active BIOS modding community. If I am not mistaken, there is a guy called Yen that is a skilled Thinkpad BIOS modder.

 

Would it be possible to ask him for us

 

Can't say I'm surprised. It would have had to have been the SLC Samsung

 

it was.

 

Deleted by Mod.

 

All items offered for sale here must be posted in the marketplace forum, be in compliance with the BST Rules and use the BST Form. If you want to sell this here, that's where you got to do it.

 

interesting.

here's what i'd want to see:
1: boot times with and without 150 Mbps cap
2: application launch times with and without 150 Mbps cap
3: internal file copy times with and without 150 Mbps cap

the goal is to prove outside of synthetic benchmarks that removing the cap makes a tangible difference.   do that before you go asking for money.   you may even need an independent tester to make sure you aren't altering the results.

my two cents.

 

Note: The name of this thread is "willing to pay for a solution". People wants to pay for 3,0 Gb/s BIOS mod - I just give them such an ability .

Anyway, I want everybody to know that I solved the problem and there is no SATA II speed limit on T61/X61 now.

 

seriously, congrats on "solving" it.   i'd still like to see definitive evidence that the lack of sequential speed limit makes a difference, just to put the arguments to rest once and for all.

 

Great that you've solved it. Obviously the T61p users would like a try-before-you buy system.

Can you donationware the bios fix like the 1810tray is here. I'm happy set the second post of this thread to support that method of distribution.

Based on the poll of this thread you should get at least 11 donations for your efforts.

 

I don't care if the title of the thread is abracadabra. If you want to sell something here, it must comply with the rules for selling item(s) here like everyone else. I was nice enough to lay them out for you. I would agree erik in that some proof would probably help sales, congratulations on your feat nonetheless.

 

Let me explain some things. I'm just a BIOS modder, and was asked many times to remove SATA speed limit on T61/X61. Now I've made it. Note that during two years nobody could make such a mod and from that point of view - I've "solved" the problem.

As for evidences of improved performance: there are SSD tests on T61/X61 and the same SSD's was tested on other machines which have no SATA speed limit. You can compare and make a reasonable conclusion.

I must say that you was the first person who had paid my attention on this issue. But unfortunately I didn't have time then.

If paypal would allow to receive money in my country I would simply place here two links (to BIOS and to my paypal account). But at the moment the only way for me to receive foreign donation is Western Union. I know it's not the best method but there is nothing else.

I agree with you: we have to test my mod. Maybe lenovo had very important reasons to set SATA II speed to 1,5 Gb/s limit, what if there were data losses on full SATA II speeds? I'm ready to provide my BIOS patch to the person with high-speed SSD drive provided he will not upload the patch to public servers.

ZaZ, please tell me what should I do. I should create a thread in the marketplace forum and make the further replies on this problem there?

 

Yes. I don't mean to come down hard on you. It is not a personal thing, but if we let one person do it, then it's a slippery slope if you catch my drift. Also you might want to post this on ThinkPads.com forum, where you'll have a larger audience of effected users.

 

I have already sent out alerts to the bios fix being available on the mydigitallife and thinkpads.com related threads pointing to middleton's post in this thread.

Perhaps middleton can just create a new thread in the marketplace detailing his offer and how to "buy it" and point traffic from his above post there?

 

Here is the link to marketplace forum:
http://forum.notebookreview.com/nbr-marketplace/501056-price-check-thinkpad-t61-x61-sata-ii-maximum-speed-bios-fix.html

Let's discuss my BIOS fix there.

 

i'm intelligent enough to figure that out.   the difference here is that you've potentially opened the door for an entirely new set of data.   to date, no one has been able to take the same chipset, same BIOS, and same system and test capped against uncapped performance.   comparing different systems creates a variable.   with your BIOS mod, everything is identical except the ATA throughput.

if you aren't willing to do capped vs. uncapped tests then that's understandable.   it would be a decent amount of labor.   all i'm saying is that i'd like to see real-world tests outside of synthetic benchmarks to prove or disprove that uncapping the 150 Mbps limitation actually makes a tangible difference.

i'm not discounting your efforts at all.   in fact, i commend you for what you've done.   i simply want to see someone prove once and for all that this is a big deal, that's all.

