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

Dear middleton,

Thank for your great work, I donated you 1 year ago.

I flash the 2.22-1.03 for my X61 7673-DQ6, generally it runs well, but the vista freeze(*) and I need to re power-up my X61.

Does it happen to anyone here?

(*)

Today, it hang( can not move, no captial Lock light on-off ) more than 5 times on my X61 7673-DQ6, it usually happens randomly when

1. I clicked on a hyperlink( web page ). or
2. I am browsng a webpage and/or scrolling a webpage

If it hangs or freezes, I have no idea but reboot by power-off.

My environment is: Windows Vista Home 32, IE7

Please help, and tries to update the bios, thank you so much.


Regards,
Fu-Chia Lin, from Taiwan.

 

Got BSOD trying to start Chrome & Opera together (i.e. disk intensive). Was using the modified 1.24. I'm flashing back to the stock 1.25 bios. Also having problems installing Linux from USB. It was basically trying to communicate with the X25-m and hanging. So, I'll update you on whether the modified bios was the problem when I get a chance tomorrow.

 

I wish you hadn't told me that. I am totally satisfied with the current performance, but now I will probably spend several hours tweaking my OCZ drive to try to optimize it...

 

Try to flash versions 2.21-1.03 from the page 8 (with and without dual-IDA). Does your problem persist?

Will wait your information.

 

I will keep 2.22-1.03 for a while, to keep testing the stability. And my system is different from yesterday.

Today: Vista Home 32bit, IE8, thinkpad wireless abg (my x61 original)...
Yesterday: Vista Home 32bit, IE7, Intel Wimax 6250 (with FRU)...

To check if there are any errors (randomly!!) like yesterday:

1. I clicked on a hyperlink( web page ). or
2. I am browsng a webpage and/or scrolling a webpage or even worse
3. No reason no touch but down, freeze

If it hangs or freezes, I have no idea but reboot by power-off.

 

No problem w/ bios. The 1.24 hack on the X61t is working fine. There are a number of problems installing linux, apparently, none of which involve the new bios.

 

Hi guys, need help to flash my T61 bios. I down load the new bios on page 8 and write to cd. Restart my T61, at the Thinkpad logo hit the F12 button and select cd start up but instead of auto flashing, Windows XP starts. (I already enable the lan at configaration) Pls help, I wonder what I did wrong. Thanks

 

Hello,
flashed the 2.29 modified BIOS on a T61P .

OCZ Vertex2 Sequential Read went from 127.8 MB/s before the update to 211.1 MB/s after the update. That's ~65% more.
Before:

After:


I have a 7200 drive in ultrabay, and so far everything works ok, with one comment: after the update HD Tune PRO gives an I/O error while trying to do a benchmark on the 7200 Drive in ultrabay.
Before the update this did not happen. I'm guessing this is the reason they blocked the SATA to SATA1.
I do want to mention that i've tried to copy large files (GB) to/from the HDD, and all my tests went without any error. I'll try to see if I can get the error in a real-life situation.

Maybe a good backup strategy would not be such a bad ideea

 

that's what they said the reason was for SATA1 in the first place. Good to know its somewhat valid though.

in BIOS there's this option of setting the CD-ROM speed to "High","Normal", and something else. Try to see if you can play with that while you're with the HDD in the ultrabay instead of the CD-ROM.

also, most likely you did not get any errors because the speed of the HDD that is in the utrabay is well within SATA1 limits. Maybe put an SSD there and that could become a problem.

 

I use this on my x61 and my x300 both fine. The only issue I have is on my x300 is if I unplug from power sometimes it locks up and I have to hard power it. I'm not sure if this SSD related or this bios related but its like 1 out of 15 that it happens so not something I really want to invest time in fixing.

ym

 

I might have to rain on the parade here...

I was adventurous and installed the modded BIOS enabling the Dual-IDA support on a x300 earlier this week (Tuesday night) and by late Friday night the laptop was nearly unresponsive.

The x300 was using a fresh Win7/64 install on a 256GB Crucial C300. I had constant BSODs when browsing online (mostly IE9) and on the reboots it would hang at the bios displaying this message:

By Saturday morning the BIOS message had changed to displaying

I can't seem to find any information explaining the different levels (1) vs (2) so I can't say if one is worse han the other.

