Unlocking CF-19 S-ATA 2.0 throttling!

Hi all,

A couple of months back I stumbled upon a few old forum threads here that mentioned the throttled 1.5 S-ATA Gbps performance of the Toughbook CF-19 series.

I myself own a CF-19K (Mk3) series and I can acknowledge that the S-ATA controller indeed runs at a maximum of 1.5 Gbps despite the ICH9-M controller's higher capabilities. This is likely due to thermal design considerations that were made at Panasonic at the time of manufacture.

Unfortunately for me, I don't really care about thermal design and thus tried to find any evidence of intentional the ICH9-M S-ATA controller crippling. The most likely suspect here is a UEFI driver in the AMI Aptio EFI firmware, so I used the latest AMI Aptio tools to dump my current firmware and enumerate the UEFI DXE drivers.. and look what I found:

SATAInterfaceSpeedCtrl with GUID 8CC39E38-CF78-46F5-AFBA-9B547B8D314D.

I disassembled the UEFI driver (TE format) with IDA and verified that it is actually talking to the S-ATA controller. The first obvious thing would be to try and remove this driver altogether, and try and see if this makes any difference. Additionally, this might work on other similarly throttled Toughbooks.

Unfortunately I'm not in the position to test this right now, but I just wanted to get the word out for anyone willing to try

 

Fascinating,

I don't think we should completely ignore the thermal design. The CF19 and CF30 are passively cooled. Anything that increases the heat may create problems down the road.

 

i agree ...
passive cooling , to the degree implemented in the '19 and '30 requires that the dissipation of the cpu (and some other items) be limited .
this means that *something* has to give *somewhere* .
any increases in performance would have to be monitored to ensure that the existing cooling does not allow the cpu (and other items) to exceed their design operating points/specifications .
in other words , one may be able to get away with increasing the dissipation on the cpu to the point of raising it by 10F over "normal" , but , will this increase in temperature (ultimately , by say increase of internal case temperature) affect *something else* (say the gpu) .

 

As my overly creative mind works...........

CF30...find a way to install a couple fans in the DVD drive bay. A modified door to allow airflow...
Matter o fact, I have some tiny fans here somewhere..

Yes you lose waterproofing, but a fun project to toy with.

 

good idea ...
the '30 is not "waterproof" per se . the term "water resistant" aptly applies .
as most users are not going to be burying the unit in a sand pile , the use of a filtered air intake and a filtered outlet stands a chance of being an acceptable solution .
the kicker is going to be *somehow* getting more surface area (think fins) on or very close to the heat pipe assembly .
directing the airflow through the fins is going to take some thin pasteboard/plastic , duct tape and an exacto knife .:laugh:

a second solution would involve using a finned assembly in contact with the cpu and thus elimiating the need for the heat pipe assembly .
a possible means of mounting would be to use spring loading and captivation of the heat sink (upside down as it were) to the "bottom plate" .
this would allow firm and intimate contact with the cpu while providing some semblance of "give" or shock absorption .

but seriously , the '30 is built way better than any other laptop out there (excluding the TB line , naturally) .
so , the "compromise" of making a couple of holes/openings should have only a slight effect on the overall integrity .

 

The heatpipe assembly is already attached to the base... Just use a old DVD drive to mount the fans and fins. As long as the DVD housing has contact with the base, it will dissipate some heat..

 

In my case, the HDD is replaced with a SSD, so increasing the interface speed would likely have minor effects on thermal performance. Especially considering the fact I'm not using my Toughbook in extreme temperatures.

But let's keep the conversation on-topic?

 

Yeah let's try that. It could be the first time we actually pulled it off . . . .

 

The ssd itself is only one part of the sata drive system. The chips on the motherboard are a part of it also. And they DO get hot. Increasing the sata speed will increase the motherboard heat......That's what Panasonic is concerned about. It is also what I am talking about ...It is on topic, but I will ignore this thread and let you toast your own Toughbook. Do you think you're the first to try to speed a toughbook up? Others have tried and failed...I have been here long enough to remember those attempts. Panasonic locks these down much better than you think.

 

This topic comes up at least 3 or 4 times a year and goes no where...the last one was only last month I think.

 

Digikey does sell 9mm fans...use vhb tape to attach dimm memory heatsinks where the dvd drive usually goes. Now we will have an active cooling system on a cf30..

Bonus points if I can fit it in an old dvd drive and make it plug and play / removable. The bus for the dvd should carry plenty of current.

I still don't think we will be able to speed it up. But the cooling fans seem interesting from an engineering point of view.

 

Yes, I had unlocked my SATA on my CF-52 some years ago. And I agree, its getting a bit faster, but hotter than before (the fan starts more often). So I think it only make sense, if u use the Buisness Edition of Toughbooks.

 

I do appreciate your comments and concerns, let me just note a few things:

* The purpose of starting this thread is to document the unlocking feature for anyone who is interested.
* I would not recommend this mod to anyone.
* As far as I can see, the CF-19 (and similar) have not been "unlocked" before, and this has not been documented on this forum. If not, please do show the relevant thread.

The ICH9 has thermal management and includes on-die sensors that can be monitored through Intel QST. There is a thermal shutdown defined at a nominal 101*C, sustained high temperatures will be an issue, but it would be a good starting point to measure the thermal difference.

I do realize now that was actually on-topic. It's just that I expected some more discussion on the firmware modification, but thermal modification is obviously something to figure out!

 

There are a lot more members here that do hardware mods than there are firmware guys....:hi2:
Onirakriss is the only real firmware BIOS mod expert we have. I have tried, but I managed to fail at a simple BIOS whitelist mod...

I am interested in what you are talking about. It would be interesting to be able to govern and control the SATA speed through a driver setting..We could tweak the speed slowly and watch the thermal changes...With a fan array modded in, we could safely bump the speed more until the magic smoke came out ...Then we would know the limits for the future units..

I am sorry if I came off a bit strong. I have seen a lot of "inexperienced" kids on here. Sometimes their comments and bullheadness frustrates me and I get blunt.

 

No offense taken, your help is duly appreciated.

The DVD cooling mod seems like an interesting hardware modification. I've been checking the datasheets but unfortunately there's little information on the thermal characteristics of the chipset in regards to limiting or disabling certain functionality, so there'll be only one way to find out how hot it'll get.

Thermal throttling in software would also be interesting, but would require a custom driver. Unfortunately I currently do not have the time available to investigate this.

As far as trying removing the DXE driver from the BIOS and see if it disables the throttling.. I will attempt this once I get my other laptops running, as this CF-19 is currently my primary system.