 

erik, I'm not willing to do capped vs. uncapped tests because I'm not an owner of T61 or X61 ThinkPad. I've not even seen any lenovo laptop in real life . I don't need a real laptops at hand to make BIOS mods for them.

 

how did you confirm your BIOS works with these systems and while using various accessories like docks, ultrabases, and various ultrabay drives including both PATA and SATA HDD adapters?

i agree that you may not need a physical laptop in-hand to modify a BIOS, calculate the checksum, and repackage it.   but, you do need one to test that the mods actually work under various scenarios.   i'm sure any potential users of your modded BIOSes would want some sort of assurance that what they're getting has been tested.

 

Maybe Lenovo should employ you, before HP and Dell snaps you up.

 

I'm going to debunk this thread pretty hardcore, and I'm going to do it with half math and half common sense. First, the math:

1.5Gbps is 1,500,000,000 bits per second.

Divide by eight (there's 8 bits for every 1 byte) and you get 187,500,000 bytes per second.

Divide by 1048576 (that's how many bytes are in one megabyte) and you get 178.814... So, roughly 179MBps.

Thus, if your SSD can sustain 179MB/sec then you might get some benefit out of this BIOS mod.

Second, the common sense: application and boot times aren't driven by raw sequential reads and writes. When your Windows OS takes 60 seconds to load from a spinning disk, what noise do you associate with this process? If your laptop (and disk indicator light) is like my aging Dell E1505 (and my home-brew desktop, and my wife's Dell Mini 10, and my office Optiplex 960, and my other office T500), then it's a whole big pile of ticking and 'crunching' noise from the disk.

All this noise is your read/write heads scurrying about the platters on the disk, grasping for the data strewn across the platters. The epic killer of boot and application load times from a disk IO perspective is not raw sequential reads (even if they DO help...). No, the killer is random seek times. Raw reads of 170mb/sec are only about 2.5x faster than a really good 7200RPM disk. But raw seek times of 0.1msec are about 60x faster than a really good 7200RPM disk.

If you've installed an SSD and are getting abysmal boot times, I'm having a hard time believing that it's your drive. Rather, I'd be pointing a finger at two other things: the northbridge of your chipset (which controls PCI interface lanes, which is where your SATA controller is connected) or the CPU itself.

Via testing with a few T400 and T500 models, it turns out that your CPU is the most epic bottleneck on a 'good' SSD. Just have a look at your task manager while the machine is booting, and you'll see it pegged out to 100% on both cores.

This isn't hard to figure out, folks. A little bit of research can go a long way...

 

I am very very tempted to test his (I have both Intel G2 and Vertex SSDs).

However, as this is an untested BIOS there is always the possibility that the laptop ends up being bricked.

Some questions.

1) What version of the T61 BIOS have you modified?

2) Have you modified any other Lenovo BIOS before and had users flash it without bricking their machines?

3) Have you modified any other Lenovo BIOS before which resulted in a bricked machine when users flashed their machines with it?

4) Have you ever done any WWAN whitelist mods for Lenovo BIOSes?

 

middleton, consider releasing the bios fix to some beta testers under NDA who can confirm:

1. it flashes providing a functional system
2. does provide performance benefits

I can't see users being so trusting as to otherwise part with their $$ with the possibility of bricking their box.

I'd also suggest pegging your cost to ~US$25 to anyone that wants the modded bios. That's what I've seen WWAN/wifi bios whitelist modders charge. And that's to do compression/decompression, patching, checksum as well as provide a recovery process in case the user flash goes bad.

We know for sure that sequential read/writes AND multithreaded 4kb read/writes on a Intel SSD or better will see performance benefit. Your bios mod could also raise the s/h profile of T61p/X61 systems as they are probably devalued because of their SATA-I performance.