I can confirm the Linux support is somehow broken with this BIOS because I tried to boot with an Ubuntu install disk and with PartedMagic 6.1, both froze after the InitRamFS loading sequence.

The Crucial c300 SSD seems dead (I have tried attaching it to my Win7/64 desktop and it does not get recognized any more than a few seconds before dissapearing, and does the same vanishing act if I boot the desktop with PartedMagic while connecting the C300 by USB).

I welcome anyone's advice at this point...

 

Just to add to my previous post, I have flashed the x300 with many of the previous BIOS releases without any difference.

I was hoping that by flashing an earlier BIOS, the SATA controller would be flashed to its original state, but that seems to not be the case. I have since flashed the stock Lenovo 1.10 release and noticed no improvement.

I remember reading somewhere (I can't find the link to where I read it) that particular changes (fixes, additions, etc) to the BIOS are sometimes kept as only certain blocks are overwritten, while others are left untouched. I could be wrong though. With that in mind, would it be possible to prepare a BIOS that completely undoes the mod and restores this BIOS to a "vanilla" pre-modded state?

I'm not sure what to do at this point...

Ideas anyone?

 

ok, update: the I/O error was because HDTune Pro selected the 100 MB boot partition.
Benchmarking the other 7200 ultrabay HDD completed without any errors. I'm still looking for other errors...

 

Hi guys, can someone help. I need to know how to flash my T61 old bios with this new bios. Thanks

 

cat I hate to hear you pain. I have the same setup and mine is running like a champ. I would email that drive just sounds like its bad nothing else. did anything work after flashed it? did you flash under win7 or XP? thanks. I actually went back and flashed via old hard drive under XP.

ym

 

I have since put the stock Samsung 64GB SSD back in so far it seems to be back to normal.

I will contact Crucial for an RMA and hopefully they will replace the C300 from a fresh batch with the latest firmware. I'll post back once I get the replacement and update my posts to whether my trouble was strictly due to the Crucial SSD and not the modded BIOS.

 

Hello, I'm having problem on flashing my battery-less T61.
Did anyone successfully bypass the battery check?
I tried typing "flash2.exe /u" as suggested in other site, but it doesn't work.

 

Did a bit more reading and saw that the max speeds for my OCZ drive are only for "compressible" data, ie, the 0x00 setting in CrystalDiskMark. Results with those settings are:



And I am totally happy! Thanks again for the speed boost!

 

One more iteration... I wanted to update the firmware on the OCZ drive and realized that I needed to enable AHCI mode in the registry and the bios to do it. Updated the firmware and left it in AHCI and now score thusly:



Scored 7.6 on the Windows Experience Index:



Awesome!

 

There is a lot of computer master here buddy. But don't bother asking how! No one will help

 

1) Windows way:

- Run WinPhlash.exe;
- Select $01AF000.FL1 file;
- Click "Flash BIOS" button.

2) DOS way:

- Create a bootable USB flash drive;
- Copy all the content of BIOS update CD to the USB flash drive;
- Create flash.bat file with the following content:

@echo off
echo.
echo.
echo Updating BIOS. Please wait...
PHLASH16 /mode=2 /mb /vcpu /p /s /cs /x /exit /i /vbl $01AF000.FL1
echo BIOS flash completed. Reboot your machine now.

- Copy flash.bat to the USB flash drive.
- Boot from the USB stick.
- Type "flash" and press ENTER.

 

hi,

I flashed my t61 with the sata-II bios using the cd image.
it beeped twice during flashing and afterwards it stuck in the
thinkpad boot screen.

I powered it down and since then am unable to power it up again.
(no reaction pressing the power button, no matter what combination of battery i use)

anyone got an idea? i'm clueless what to do now...

 

Check out the posts on page 59. I dit it just as stated in my posts and it went straight thru with no problems. Hope this helps you.

Cheers,

Singtoh

 

Hello

I have a T61p and I have four questions. I hope you can help me.

