upgrading processor

[sneezinglion]

quote:Originally posted by SparcV

quote:Originally posted by Jonathan Schmidt

Of course... I didn't mean to imply that there was a risk for anyone making a backup of the BIOS. The risk is only in doing the restore.

Varian, have you tried the restore yet?

Does anyone have a Dothan machine yet that would be willing to help us out with a BIOS backup using this utility?

Im a bit afraid to try it just yet.

Wimp! just kidding

[Jonathan Schmidt]

Okay, interesting update.

I thought I would be brave (or stupid) enough to try and use the UniFlash utility to see what I get.

I used the utility to back up the 1.4 BIOS successfully (I think).

Then, I downloaded the 1.3 BIOS from the Toshiba site. The BIOS successfully flashed back to 1.3 using the Toshiba utility.

Then, I loaded UniFlash again to re-load the 1.4 BIOS. When I did this, the flashing process went very quickly (almost too quickly, I thought). The verify process failed. I thought... oh s**t. I rebooted the machine and everything was fine. Version 1.3 is still in tact.

Upon doing some more reading in the UniFlash documentation, it mentions something about a BIOS write protection scheme used by some motherboards. I suspect that this is the problem and even though UniFlash thought it wrote the BIOS, it really did nothing.

I have written the author of the utility to see if there is any more troubleshooting we can do. But, for now it looks like we are stuck only using official Toshiba BIOS updates.

I will post more info if I hear back from the author.

[SparcV]

Hmm... if the bios for the dothans are different, someone with a new dothan can call support saying the machine is stuck at 600Mhz no matter what they do with the power settings, and when they ask what the bios version is, say its 1.30 or whatever is lower then it really is, and try to get support to email them a newer bios to fix the problem.

[sneezinglion]

quote:Originally posted by SparcV

Hmm... if the bios for the dothans are different, someone with a new dothan can call support saying the machine is stuck at 600Mhz no matter what they do with the power settings, and when they ask what the bios version is, say its 1.30 or whatever is lower then it really is, and try to get support to email them a newer bios to fix the problem.

Good idea! Social engineering is always the easiest way!

[mjmattson]

I'll let you now what BIOS my 755 has when I get it.

[Jonathan Schmidt]

quote:Originally posted by mjmattson

I'll let you now what BIOS my 755 has when I get it.

Thanks, mjm!

[justjoem2]

The other bit of software that should be suspect is the Toshiba Power Saver. Toshiba’s proprietary software also controls the speed step. If the Toshiba Power Saver tool doesn’t recognize the Dothan processor it may be locking it at 600mhz. It may be this program instead of the BIOS that Toshiba has updated.

You might consider removing or updating the Toshiba Power Saver tool if the BIOS hasn’t changed. It is a long shot, but one never knows………

[dustham]

Hi - I have taken out the Toshiba power saver program and no changes. You get the speed upgrade a bit from the 2 meg cache but my 2.0 still states 598mhz. So I suspect its a bios, but we have to wait until someone has the new ones so we can take a look at the difference.

Dustin

[Jonathan Schmidt]

Yes, I tried this too. Should have posted such. When I called Intel support, they made this suggestion to allow WinXP to do all the power management. Didn't help me either, obviously.

quote:Originally posted by dustham

Hi - I have taken out the Toshiba power saver program and no changes. You get the speed upgrade a bit from the 2 meg cache but my 2.0 still states 598mhz. So I suspect its a bios, but we have to wait until someone has the new ones so we can take a look at the difference.

Dustin

[SparcV]

The problem is in the bios. With a banias there's an option "Dynamic CPU Frequency Mode" switch. When the dothan is installed its totally absent.I believe this is the problem. Once we get a proper bios that knows what a dothan is we should be all set.