 

i think 20 to 30 dollars is the psychological price barrier for most people for this sort of mod. If you price it at anything higher, you would generate less number of sales and total revenues. You are aiming for sales volume here.

 

I didn't plan to send my BIOS patch to the T61/X61 owners without testing. There always exist a brave person who agree to be the first tester of modded BIOS.

1) The latest official version from lenovo's web site.

2) Yes, I did many BIOS mods for lenovo machines. For example, FN-CTRL swap on all Lenovo laptops [SOLVED]. See also my posts here: lenovo community (my nick is the same there).

3) When I started my work on CTRL-FN BIOS patch, one tester bricked his machine with the first version of the mod. BUT:
- that guy was willing to risk.
- CTRL-FN swap is very very hard challenge to be done not having a real laptop for testing. SATA II 3.0 Gb/s patch is much simpler, we need to patch just two bytes.
Anyway there are no bricked machines since then. But you should know that BIOS flashing is a risky procedure and I am not responsible for possible bricking of your laptop.

4) I do it almost every day, not only for lenovo machines.

Provide me your email address.

jketzetera is ready to test the patch. I'm already tired of this story so I'm going to do the following:
If he proves that everything is OK I'll place here links to T61 and X61 modded BIOSes. People who want to donate should write me a private message. That's my final decision.

 

Sounds really good, I'd be happy to receive a functionable BIOS for my T61 and I will make a donation

Greetz,

XStoneX

 

I believe that the difference in performance for 1 & 2 above, between SATA I & II modes will be small for the following reasons:

Various SSD tests show very little difference between new and old SSD models in regards to OS boot times. Even compared to regular 7200rpm HDDs, SSDs do not show enormous gains in boot time.

The reason for this is said to be that the operating system spends a significant time during boot on hardware detection and initialization.

I also believe that the gains in application load times will be small, unless we are taking about humongous apps.

However, I do believe that the file copy times should show significant difference. I also believe that if you are working with very large data files (e.g. video editing) you should also notice significant improvements. Therefore, PCMARK should show significant difference between SATA I and SATA II.

However, only testing will tell ...

 

i would not recommend releasing this until the following are confirmed:
- function with T6x dock
- function with X6x ultrabase
- function with T6x using ultrabay PATA HDD adapter
- function with T6x using ultrabay SATA HDD adapter
- function with X6x using ultrabay PATA HDD adapter in ultrabase
- function with X6x using ultrabay SATA HDD adapter in ultrabase

testing simply for transfer speeds and not with the above hardware is irresponsible in my opinion.   even if jketzetera's system works in a standalone environment, you could wind up with users who brick their systems after adding various hardware -- which is exactly why the 150 Mbps limitation was employed in the first place.   you need to know if this works, not guess.

i'm all for your efforts here but please be responsible about it.   anything less and it makes you look like you're out for money and not the greater good.

 

You could just put a disclaimer, like the setfsb author does:

Early pioneers will provide confirmation of functionality and reliability which others can then base their decisions on. It's great that T61p/X61 users now have an option to enable 3Gbps SATA-II and see (likely) SSD/HDD performance improvement. Sequential read/writes on most SSDs and multithread 4kb read/writes on Sandforce/Intel/Marvell SSDs when set to AHCI mode will see improved performance.

 

I use this options (T61 Advanced Mini Dock & SATA HDD UltraBay adapter with 500GB Samsung HDD).

@ middleton: if you send me your "Beta-BIOS" I'll flash it, make some benchmarks and try to find out if everything rocks stable with these options. I'll send you a pm.

Greetz,

XStoneX

EDIT: I can't send private messages. How do I?

 

I've sent my BIOS fix to jketzetera. Let's wait for results.

Don't worry, I'm not going to brick T61/X61 machines. Links to modded BIOSes will be available with a list of tested configurations. If someone decides to try my patch on non-tested config, then he'll do it at his own risk.

jketzetera received the BIOS. I advise you to wait a little.
And as for private messages: you can't send PMs until you post 10 messages in this forum (I don't remember the exact number, you can find it in the forum rules).

 

Ah, thanks.

