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

No, there is no way. T60's only have a SATA I capable hardware, whereas T61's have a SATA II capable hardware, which has been reduced to SATA I speeds via firmware. This is why Middleton's BIOS correction can make a difference on T61, whereas on T60 no such possibility exists, unfortunately.

 

Hi Middleton or other forumer,

Could i verified whether your bios file for X61 Tablet support the following addon? Tend to apply this I know zender bios support this but not sure yours but his BIOS's doesn't support SATA II.

Broadcom BCM970015 mini PCI-E Crystal HD Decoder 1080i

Broadcom BCM970015 mini PCI-E Crystal HD Decoder 1080i | eBay

 

Even flashing an official BIOS from Lenovo can brick your machine if you're very unlucky and something goes wrong, but if you follow the instructions provided in this thread, the modded bios should be as safe to install as the one you can download from Lenovo. Please skim through some of this thread as it will answer most of your questions

 

You said Zender's BIOS supports Broadcom BCM970015 mini PCI-E adapter. If it's so, then my modified BIOS supports this adapter too because I used the same patching method as Zender did.

 

what a wonderful news!
thanks!

 

I'm also getting the error 99 that was mentioned previously. I got the warning about BitLocker also. The bios did not flash. It is still at the old version (2.07). Any idea what went wrong? I was able to do the fn ctrl swap successfully.

 

T61/R61 owners might want to see if the bios accepts newer T4xxx/T6xxx or even 1066Mhz FSB Penryns as discussed in: http://forum.notebookreview.com/har...intel-gl960-gl40-useful-info-pll-modders.html . Could be a low cost upgrade from the 65nm Meroms with resultant lower temps and longer battery life.

 

Hi all

I must be a bit thick as I'm really struggling with getting the bios flash to work. I have a X61t and have downloaded the correct bios file, I'm running Win7 x64 so apparently can't flash it from the windows environment, can you anybody please explain which is the best method to get this to work from a usb key? I have no ultrabay cd drive. I have tried unetbootin, the HP utilities etc with no success. I have searched this thread to some extent with no joy either. TIA!

 

nando -
do you know if the modded t61p bios will allow a quad-core processor?
can you be more specific as to which processors to try to obtain the cooler tempand longer battery life?
thanks

 

So I really appreciate the bios and my ssd getting almost twice the speed, thank you middleton.

But I have a question about the bios. I assume changing the bios changed the things I see during my startup process and part of that is counting up my RAM every startup. It says "XXXX Extended RAM passed" or something similar and the X part just counts up to 3000 or so. Is there any way to skip that part?

I tried using ctrl+s to enter setup but there are really no options. Are there other function keys I can tap during bios load to change settings for quick startup or something?

 

This can be configured in the BIOS, but i don't know exactly where out of memory. You will easily find it looking around a bit in the configuration options.

It makes me wonder how a Thinkpad user doesn't know what that big blue button on the upper left of the keyboard is good for? Either press that one when the Thinkpad logo shows up first after turning on the machine, and then choose the appropriate startup option from the menu, or just press F1 instead of the blue button.

 

still hoping for a kind soul to gimme a hand in getting this to work from a usb pendrive

 

middleton,
Could you, please, make a mod to enable ASPM in Thinkpads, specially the T61?
Details are explained by nando4 in this post

Also, do you have any idea to enable USB controller to shutdown or sleep when inactive? Details in my post.
Thanks in advance!

 

Windows has a Control Panel->Power->USB settings->USB selective suspend setting. Linux has something similar.

 

No, I didn't talk about USB selective suspend setting. In my post, I mean the following feature observed on T41, T42, and X60s:
- Assume that you have two USB devices A and B, each consumes 1W of power.
- With two devices (and only two, no other USB devices) connected, the power consumption of a laptop is 15W.
- Disconnect one device (B, for example), the power consumption drops to 14W (what is expected).
- After that, disconnect the last device (A). Now there are no USB devices connected. The power consumptions drops to 11-11.5W (not to 13W as expected).
On T60 / T61, when I disconnect the last USB device, the power consumption drops by only 1W, i.e. to 13W.
At first, when upgrading from T42p to T60p, I thought that this feature is disabled in 945/965 chipset. However, a later test shows that X60s also has this feature. So I am thinking that the feature is disabled in T6x BIOS (and possible in later T models).

