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

Yeah, I'd also be happy to make a donation to Middleton for giving my T61 a new lease of life.

 

Thanks for the help. I did the BIOS upgrade and now have Sata 2 that I wanted for a new Seagate Momentus XT hybrid storage drive.

I do have some problems though.

Since updating the bios my hotkeys are not working properly. Apears to effect some of the drivers.


Do I need to reinstall Windows 7 with the new BIOS?

 

SATA III mod is *NOT* possible. This is SATA II mod, btw.
BIOS is OS independent, you don't need to reinstall it.

 

I've updated all BIOS packages to solve this issue. Now flashing CTRL-FN swap (using ISO CD-image) should be correct. Read "READ_ME!!!.txt" inside the package for further instructions.

To all who need dual-IDA support: You can now test a beta BIOS.

 

That is what I meant. Thanks for the correction.

I went ahead and did another clean install. I want to make sure I get this right.

I'm going to follow Lenovo's guide lines for doing clean install.

Lenovo Support - Windows 7 Clean Installation - ThinkPad

I'm going to use the ThinkVantage System Update 4.0. method which Lenovo says is the most simple to do.

 

xmas has come earlier for these Lenovo system owners: a dual-IDA overclock will provide an extra multiplier gaining you 200Mhz extra CPU performance. More details here.

 

Thanks for this. Just tested the dual-IDA on my X61 Tablet.

Prior to flash, I spent some time in CPUZ with different loads to see how it was behaving, and my 1.6 L7500 was stuck on 1.6 with 800Mhz FSB. ThrottleStop (TS) was similar, and EIST was pre-selected and grayed out, as expected.

I then:
-flashed BIOS (wet fine)
-disabled EIST in BIOS
-ran CPUZ and noticed multiplier locked at 6 (versus normal 8)
-ran TS, created config, added the dual-IDA config entry, restarted

After this:
-noticed TS has EIST un-checked, and greyed out (i found that odd)
-set TS "Turn On", noticed TS still has EIST un-checked, and greyed
-setting multiplier to 9 (turned TS Off and On a bunch of times)
-CPUZ and TS both still reporting multiplier 6

So then I:
-restarted
-re-enabled EIST in BIOS
-ran CPUZ and noticed multiplier ranging between 8 and 9. (it wasn't doing this before...ever..it never exceed 8)
-watched the multipler in CPUZ a bunch of time while loading macine with variety of tasks, P95

I would say, given the dependancy for the enabled EIST checkmark in TS, that I either did something wrong / out of sequence, or TS is not recognizing what I did to my X61 Tablet.

But I would also say that I have never before seen my multipler reach 9, and now it appears to do it on demand. This is both with and without TS running. I cannot conclusively say whether both cores were running in these informal tests, which is the point.

For me, this is an improvement. Probably not a great as the SATAII and whitelist (I am enjoying both), but I will leave it.

Thanks for all your work.

 

If you right-click in TS white-space, is there a "Start dual-IDA" option? All that does is uncheck EIST with the highest multiplier set. dual-IDA won't oscillate when setup correctly. It would be fixed 200x9 on your L7500. EIST must be available to be checked/unchecked in TS. That can only occur if the EIST-lock bit hasn't been set by the BIOS which is the whole idea of a dual-IDA modded bios.

Sounds like you are running single-IDA which would have been available prior to flashing this bios. Can confirm single-IDA operation by running something like wprime32 with 2 threads active which would see both cores running at 200x8. In which case perhaps provide feedback to middleton about this condition?

 

mike5065 and nando4, I've just found why EIST option is greyed in ThrottleStop.
It's always useful not to turn off your brain when you use any guide (even perfect one). kizwan haven't described the code pattern which I met in ThinkPad BIOS.

Guys, please don't install the current versions of dual-IDA BIOS - it's useless, they simply won't let you activate dual-IDA support. I'll inform you when fixed versions are available.

 

If all the dual-IDA bios require a revision then have you considered replace the dual-IDA bios links here with TBA?

