I created this Topic for everyone to post their successes with upgrades to the various Thinkpad 600 series models. Please submit whatever you feel will contribute to this topic.

With the aquisition of a Thinkpad 600 I'm already well at work upgrading this little machine. I figured another topic similar to the 770 one with upgrade stories, successes, and warnings would be appropriate. Let's examine some facts about the 600 Series

There are three 600 series models:

The 600 (base model):
MMC-1 modules ranging from PI-233 w/MMX to PII 300MHz from IBM, or a PII 400MHz aftermarket MMC-1 module. Al,l with 66MHz FSB.
Base RAM: 32MB (fixed to motherboard like the early 770) up to 288MB max. (NB, the early PI units are limited to 256MB RAM max by the Intel TX chipset.) The onboard RAM is PC66 so it's best to match this when adding RAM rather than attempting to use PC100 sticks.
Video RAM: 2MB NeoMagic MagicGraph128XD.

The 600E:
MMC2 processors ranging from PII-300 to PII-400 (Dixon) with 66MHz FSB.
Base RAM: 32MB. Max RAM: 556MB.
Video RAM: 2.5MB NeoMagic MagicMedia256AV

The 600X:
MMC2 processor ranging from PIII 450 to PIII 650 (Speedstep) with 100MHz FSB. Aftermarket MMC-2 modules are available up to PIII 850MHz, the fastest MMC-2 module made.
Base RAM: 64MB. Max RAM: 576MB
Video RAM: 4MB NeoMagic MagicGraph256ZX

They use a different ultrabay than the 770, but seem easier to disassemble (we'll see about that!)

Please contribute what you can to this topic. Thanks

Nate

(Lightly edited by JHEM)

The 600 bay is called UltraSlimBay.

I have two 600X's: 2645-5FU (bought new) and 2645-9FU (junker on eBay). Both are the 650MHz SpeedStep type. 5FU came with DVD; 9FU with CD-ROM. Both have video out. I do not recommend using the machine as a DVD player as DVD playback to video requires a 16-bit display mode, and this can be really terrible to watch.

On the 5FU, I upgraded the CPU to 800MHz without a hitch. I replaced the original drive with a 40GB 40GNX, which is faster and a LOT quiter. I've had the RAM up to the full 576MB.

My 9FU is used by my wife. It has the old drive from the 5FU and some RAM.

I highly recommend getting the UltraSlimBay battery. It adds hours of useful time and they are cheap. Maybe I've been lucky, but I've bought several IBM branded, sealed batteries from eBay. They must be years old but they hold a charge like they are new.

Both have WiFi cards and have XP Pro installed. I've found XP Pro to work really well. WiFi support is very nice, as is support for hot-swapping digital media such as USB drives and CF cards from my digital camera.

I take care of two 600E's for family members (a -3AU and a -4AU). There are some models of 600E that will not accept 256MB memory modules (A5U, 55U and others... IBM's site is down at the moment).

I tried to upgrade the CPU in the 2645-3AU (300PE Mhz PII) to a 400MHz PII. It kind-of worked, but seemed to lock up when moved.

I replaced the keyboard, thinking I had broken a trace on the connector. No luck. I replaced the sub card. Also no luck. I put the old CPU back, along with the old keyboard, and the machine is fine.

I think the 400MHz machines use a different system board.

(I'm on a roll, apparently...)

The 600E runs its bus at 66MHz. However, I have used PC100 memory successfully in both of the ones I maintain.

The 600X runs its bus at 100MHz. I have not had luck using PC133 in my 600X.

It seems that for any 256MB module to work in either the 600E or 600X, it must have 16 low-density chips, rather than 8 high-density chips. The 600 apparently does not accept 256MB parts, but I have not used a 600.

I wonder if the processor is shorted somewhere? OR I recently had a problem with my original 770 that I upgraded to a PII 300mhz. I used a cheaper MMC1 module with external L2 cache, and when I replaced it with a PII 400mhz "on die cache" and it's running grea now.

Nate

I think you're on to something there, but that laptop is now used by my 78 year old father as his first ever computer. It's MORE than fast enough to play solitaire and poker!

If he ever gets on the internet, it'll be fast enough for e-mail and (most) web browsing too. That machine won't be getting any more upgrades. Its next stop is eBay. I've had it apart too many times to do it again.

how did the upgrade work? where did you get the CPU?
I bought 3 600E for friends, am interested in knowing the potential of the 5FU.

Tx.

The 5FU is a 600X SpeedStep model. I bought the 800MHz MMC-2 CPU module on eBay. Someone sold a lot of them at $49 each. They went quickly. I followed the HMM procedure for removing the CPU module, swapped in the new one and put the machine back together. I powered up into Eazy Setup and 800MHz appeared on the screen.