 

Oh, I did a clean install and got rid of the ThinkVantage stuff so the blue button interrups the startup process but points to nothing. I will try F1 though and hopefully that will give me bios settings. The ctrl+s thing literally gives 2 or 3 options with nothing to change really.

 

The function of the blue button is not tied to any program or operating system. My Thinkpads have only Linux installed, and pressing this blue button during startup triggers a menu from which i can choose whether i want to enter the BIOS via F1, or choose another startup device via F12. This is purely managed by the firmware.

 

Hi,

Just want to say thanks to middleton for making the patched X61s BIOS. It works perfectly. I was especially interested in the SATA II patch and it works!
I have attached a picture of the results from an Ubuntu Linux machine.
At first I had problems flashing it via the iso file - it kept complaining about that flashing over the network was disabled. There is a BIOS flash enable/disable option in the BIOS and it was enabled so that a user should be able to flash his bios. I then booted up into XP and flashed via the windows flasher with success.

Btw, what is a SLIC 2.1 patch? Is it something to do with Windows activation?

Anyways, thanks again middleton.

qiet72

 

I'm running windows 7 x64

I also was looking for a solution because I didn't want to go out and buy a CD-R to burn a cd.

After hours of trying everything, I gave up.

Here's everything I tried but couldn't get to work:

Unetbootin - I kept getting stuck at the select option screen. It was an endless loop to allow me to select default. Tried Unetbootin in both Windows and Ubuntu, no luck.

Creating a bootable BartPE Windows XP - I couldn't successfully do it. It said eject disk and press enter - and it rebooted on me.

I also tried creating a USB Boot disk with dos on it with the HP Disk Utility, and (Win 98) it said that the program will not run in DOS.

I just gave up and got a CD-R from work.

I really don't like the idea of flashing from the OS - I've actually came very close to bricking old computers when flashing a bios in the OS. Doing it from DOS is much safer.

The ISO image worked perfectly.

I think if you can either swap out a cheap hard drive and install Win XP on there, you can run the tool, or if you want, try to make a bootable Win XP USB drive and copy the files on there. If that works you can run the flash utility.

 

Middleton, can you please help me. After spending a few hours reading here I decided to try your bios on a T61 14inch widescreen. I had just installed windows 7 x64 and confirmed the system was stable then I burned the iso...

7luj27uc.iso

Using Imgburn. I then booted the disc with AC power and a fullycharged battery. It said it was flashing, then said it was done, then I got a long beep and the screen powered off. Now if I try to start the laptop the LED lights flash and nothing else.

Is there anything that can be done?

 

Before anything else, please try as follows:

- turn off your T61, unplug the power supply and remove the battery
- press 10 times the power button about every second
- press and hold down the power button for 30 seconds
- plug in the power supply without battery and turn on the machine

Does it now boot again? If yes, then enter the BIOS by pressing F1, and reset all BIOS settings by pressing F9 and confirm. Then reboot again, change back your BIOS settings, and keep using your machine as usual.

If it still doesn't boot after this procedure, i'd really start to worry.

 

I still get nothing at all. It's not the end of the world, I purchased this pc to experiment with before doing the mod to my other T61 thinkpads, but after buying it sight unseen, I was sent a much better model then described and it look like it was in almost new condition... I was really starting to like this pc, but if it can't be salvaged, I'll make some use of it, it's gotta a beautiful 14inch widescreen on it, but if anyone has any other suggestions, I really want to try to fix this.

Also, can we do any kind of forensics on this... I mean is it possible my disc image was damaged, or the data was garbled when it was burnt? Maybe if we find the error on the disc I burned it can save someone else from bricking their thinkpad.