 

I have the BIOS. However, I will not be able to test it until late tonight. Will let you know if the machine made it as soon as I have tested it.

 

Any news? Can't await your answer...

 

I have now tested Middleton's patched BIOS and it worked!!!!

I flashed the BIOS of my "expendable" T61p (model type 6457-85M) in Windows XP. The flash update went without any problems and I put in my Windows 7 setup and booted it.

I opened the Intel Rapid Storage Technology Application and it was now showing Generation 2 instead of Generation 1 as the SATA transfer mode of my Intel G2 SSD.

I ran CrystalDiskMark and it confirmed what the Intel Application was saying. For the first time ever, thanks to Middleton's BIOS the SATA-I speed barrier has been broken on a T61p!!! (Please note that my G2 only has less than 3GB of total free space, which influences the benchmark negatively)

I will proceed with the comparative benchmarks but have to postpone them for a few days to some unfortunate and unforseen events.

However, many many kudos to Middleton who managed to pull of an awesome feat (even without having a Thinkpad himself). Also, many thanks to Nando4 who has been actively involved in trying to find a fix and who also did a lot of needed background research!

Now, if only one could combine a WWAN whitelist BIOS with the SATA-II patch, then my T61p QXGA Frankenpad would be the ultimate notebook (at least to me )

 

These are really great news. Seems, that everythings run fine and the benches are much better than before! If you want - and for sure with the agreement of middleton - I also try it in combination with my S-ATA Ultrabay Adapter in the T61 Dockingstation. If there are no problems with the compatibility of the Ultrabayadapter (with 500GB Samsung HDD), I think middleton could release the BIOS finally.

I am not able to receive PMs at the moment, my E-Mail is ....... (edited)

Greetz,

XStoneX

 

More testing is always better than less testing. However, while Lenovo might have had a legitimate reason for capping the speed to SATA-I, a coherent and valid explanation for this has never been given (at least not officially).

The official explanation given can only be categorized as either nonsensical or incomplete.

The full official statement from, Mark from Lenovo can be found at

Re: t61 does not operate at SATA-II speeds?! - Page 6 - lenovo community

Below is the relevant excerpt:

“All,

I've investigated this issues at length through engineering and have received the following explaination of SATA data rates available on the Santa Rosa ('61) and current Montevina based systems (T400/T500, W500, W700, etc)...

"For Santa Rosa-based systems, the Intel ICH8 supports a SATA bus speed of up to 3.0 Gb/s. Lenovo made a design decision to prioritize maintaining compatibility with Ultrabay disk drives, which are connected via a SATA-to-PATA conversion chip which could not handle a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed reliably. Therefore the system was standardized to 1.5 Gb/s.” “

So by reading the above we see that Lenovo states the following reason for capping the speed:

“…maintaining compatibility with Ultrabay disk drives, which are connected via a SATA-to-PATA conversion chip which could not handle a 3.0 Gb/s SATA bus speed reliably. “

Unfortunately, the above stated reason does not make any sense whatsoever for the following reason:

The Ultrabay in the 61-series Thinkpads is connected to the ICH8M PATA controller and not the SATA controller of the ICH8M chipset. Any device connected to the Ultrabay, be it a PATA HDD or a SATA HDD will communicate over the ICH8M PATA interface.

In order to use a HDD in a 61-series Thinkpad Ultrabay one needs to use an Ultrabay adapter. There are two different categories of Ultrabay adapters, one for PATA HDDs and one for SATA HDDs.

The Ultrabay adapter for the PATA HDDs is just a simple mechanical adapter, connecting the pins of the HDD PATA interface to the internal Ultrabay PATA interface.

However, the Ultrabay adapter for SATA HDDs contains a SATA-to-PATA bridge chip which is needed for SATA HDDs to be able to communicate over the Ultrabay PATA interface.

It is this bridge chip that Mark is referring to in his “explanation”. However, how the speed setting on the ICH8M SATA interface can have anything to do with the onboard SATA-to-PATA bridge chip in the Ultrabay adapter (that is connected via the ICH8M PATA interface) is beyond me and beyond anyone else as it simply does not make any sense.