 

TS "Options"... "Start Dual IDA" and "Profile 1" are both greyed out, and de-delected, when EIST is On or Off in BIOS. The TS EIST behaves like I described prior. I agree with your suggestion, and my best guess is I was running in single IDA. P95 had 2 workers, and CPU was 1.6. WPrime was difficult for me to interpret, so I didn't use it.

middleton, if you want me to test, PM me or something...happy to help.

 

No need: I've already fixed the problem.

You can test the fixed version.

To dual-IDA testers: all BIOS packages have been updated. I hope dual-IDA will work correctly this time.

 

My test of this version shows it's fixed, and works as expected. The Option for Dual IDA can be enabled (I also had to enable Profile 1). My L7500 locks at multiplier 9 during P95 and WPrime, both cores testing, when I manually set the multiplier.

Thanks very much.

 

thank you for your hard work on our BIOSes

I'll test this BIOS soon on my T61 (going to some party right now )

 

Good info to then feedback to Kizwan so can revise his document here with the Lenovo EIST-locked pattern to look for. Might even be the same for the Montevina X/R/T/W Thinkpad series. Those SU9xxx/SL9xxx owner's would surely like the extra multiplier they'd get with a dual-IDA bios.

 

Edit：got the bios file, mediafire is working now.

 

tested on my T61

http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/566213-first-lenovo-t61-running-dial-ida-would-mine.html

the BIOS updated its first part only, then I restarted (as asked by the software) and my windows got stuck on the restart. Then it restarted itself again and ran fine under "start windows normally".

I expected the second part to flash as well, but it didn't. I'm not sure if that's for the embedded controller, but as far as I remember the first part has 21 blocks, and the second part after the restart has 2 blocks to flash.

either way, seems to work fine

 

So what we have at the moment:

X61 Tablet dual-IDA BIOS - 1 feedback (19 downloads).
T61 dual-IDA BIOS - 1 feedback (66 downloads).
All other ThinkPads - 0 feedbacks (48 downloads).

Usually people don't send messages on a forum when everything is OK. But it's not so in case of problems. Since we have no messages about issues, I've decided to mark all dual-IDA BIOS'es as tested.

nando4, I want to leave only one BIOS version for each ThinkPad. Is there any side effects from unlocked EIST bit? What if dual-IDA version will be the only available version for download (even for those who don't need dual-IDA)?

 

There are no side-effects. If the user isn't using Throttlestop to start dual-IDA then the system will run exactly like it did prior to using the dual-IDA bios.

You can go ahead and just have the single modded bios which is 'dual-IDA capable'.

 

I would suggest giving it some time to see if anybody finds some side effect before removing the links without Dual IDA.

Like a month maybe...

 

I'm not planning to remove the links to stable versions right now. Want to do it at the end of this month to exclude for sure any possible issues with dual-IDA BIOS.

 

I've just flashed (by CD) this new revision on my R61i (8918) and everything seems to be working perfect! Thermal hack works, SATA II hack works and I'm in process of testing dual-IDA (trying to figure out how to force Linux to run @ 2.3Ghz - any ideas?).

Thanks middleton, another time you did great job for us!

 

Actually my contribution to the patch is not so big, see acknowledgments here. I simply combined my own mods and ThinkPad BIOS patches made by other people into one so-called "Ultimate" BIOS.

And you don't even suspect what a great role nando4 played in this story. if not for him, I wouldn't even know about the existence of T61/X61/R61/X300 SATA II cap. Also it was his idea to add dual-IDA support.

 

. The balance has been shifted. These Lenovo users are now getting more than you paid for courtesty of middleton's ingeniusity.

T61 users could go one step further. Consider then a [email protected], [email protected], [email protected] and [email protected] by running a dual-IDA 200->266Mhz FSLx PLL pinmod below.

Lenovo/IBM T61 FSLx PLL pinmod


Left: ICS954309 datasheet details
Right: T61 schematic PLL pinout details

The ICS954309 PLL's datasheet does not show any software programmable configuration registers. Though the T61 circuit does label PIN59 as TME. So conflicting info on whether the PLL is software programmable or not. If technically clued up could TME-unlock the PLL and experiment with PLL registers to program it. Could be a bit of mucking around.