 

Has anyone ever tried to physically replace the bios chip on a T61? I have a 15.4" model here that has an intermittent failure somewhere that I was going to cannibalize for parts. I recall reading a guide on how to unsolder the bios chip and use a eprom reader to retrieve a bios password, so I'm wondering if the bios chip could be swapped?

Obviously I'd like a better option since that would require a lot of work, and it might be more cost effective to buy another t61, perhaps with a damaged screen and use the system board.

And I'm still open for any ideas of what I can do to fix this poor thinkpad

 

Middleton - Can we please request one more thing? This is actually critical.

There is no way to revert back to the SAME VERSION of original Thinkpad BIOS using the Lenovo .ISOs.

Can you take those and add an option in them so that we can use them to go back in case we face some issues. (I am facing some issues now)?

There's a small check point/ switch in the original ISOs that does not allow flashing the BIOS if same version number already exists.

Hence, if I have on X61T: Middleton 1.24, I can go to Lenovo 1.24
same issue for 1.25 (Latest Middleton 1.25 back to Latest Lenovo 1.25)

 

@ crashnburn, I recall reading that this was addressed in this topic. I think the solution was to flash an older version, then update to the new one again.

I could be mistaken though, by the time I read all 70+ pages my eyes felt like they were bleeding lol


ps. An update on my failed flash attempt. There is a program called WinCrisis.exe that can boot from a usb or floppy disc to recover a failed bios flash, but my PC was unable to even boot that. I had a tech look at it and the consensus was that the failure wasn't from the bios flash. A failed bios flash won't boot from a cdrom, but will boot from usb (according to this tech). He also pointed out that even if a bios flash failed, you should be able to get the unit to beep sharply if you abuse the keyboard by pressing a couple dozen keys at once. Mine does nothing at all and the seller agreed to replace it.

I can't say if any of this is true or not, but maybe middleton or one of the others here can correct me if this is bad information and I'll edit/delete the post. All I ask is that you send me a PM if I posted bad info so I can both learn, and remove the bad info. Please also do the same if you can confirm this info is correct. I tend to not believe everything I read and hear unless I get some confirmation.

 

May I ask what issues your facing?

 

You are really lucky with the seller! Keep him in your contacts list!

The error descriptions match the behavior of a T61 broken due to the nVIDIA bug pretty well, and I am tempted to believe that you had a T61 with a nVIDIA GPU. Could you confirm this?

If this was actually the case, i would believe that coincidentially your nVIDIA GPU simply failed the very time you did the BIOS flash.

 

That is the conclusion I reached too, and I got a second opinion before contacting the seller. I told him that no matter his decision I wont leave negative feedback, no point really, as I'm sure he didn't know it would die that moment when he sold it.

Plus, I usually only buy from sellers with 100% feedback, if they have less, I read each one, then look at other feedback that seller left and was left. You can usually sort the credible ones from those that aren't.

I too have 100%, and any auction I hold has bold type saying "ebay feedback is used only as a last resort when a dispute cannot be negotiated. If you contact me with a sincere problem, I will do anything I an to resolve it. If you leave negative feedback, then there is noting left to discuss and I can't help you.

Never had a problem I couldn't resolve.

Besides, these things are dirt cheap compared to what they cost new. I've spent a lot more $$$ taking the g/f out for the day. I wouldn't have been happy, but I knew what I was buying and that it could fail.

What really upsets me is several T61 models that are advertised with Intel grapics (cut and paste from some website description), but really have defective nVidia. Sellers always blame it on ebay descriptions, or some other website. I doubt someone that is selling over 100 laptops doesn't know how to tell if it has defective graphics or not.

On a positive note, I just bought another 15.4" model with Penryn, sight unseen and it too is almost new condition, nVidia with a build date of September 2008

I couldn't be happier with this one, it's exactly what I was looking for and I offered what I felt was a fair price for a defective model.

However, regarding the dead 14.1" model discussed here, I was planning on trying to transplant a bios chip from a failed gpu board and making a photo guide, but I won't have that opportunity since the bios isn't bad. I was hoping to submit it to the community because I don't think anyone has done one, and because of all the amazing help and info I've found in my research.