1. I've heard that the middleton bios have an virus inside, something like dos.junkie. Is this true?

2. Is the newest middleton bios recommended and does it also enable SATAII on T61p?

3. What's the difference between zender and middleton bios or which one is better?

4. With the bios mod one loose the guarantee, but how is it handled in practice by lenovo that means do they check it? Has somebody experience with it? Before sending the notebook to lenovo for repairing it, one could flash the bios with the official bios from lenovo but It could be the case that the notebook is in a way damaged that a flashing is no more possible.

 

Helloo All,

Just read a comment posted by Helvectius about a virus in the modded bios 2.27-2.08 and I would like to confirm that my antivirus clamav, runing on ubuntu/linux has indeed picked it out of that file. I was wondering if others can confrim this as well and also what effect it will have if any??? I quarentined the file and just for grins downloaded the bios again from page 8, and scanned it again and sure enough clamav flagged it again as infected with DOS.junkie-1. Any comments or ideas, maybe another bios update to re-flash and hopefully get rid of this virus??? Not sure how this virus works other than it sticks itself into the MBR. Can anyone offer some advice on this one?? On a higher note, middletons modded bios is working on my machine with no problems, just a bit of a worry with this virus??? Pleas advise and thanks in advance for any comments or advice

Cheers,

Singtoh

 

Oh my God! Guys, why don't you use search before posting here? Just type in Google:

DOS.junkie-1 site:http://forum.notebookreview.com/lenovo-ibm/459591-t61-x61-sata-ii-1-5-gb-s-cap-willing-pay-solution

 

Are you really that surprised Middle?
The eyes of fear

 

Sorry middleton. Can you quickly look at my other questions?

1. Is the newest middleton bios recommended and does it also enable SATAII on T61p?

2. With the bios mod one loose the guarantee, but how is it handled in practice by lenovo that means do they check it? Has somebody experience with it? Before sending the notebook to lenovo for repairing it, one could flash the bios with the official bios from lenovo but It could be the case that the notebook is in a way damaged that a flashing is no more possible.

 

If you mean the patch based on the latest 1.29-1.08 BIOS (see here), then it's on beta testing at the moment. There are messages in this thread about some issues with the patches based on the latest official BIOS. So I decided to extend the test period before new patches will replace the old ones and become recommended.

You can use either old stable 1.27-1.08 version (see here) or the new 1.29-1.08 version. It's up to you. All of them enable the full SATA-II speed.

Don't know what to answer. I've never had a lenovo notebook. You'd better ask real owners in this thread. Anyway you use the patched BIOS at your own risk because my BIOS mods are unofficial. Read disclaimer on page 8.

 

Thanks for the link Middleton and for clearing this up. Sorry, didn't mean to offend anyone, just wanted to make sure of things. My google searches didn't show me that link, or I missed it. Anyway all is good and thanks again.

Cheers,

Singtoh

 

Thank you middleton.

Did anyone here have experience with the bios mod and the lenovo guarantee?

Do one notice the difference between SATAI and SATAII in practice?

 

The answer to this question seems to depend on which drive you're using.
Try to browse through this thread and look at the benchmarks that others have posted.
Personally, running a Momentus 7200.4 + 5400 in ultrabay I did not see any improovements. This is to be expected as these drives don't even saturate the Sata I bus speed. When using an SSD or a hybrid drive that DOES saturate the SATA I speed, the difference should be somewhere between noticeable and staggering I think

 

I'm using a SSD. The problem is that I have to estimate if it's worth to go with the bios mod for having SATAII and probably loosing the guarantee or to have lower speed but with guarantee.

 

thankyou Middleton.sorry to bother you but I can't download the BIOS file on page 8,could you sent me the BIOS for r61 15.4 with 1394 or give me an available link of the BIOS if you don't have much time.thankyou so much!
my email:[email protected]

 

Sorry middleton, I have another question.

I saw that you offer also a Bios package with dual IDA support. I googled it and found that it's something about making the CPU faster and also hotter, but I'm not that sure. Is it worth to use this bios package and is it stable? You recommended the bios package without dual IDA support.

What is CTRL-FN swap?

 

How can I use unetbootin to create a USB boot disk to flash the BIOS...?