In the thread in the Lenovo forums, myself and others asked Mark for a clarification on his official statement given the above but he never bothered to respond.

Given that Lenovo gave a nonsensical reason for capping the speed and never cared to elaborate when asked about it, my gut leans toward that this fix will work well. However, only testing will tell for sure.

 

Awesome! I knew it would work without any hiccups. Expect positive affect on the resale value of a T61p/X61.

It would seem Lenovo chose to limit the sata primary bay to function with the same HDDs the ultrabay would function with. This providing 'overall compatability' as supposedly the ultrabay adapter has incompatability issues with sata-II drives. Unusual claim by Lenovo given the same Marvell sata-to-pata bridge chip is shown working perfectly well here with a OCZ Vertex SSD and Scorpio Black HDD using the same ICH8M I/O PATA interface.

 

XStoneX

I've just sent the BIOS on your email.


jketzetera

The same story was with CTRL-FN swap. Lenovo made CTRL-FN BIOS switch only for new ThinkPads but not for the old ones. They unofficially explain this fact by hardware issues which don't allow to make CTRL-FN switch for old models.

As you know I managed to make CTRL-FN patch. After that I decided to compare my patch with the ThinkPad T510 BIOS (which has the official CTRL-FN switch). I was surprized when I saw absolutely the same code for keyboard handling therefore lenovo didn't change hardware in new ThinkPads - they still use Renesas Embedded Controllers based on Hitachi processors. Moreover: lenovo's keyboard handling code performs CTRL-FN switch just like I do in my patch. It's very funny.

So I think there are no hardware issues in these two cases (SATA II speed limit and CTRL-FN switch). It's only marketing. Lenovo forces users to buy new ThinkPad models.


nando4

I forgot to thank you for your researching. I had the complete picture of the problem after reading your posts. Your work significantly speeded up creating the SATA II patch.

 

Thank you, middleton.

I'll patch your BIOS in the next few minutes. I saw, that you wrote it for a 32-bit OS. Is there a problem patching it under Windows 7 64-Bit?

 

There is no BIOS update for T61/X61 which you can flash under 64-bit Windows (you can check this on lenovo's official site).
Lenovo recommends you the following: "If Windows Vista or 7 64-bit is already installed on your system, then you must use the bootable CD ISO format of this BIOS update".

Check you email. I sent you bootable CD-image in ISO format.
There is an alternative way: you can install 32-bit Windows on another partition of your hard drive.

 

Wow, finally a working solution to the issue! I haven't looked into this issue much since ZaZ closed down my thread and Lenovo tech support gave me nothing more than a "there is no issue".

Thanks nando4 and middleton for all of your work!

Middleton, I've PM'd you about possibly testing the beta BIOS on my T61. I have an X-25M G2 as the main drive and a 640GB Samsung hard drive in the Ultrabay. Please let me know if it would be possible for me to beta test the BIOS and post relevant performance results.

By the way, I am using Windows 7 x64, so I will require a CD-ISO version of the BIOS in order to test.

 

Congratulations to middleton & nando4, it's really done.

I flashed the BIOS via bootable CD (because I use Windows 7 64-bit), while flashing, there is no difference to the official BIOS versions so far. But afterwards my Windows 7 is booting about 4 seconds faster than before and the benchmarks tells me, that everything is fine

The Ultrabay HDD runs at S-ATA I like before, see the HDTune screenshot for details. But my Intel G2 160GB SSD runs like hell now!

I've tried several tests, put the T61 out of the docking, changed the HDD in the UltraBay with my internal DVD-Burner,... No problems here. Also the CPU usage while running the AS_SSD Bench is like before.

From my side you'll get green lights to make your great BIOS public. Now I'll make the first donation for your great work.

Greetz from Austria & big thx again,

XStoneX

EDIT: Pictures attached. Nr. 2 is the Benchmark before flashing the Mod-BIOS!

 

PM me your contact information. After you test the patch I'll put it in public access. I think three tests are quite enough.