I also posted a cpu swap guide with info I collected and Mark Lenovo posted it on his blog, so I feel like I was able to return some of the karma back to the community, hopefully the "thinkpad gods" will smile down on all my GPUs favorably, and won't call them home lol

 

CONCERN FIXED: SOLUTION DIRECTION:

Lenovo Original Bootable BIOS Update ISOs can downgrade and upgrade BIOS to lower or higher versions. But will not do the same version. So we can go up or down a version before going to the version of Custom Modified BIOS we want.

I had flashed my X61T with the Middleton X61T BIOS based on Lenovo 1.24
This was an earlier release that had SLIC 2.1, whitelist and SATA2 (Ctrl Fn swap was an option as well but I did not choose it).

It worked well for a while, but lately I couldnt boot from XP, 7 or anything. 1st i thought it was due to RAM or something. Changed that too but no dice.

Spent 5 days going through this and finally based on suggestion from a friend on TP forums..

Updated to Lenovo 1.25 (Since Lenovo's 1.24 Bootable CD Flasher wouldnt go ahead as it detected the Middleton 1.24 as SAME VERSION so flash not needed).

This fixed the issues rightaway.

Now, I'd like to go to Middleton 1.25; I am assuming and hoping its a better release.

But, I'd also like the option and method of reverting to the Original Lenovo 1.25 BIOS.

So.. any ideas?

 

Well windows BSODd during the BIOS update and I now have a $450 brick... Is there anything I can do before I just send it off to some guy to have a new BIOS chip put in it for $100?

 

Running a BIOS update from a Windows installation in an unknown state always includes a much higher risk to produce an expensive electronic brick. Here we have now yet another example. Sorry for that, mate!

I'd vote to have that BIOS update executable removed, leaving only the ISO update possibility. While there is no 100% guarantee that it will never fail, with the ISO no such thing could happen.

No idea if this would be of any real help: 435277-phoenix-bios-crisis-recovery-no-floppy-yes.html. If i were you, i'd simply start looking for a used replacement mainboard.

 

You definitely need a stable working environment when flashing a bios on one of these. I don't agree that the bootable cdrom is a better idea though, it boots and flashes with no chance to stop the process if the system seems unstable.

Next one I try I'm inclined to run it from safemode, or boot from a cdrom boot disc, but run the program from a harddrive. I'd rather confirm my system seems to be stable, then execute the program.

This would also eliminate disc read errors from an optical disc.

ps. exactly what system do you have? and will it "beep" if you abuse the keyboard?

 

It's an SXGA+ Thinkpad X61 Tablet. It doesnt beep when I "abuse" the keyboard. I'm going to send it to the guys at aqstech.com for a BIOS chip replacement since I've seen them advertised and recommended on several forums. It's also cheaper than buying a whole new motherboard, plus It would be hard to find one just like mine with the 1.8Ghz C2D.

 

Is there any way to modify bios for T61P, for GFX frequencies?? I would like to apply my settings for Quadro FX 570.

 

I'd at least try the usb flash using wincrisis, but from what I've learned in the last two weeks, if you can't get it to beep by holding down a dozen or more keys, then it's probably not going to be salvaged externally. I suspect this company is going to reburn your existing bios chip, or they may even have developed a way to do it without opening up your laptop.

Also, most of us wouldn't buy a new, or even a used motherboard from a parts company, rather keep an eye out for a used, perhaps damaged laptop you can salvage one from.

Good luck with your bios job and let us know how much it cost, and if you're happy with the work. Also if they were willing to use this bios instead of setting you back to sata1 speeds.

 

By the way, I found an ebay seller that sells bios chips for these models, less then $20 too.

This isn't a user serviceable part though, you need some soldering skills to install one. From what I understand, they are soldered with lead-free solder that is difficult to use, the heat necessary to remove the old one and solder the new one could very well destroy componants, but it might be possible to cut off the old chip and solder the new chip onto the remaining leads from the old one, piggyback style. I'd definitely try it if I needed a bios, but paying $100 to have your bios reburned (if thats how they do it) sounds like a good deal, as these are tiny leads on this and no assurance that it will even work when your done.