Might be simpler to just do a 200->266Mhz FSLx PLL pinmod instead by:

1. Flash RAM to to 6-6-6-18 400Mhz spec as a 266Mhz BCLK would mean RAM would be overclocked from 333->444Mhz as shown here

2. Do a CPU overvolt such as Vss+VID4 shown here OR do a 10-20% voltage increase by modding the volt regulator circuit in a similar way to that described here.

3. Ensure the PLL samples a GND(0) on the FSB pin 7 to get 200->266Mhz on bootup. That may mean cutting the track leading from the PLL pin7 from the rest of the circuit and routing PIN7 to GND signal via a 10k resistor OR using a strong pull down of 100-1k to GND.

Worth trying since a T9300 has been successfully overclocked to 3.6Ghz in http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...pll-pinmod-overclocking-methods-examples.html . Such an overclock would get you i5 performance levels. Not bad for 2-gens older tech.

 

Don't be so modest
Even putting everything into one cost some effort.

Big thanks for nando4 too

Seems to be too hardcore for me - I don't have soldering skills/hardware...
Anyway, thanks for looking for more and more ways to improve our machines!


Now, 1 question remains unanswered - is there any way to run dual-IDA under Linux?

 

It seems nando4 knows how to do it under Linux - Appendix 1: Overclocking in Linux.

 

Thanks for this great post. I'm willing to flash my x61s bios. While downloading the files

SATA-II_Whitelist_SLIC21_ThinkPad_X61_X61s_BIOS_%282.21-1.03%29.rar

and

Dual-IDA_SATA-II_Whitelist_SLIC21_ThinkPad_X61_X61s_BIOS_%282.21-1.03%29.rar

junkie-1 virus was detected in both files . Anyone else detected this?. It would be posible to have these files signed or at least the md5 sum?.

Thanks.

 

Use VirusTotal - Free Online Virus, Malware and URL Scanner to check the patches. For example, Dual-IDA_SATA-II_Whitelist_SLIC21_ThinkPad_X61_X61s_BIOS_(2.21-1.03).rar:

Antivirus results:

AhnLab-V3 - 2011.04.07.01 - 2011.04.07 - -
AntiVir - 7.11.5.254 - 2011.04.07 - -
Antiy-AVL - 2.0.3.7 - 2011.04.06 - -
Avast - 4.8.1351.0 - 2011.04.06 - -
Avast5 - 5.0.677.0 - 2011.04.01 - -
AVG - 10.0.0.1190 - 2011.04.06 - -
BitDefender - 7.2 - 2011.04.07 - -
CAT-QuickHeal - 11.00 - 2011.04.07 - -
ClamAV - 0.97.0.0 - 2011.04.07 - DOS.Junkie-1
Commtouch - 5.2.11.5 - 2011.04.06 - -
Comodo - 8254 - 2011.04.07 - -
DrWeb - 5.0.2.03300 - 2011.04.07 - -
eSafe - 7.0.17.0 - 2011.04.04 - -
eTrust-Vet - 36.1.8258 - 2011.04.07 - -
F-Prot - 4.6.2.117 - 2011.04.07 - -
F-Secure - 9.0.16440.0 - 2011.04.07 - -
Fortinet - 4.2.254.0 - 2011.04.07 - -
GData - 22 - 2011.04.07 - -
Ikarus - T3.1.1.103.0 - 2011.04.07 - -
Jiangmin - 13.0.900 - 2011.04.07 - -
K7AntiVirus - 9.96.4320 - 2011.04.07 - -
Kaspersky - 7.0.0.125 - 2011.04.07 - -
McAfee - 5.400.0.1158 - 2011.04.07 - -
McAfee-GW-Edition - 2010.1C - 2011.04.07 - -
Microsoft - 1.6702 - 2011.04.07 - -
NOD32 - 6022 - 2011.04.07 - -
Norman - 6.07.07 - 2011.04.06 - -
Panda - 10.0.3.5 - 2011.04.06 - -
PCTools - 7.0.3.5 - 2011.04.07 - -
Prevx - 3.0 - 2011.04.07 - -
Rising - 23.52.03.06 - 2011.04.07 - -
Sophos - 4.64.0 - 2011.04.07 - -
SUPERAntiSpyware - 4.40.0.1006 - 2011.04.06 - -
Symantec - 20101.3.2.89 - 2011.04.07 - -
TheHacker - 6.7.0.1.168 - 2011.04.07 - -
TrendMicro - 9.200.0.1012 - 2011.04.07 - -
TrendMicro-HouseCall - 9.200.0.1012 - 2011.04.07 - -
VBA32 - 3.12.14.3 - 2011.04.06 - -
VIPRE - 8946 - 2011.04.07 - -
ViRobot - 2011.4.7.4398 - 2011.04.07 - -
VirusBuster - 13.6.291.0 - 2011.04.06 - -