That being said, it is VERY difficult to keep the machine running at 800MHz and get long battery life. It seems to like 550MHz or so, but then again, it's not usually doing anything too taxing. I like longer battery life anyway. Windows XP will manage SpeedStep on its own, and Intel does not support its SpeedStep helper application under XP, so it's hard to know at any given moment the precise speed of your CPU. Benchmarking does show the expected improvement, though.

Some have upgraded a 600E from its PII to a PIII, but not me. You'll have to find other sources for 600E CPU upgrade tales.

I have a 600X running with a PIII 850MHz module as well as several now running with the 800MHz MMC2 module (I bought a bunch from the fellow who was selling them on eBay!) and have no problems with them under W2K.

The Intel Speedstep app runs just fine under W2K and the machines are very reliable.

That being said, I have never had good results with upgrading the 600E with a non-Speedstep or Speedstep PIII. Even when I could get them to BOOT well, the machines were unreliable and would throw all kinds of errors at the most inopportune times.

Regards,

James

[quote="whizkid"]The 5FU is a 600X SpeedStep model. I followed the HMM procedure for removing the CPU module, swapped in the new one and put the machine back together. I powered up into Eazy Setup and 800MHz appeared on the screen.

I gather it is not difficult to remove the old CPU? Not soldered?

Tx

Nothing but a screwdriver required. Intel's MMC-2 module is a small circuit board with the CPU and interface circuitry... and a really cool low-profile socket. That adds a lot of parts and expense, which is probably why they don't do that any more.

All the 600/E/X family use a CPU module.

Did somebody say that a P3 system board would work okay on in a TP600???
A J A

No.

Regards,

James

I've successfully upgraded my P2-366 600E to a P3-450. I had a BIOS error of 127 initially, which has to do with a P3 cache init problem (being a P2 BIOS). After Googling around for a bit (Google IS your friend) I came across this link:

http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/viewtopi ... nkpad+600e

After the CMOS modification to turn the cache off, and installing PowerLeap's CPU Control Panel in Windows to turn it back on, all is well running WinXP, with the onboard 32MB running fine. I confirmed the memory could handle the overclock by running Memtest86 for several hours. That page above also discusses how to turn off the OB RAM as well to avoid overclocking issues.

If you're using Linux, pass "cachemem=256k" to the kernel at boot to achieve the same thing.

Now if I could just get the thing to boot with a Toshiba SD-C2402 DVD with XP. Works fine with W2K and Linux, and when it's swapped into a suspended XP. I even installed XP with it no problem *shrug*

Regards from a happy 600E user,

Donald Bailey

Is this after disabling the built in 32 megs of ram? I'm curious as to whether this will work because I'm just about to try such an upgrade on my sister's 600E, it's already a P2-400 - but I want to put a speedstep 600 in it, so it'll run at 500mhz, use less power, run at 100mhz fsb and have SSE. I'm hoping it'll work since I've been able to disable both the L2 cache and the onboard memory by following the CMOS editing instructions from sharedoc on wimsbios forums.

Okay, I've just done the mod (upgraded 600E from PII 400 to PIII 600 speedstep) and it's working great now. It did everything I wanted it to do just like I expected, the increase in speed along with SSE have made it capable of playing any Divx files and it seems a little faster too.
It only runs at the lower speedstep of 500MHz but I consider that to be a good thing, although power usage doesn't seem to have decreased

I did run into some memory problems like JHEM hinted towards, although it seems to run fine with the right combination of memory and things like standby mode work as they should.
I made up a little table of which memory worked and which didn't and the results are fairly inconclusive, the two sticks I had trouble with work fine on their own or with just those two in the laptop, but when paired with one of the 256meg modules I have, the machine will crash within a minute of starting up. The 256 modules work fine on their own or with both:

64 = 64MB Compaq PC100 module, rated for CAS2
128 = 128MB Kingston PC100 module, rated for CAS2
256s = 256MB Samsung PC100 module, rated for CAS3
256c = 256MB Crucial PC133 module (low density), rated for CAS2 at PC133

X means it crashed, O means it worked as far as I can tell, ran prime95 for a few minutes.

64+256s = X
256s+256c = O
256s+128 = X
256c+64 = X
256c+128 = X
128 = O
256s = O
256c = O
64+128 = O

So I guess the 600E is much more picky about what memory it'll run at 100MHz than the 600X probably is.
One thing that I noticed is that it runs the tightest timings of all the SDRAM based laptops I have available, it forces CAS 2, ras-cas 3 and ras precharge 3. Unlike my X20 that seems to force CAS 3, ras-cas 3 and ras precharge 3. Both have a DRAM idle timer of 0 (which means the memory is cleared every clock cycle, which probably makes it run slightly hotter).
The dell c600 that I've got seems to use SPD on everything but forces a DRAM idle timer of 8 clocks.