Here is a link to the chip I found

Fix Reset Lenovo ThinkPad T61P Bricked BIOS CMOS Chip | eBay

 

For those interested, I've succesfully flashed my T61 BIOS with version 2.29-1.08 posted on this forum by middleton.

Like many others, I was hoping that this BIOS would remove the 1.5Gb/s cap Lenovo put on the eSATA-II interface so that my SSD performance would improve. I attached 2 PDF files that show a SSD benchmark I ran at the beginning of the year and one I just ran after flashing my laptop. I'm no expert on this but the numbers seem pretty clear to me. Thought I'd this with everyone.

Many many thanks to all those who worked on this project.

 

Hi there and thanks for all the hard work and contributions so far. I honestly appreciate your effort.

I do have a small problem though. I successfully flashed my X61T (Win64) with the BIOS including the fn-ctrl-swap assuming this was an optional setting. Now that I came to understand that this is not the case I do not only feel stupid but I am really having serious trouble getting used to this key setting as a 8+ years ibm/lenovo user. So here is my question is there any easy way to get the version without the swap on my system now? Unfortunately just flashing the system with the non-key-swap version did not work out.

I know that this is my fault and if I would have read the whole thread in the first place I would have known better...

Thanks for any piece of advice,
Bruiser

 

I guess it would already have been sufficient to take into account the information provided in the accompanying "READ_ME!!!.txt" file. The rar file you downloaded contains two versions of the BIOS, one with, and one without the CTRL-FN swap. Here is the list of contents of the archive:

/BIOS update
/BIOS update + CTRL-FN swap
READ_ME!!!.txt

Try to reflash your BIOS using the ISO image contained in the "/BIOS update" folder.

 

kamaleon, did you figure out anything? Your situation is like mine.

 

Bruiser, how did you get the USB to boot in Win 7 64 bit? I have X61T.

 

Already answered.

 

@middleton, What do you think about the idea of booting the system from a 32bit windows boot disc, then executing the bios flash from the harddrive, rather then running it from the premade bootable cdrom image. I haven't tried this yet, but having just seen what I believe to be a cdrom read error cause the bios flash to fail, I'd think this might be a safer alternative for 64bit windows users.

ps. Thank you very much for your work, I own several T61 models and hope to use this on all of them.

 

All tested thoroughly and all working correctly.

 

I saw several messages from Linux users about successful flash using Windows 32-bit bootable CD. So, the method you're talking about really works.

 

rivatuner can adjust frequencies

 

Okay I've got my SXGA+ Thinkpad X61 Tablet back from the BIOS repair... I'd really like to have this modded BIOS on my Thinkpad but I don't know if I could deal with the possibility of it being bricked again...

 

what OS did you use to update the bios? i had no problems with vista business 32-bit. it was a fresh install though.

 

I finally got up the courage to try it again. Just updated a t61 with a very rare build date of 10/22/2008, one of the last ones made and still in warranty (for a few more days), so I figured I best get over my fears and do it before the warranty expires lol

It worked flawlessly flashing on vista x86. I got several more to do, so I'm going to install this harddrive in my x64 units and flash that way. I'm not going to try it from a CDrom again, you can read my previous posts regarding that, or suffice it to say, one single read error and it will never recover, and when the system boots from the cdrom, if it's not stable, you have no way of halting the progress.

If you can't run it from a 32bit OS, then I recommend getting a winPE boot disc, then run the program from the harddrive after you've booted a 32bit OS. Middletion confirmed this works for linux too, and I think it's much safer then the bios boot disc.

Thats my opinion/advice.

@KosanRio, how much did the bios repair cost?

I'd say make sure your system is stable if your going to do it, running it in safe-mode might be a good idea, less drivers loaded that could cause a repeat of your bluescreen problem, and definitely don't do it if your system isn't stable.

 

Why and how is this better & more reliable than the Bootable CD?