Or if it's not possible?

Tried writing the ISO, then reboot, stuck at the bootloader.

Tried writing the ISO, then wrote FreeDOS, ran updtflsh, resulted in invalid opcode blah blah blah...

Any idea?

BTW I heard enabling SATA II on X61T will adversely affect if you use the dock's drive bay, is that true?

 

I have an iso that will work, can send it via pm if you like (some details here: BIOS Upgrade/X Series - ThinkWiki)

 

Can you upload it to upload | ifile.it

Thx!

 

request download ticket | ifile.it

Delete link: delete file | ifile.it

This iso can be booted from grub.
Alternatively you can extract the file image and write it to usb.

 

Thanks. But that is an 1.24, a newer version has been released on page 58:

http://forum.notebookreview.com/len...-cap-willing-pay-solution-58.html#post7480413

 

using a mod bios is always on your own risk, and *most probably* it will void your laptop warranty.

it's your call (your decision to make).

 

just take a look at your laptop's keyboard. the fix is to switch the position of the Fn key & Ctrl key.

Some of us prefer that the lower left key is a Ctrl key, instead of an Fn.

 

I have an x61s, and have been waiting for the 2.22-1.03 bios patch to come out of beta, but it seems it's taking a while, so I'm a little concerned that there may be problems.

Anyone tried the phoenix flash recovery sofware after a bad flash?

It looks as though it may be necessary to flash from a non-64 bit OS (rather than from a CD) - is this the case?

Has anyone flashed an x61s with Middleton's latest 2.22-1.03 bios?

Also, I wasn't sure whether I could use the previous 2.21 mod, as my machine has already been flashed with the official 2.22

@Middleton - It's a shame you're not able to take donations anymore, as I would have donated towards your efforts... maybe you could sell something on ebay, that I could buy.

 

Hello all. This is a good place to be with BIOS modders bestowing gifts upon us! I inherited my 26 month old T61 from my employers and will be fitting a Crucial M4 in the boot drive bay. I see there is Middleton 2.27-1.08 from post #75 and Middleton 2.29-1.08 from post #580.
I note there is no separate BIOS files for Dual IDA or NOT in the newest Middleton revision. I presume that the newer files are Dual IDA only as stable function is now well confirmed. Is my assumption correct?

Downloading the BIOS files does indeed show the 2.29-1.08 as "Dual IDA". It must be stable.

 

Sorry guys, don't have much time to answer in this thread (I'm very busy at the moment). Just want to provide you some information:

- dual IDA patches (from page 8) have been downloaded about 1500 times.
- new BIOS versions (from page 58) have been downloaded about 750 times.

We haven't seen mass negative feedback so far. I think all the beta BIOS versions will become recommended from the next month.

 

BIOS file 2.29-1.08. Flashed using ISO image. It is stable on my T61 7300, battered the machine with many arduous tasks on a Win 7 x64 install. Works a treat. Saturates SATA 2 with a Crucial M4. Many thanks middleton BIOS modder.

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

Sequential Read : 254.880 MB/s
Sequential Write : 108.677 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 235.791 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 108.598 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 16.653 MB/s [ 4065.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 35.245 MB/s [ 8604.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 125.834 MB/s [ 30721.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 96.323 MB/s [ 23516.3 IOPS]

Test : 100 MB [C: 21.2% (12.6/59.5 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/06/22 1:24:58
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

 

:d Good News

 

To all

After quite a long testing, all the beta patches have become recommended ones. You can download them from page 8.

 

Thank you so much middleton!!

 

After one week I can safely say that the modded BIOS by middleton is completely sound. I have had cause to continually swap ultrabay drives whilst installing applications for what is now my own machine rather than my employers. I eject the ultrabay drive using the Win 7 taskbar utility and replace with the combi drive or a 500Gb spinpoint while applications are still open. Not a single problem or complaint from the OS or machine, it is totally stable.
Be in no doubt that if you do not have the money for the latest machine but yearn for a performance increase the BIOS mod unlocking Sata 3 performance and maybe an SSD purchase will buy you time before having to spend yet more money. Many thanks to one of the communities givers and the others here that have made this possible