File info:
MD5: b3728370eb3953d545d9191bfc2be459
SHA1: 1ebe122f7719b0387c2247becb63a59bab8b0a98
SHA256: be4c4d44f56e587bcccd66d32486dd9ba9b2d5da91edca3bbf5271521462053a
File size: 11238938 bytes
Scan date: 2011-04-07 12:13:16 (UTC)


I think it's a false alarm from ClamAV. This antivirus suspects ISO CD Images.
Download the official ISO BIOS update from lenovo and ClamAV will find "DOS.Junkie-1" in it .

 

I did not know that ClamAV was so picky.

Thanks again for your great work middleton!.

 

Hello,
I was attracted to this forum by this thread about SATA2 for T61/X61.
My laptop is a T61p 6460 with Win7 x64 and I tried the modified BIOS "2.27-1.08" from page 8. After burning the CD and rebooting it showed "Check failed. Return code = 1"
I tried two different burning softwares (Nero 8 & the recommended ImgBurn).
Then I tried an official Lenovo.iso, which booted correctly and succesfully upgraded my BIOS to 2.26. (I know this isn't the newest one.)
I would appreciate it if anyone could help me.
Furthermore, could anyone tell me, how to donate money to middleton, when this works?

Thanks for your help!

 

According to lenovo "return code = 1" means the following:

1 Flash Over LAN is disabled in client's BIOS setup.

Enable this setting in BIOS setup (Config -> Network section -> Enable Flash on LAN) and try again.

"how to donate money to middleton, when this works?" - At the moment nohow.

 

that did the job! Thanks!

 

Dual-IDA success on Windows XP on X61S with Throttle Stop and the new dual-ida bios. Just to let you know. Thanks.

 

middleton, can you change the voltage table of the NVS 140M GPU BIOS ? I want to underclock the GPU a bit.

 

use RivaTuner to change clocks on the GPU.

 

Thank you for information.

I have very little experience in NVidia Video BIOS modding and can't help you.

 

I flashed my Notebook (R61i 8918) with the non IDA Firmware (mostly to get rid of the thermal warning after installing a T8100)

I also have a Vertex2 installed, and something strange happened:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : Crystal Dew World
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 220.197 MB/s
Sequential Write : 58.580 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 0.000 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 0.000 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 0.000 MB/s [ 0.0 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 0.000 MB/s [ 0.0 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 80.487 MB/s [ 19650.2 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 58.246 MB/s [ 14220.2 IOPS]

Test : 1000 MB [C: 44.7% (47.9/107.0 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/04/13 4:48:08
OS : Windows 7 SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

These are my Benchmarks WITH the modded Bios.

Beofre i had 135MB sequential read and 115 sequential write. Random Read and Random Write were both 3MB/s higher.

Has anyone an idea where this drop in write performance might come from? Between those two tests was the installation of two or three small tool, not much changed in the used harddisc.

 

middleton's Ultimate BIOS is now giving you SATA-II link performance. Your issue is with the Vertex 2's SF1222 controller. When it detects a lot of non-compressible data written to it by CrystalDiskmark, it pulls back write performance to improve longevity of the SSD. Unfortunately it appears to maintain that slower state.

The solution is to restore write performance is to do a secure-erase then avoid CrystalDiskMark benchmarking. I use Linux' hdparm to do the secure-erase. It requires hotplugging the SSD on a SATA link to unfreeze it.

 

Do i understand you correctly that i have to secure ERASE my brandnew SSD where i installed all my stuff during the last 4 hours and then REINSTALL everything again for 4+h just because of a Benchmarktool and a obviously buggy firmware of an SSD?

And there is NO Option to just send the SSD back into "normal mode? o.0

 

or you could clone your SSD to some HDD, do whatever needed as per your SSD, and then clone back your stuff.

for that kind of issues I'd go look into the SSD forum section. You may get some good advices

 

And then i should run into the same problem again, my SSD is filled for nearly 60%, so when i play the image back it should directly run into this "life saver wall" again
And as a added feature i would need my CD drive to run an imaging programm but my second HDD is installed in an Ultrabay, just to make this a bit more interesting

Yeah i will do that, it seems this technology is less matured then i thought.

 

I'm new on this forum - so hello all.

I have problem. I flashed my R61i ( C2D T8300 installed ) with Dual-IDA BIOS - with inserted battery processor multiplier is maximum 12 to 13 - it's ok. But when I remove accu then multiplier falling down to max 6. I tried different options related to processor or power in BIOS and PM in Windows 7 - but always the same. Someone help me ? Sorry for my poor english

--- After 2 days
BIOS is ok - I found info about speedstep and accu - accu must be inserted in to speedstep worked fine.

 

Having trouble getting dual-IDA to workw ith a T61p.

CPU:T7700

Installed newest firmware yesterday.
Turned off Speedstep in BIOS.
Booted into Win7 64bit and was at 6x.
Turning on ThrottleStop took me to my normal 12x, where 13x is dualIDA.

Tried checking Start DualIDA and Profile1 in options.
Tried adding dualida=1 to config file.
Tried right-clicking whitespace and choosing start dualida.
Tried Set Multiplier 13x
Tried turning EIST on/off or switching to other profiles and back.
Tried putting a load on the CPU.

In some situations when I check EIST, it immediately unchecks it for me. Still at 12x though.

Any other suggestions? Do I need a Penryn processor to support it and this was just a waste of time?

 

OK - good start is when EIST is no longer greyed out. That means EIST is unlocked by the modded bios.

Now ensure you're power profile's cpu min percent is set to 100%. Throttlestop should have the multiplier set to x13. Set "dual-IDA on start",. Save your profile. EIST will be unchecked when you run dual-IDA.

If still no go, then post hwinfo32 CPU screenshot like this to confirm your CPU isn't a non-standard one, eg: ES sample. A production T7700 supports a 2.6Ghz IDA speed.

 

why do you turn speedstep off in BIOS ?

 

Thanks for the help.

My profile's min CPU was set to 100%.



Seems to be a standard processor.

One odd thing is that I swear RMClock showed IDA in my list of options before and now it doesn't. At some point between flashing the BIOS and now, the option disappeared.
*edit - Turning speedstep off in BIOS makes IDA disappear for RMClock. Probably isn't a concern.

 

Just registered to say there is new 2.22 BIOS for X61. Will there be update of the cracked bios? If so there will be a lot of thanks

 

Quote from the official summary of changes:

"Version 2.22
BIOS: 2.22 / ECP: 1.03
(Fix) Fixed an issue where OS boot with Tivoli OS from USM memoru key might fail."

I think this change is hardly worth updating the patch.

 

I've been looking at SSD's for the X61, and, it's great that you've fixed the speed issue. But I was looking at how much an X25-m costs and thinking that I might be able to use one of the mini PCIe SSD drives as a boot disk in the spare mini-PCIe and spin down the main disk when I'm not using it. It would be cheaper and probably save energy.

Nobody has solved this problem, so far as I can tell. The two issues are that the bios won't recognize any of the drives and probably wouldn't boot off of it even if it did.

Any thoughts on the feasability of adding this to the modded bios? I suppose if I spend enough time researching this issue, the X25 will come down in price

 

A mSATA slot is electrically different to a mPCIe slot even though they look the same. It's only the really new systems that accomodate mSATA SSDs: X220/Tx20s. So a bios mod will not help here.

Saying that, a SSD vendor may consider putting a pcie-to-sata bridge on their mSATA SSDs. In which case it could be used as a a super-fast data drive once Win7 loads and the bridge drives are loaded. It would pretty much have the same usability as the expresscard SSDs that are available.