I have a 570E, and from what I can gather, it is essentially a 600 series Thinkpad. Mine came with P III processor which I haven't upgraded. I did increase the RAM to 256, replaced the keyboard after the letters wore off and a couple of keys needed a hard punch to register, replaced the docking bay which died, and went from Windows 98 to Windows 2000. I almost replaced the CD ROM with a newer burner so I wouldn't have to keep using the floppies, but opted to buy an external burner instead. I'm still on the two original batteries I bought with the unit 4 years ago, although they don't last as long as they used to. I'd like a bigger hard drive and a faster processor, but I think I've reached the point of diminshing returns.

I've dropped this thing on a tile floor, inadvertently left it in a hot car, left it on for an extended period with two batteries in place and thought I'd cooked it for sure. It keeps on tickin'.

OK. The 600X uses a 440BX controller. That can handle four slots of 256MB each, but the 600X has two slots and one bank of 64MB soldered in.

Hmmm. Solder, eh? Does anyone know off-hand how many memory chips are in a 600X so I don't have to take mine apart... again?

I'm going to guess there are 8 chips. Since the 600X can't seem to handle high density RAM, that means that if a (crazy, addle-headed loony) person were to solder in new RAM, it would mean that the 64MB internal would become 128MB, increasing the max from 576 to 640MB. That's hardly worthwhile.

But, if there are 16 chips, and a person could connect the extra two address lines to each chip, that means someone COULD have a 600X with a souped up 850MHz PIII and 768MB RAM.

<sigh> Ah but that would have had to be done before I got married.

I have a Thinkpad 600e (model 2645-4AU) system that I'm wanting to upgrade the CPU, RAM memory, and also put a DVD drive in it. Currently, it runs on a Intel Celeron 366 Mhz and has 32MB of onboard RAM with another 128 MB of SDRAM added. I found this out by utilitzing IBM's system snapshot program on their website. I have never actually had the system apart to see with my own eyes what is in it.

So my question is, is there anywhere on the internet that will tell me information pertaining to the system board in my 600e? Because if I'm upgrading the CPU, won't I need to know how many pins it has and how fast of a processor the board will accept? Same issue with the RAM memory. I'm not sure what kind of RAM to put in there. The previous owner told me that he updated the BIOS (INET36WW) to where it will now accept 512 MB of RAM memory. My baseboard serial number is J1Y268171M3 in case anyone knows of a search option for pulling up system board informaiton.

I've done many searches and have come up empty handed.

Your 4AU came with a Pentium II at 366MHz, not a Celeron. Others can better tell you what CPU module to use to try to upgrade. The CPU is on an Intel MMC-2 module and runs at 66MHz. This thread has great info on upgrading your CPU.

As far as RAM goes, you certainly can put two 256MB 144-pin, SO-DIMM modules running at PC66 or PC100 speeds. I don't think anyone made 256MB PC66 parts, and PC100 will work and have better resale value because they'll work in more machines. They are pretty pricey nowadays. Crucial sells theirs for $114 and IBM for $159.

If you buy a 256MB part that "might" work in your 600E, be certain it has 16 chips. If it has 8 chips, it will not work. For example, computer geeks sometimes has a 256MB PC100 part with 8 chips for about $45 that WILL NOT work.

The easy way to get DVD is to buy an IBM UltraSlimBay DVD drive. They go on eBay for about $35 for 2x and $45 for 6x. Do not get "UltraBay Slim", "UltraBay 2000", "UltraBay Plus" or any other configuration. There are also third-party 8x drives that will likely work too.

I am about to order a new cpu from ebay for my 600e (2645-55u). It is currently a PII 300. I've added 2x256MB IBM memory PN 33L3070 http://www-1.ibm.com/support/docview.wss?uid=psg1MIGR-4E4RG3. The BIOS shows 544 installed, but only 512 usable. Any ideas here?

If you have to do this over again, would you still go with a steepstep cpu, even though you're not using it to its full potential? I'm not sure if I should just go with a PIII 500, or follow in your footsteps.

Any comments would be appreciated.

Got this 600 from my dad when he upgraded and i really dont need anything fast, but come on 233 mz? My palm pilot is faster than that. I wanted to put something much faster and was wondering if i am stuck at 400? That would be tragic because i just bid on a couple on ebay. Thanks

I bought an Intel 2200BG MiniPCI card and it works in my 600X (2645-5FU). I have not yet antennae, so the range is about four feet.

It is the same size as the modem I removed, so there was nothing special to do. The BIOS seemed fine after a strange first boot (two short beeps then a reboot).

I installed the drivers, put the machine close to my WAP and my 802.11b network was detected. I entered my WEP key and away it went. I have not tested 802.11g yet and am looking forward to the range I can get when I add internal antennae.

Well, I mostly went with it because it was on ebay for about the same price as all the PIII 500 MMC2 cpus I'd seen, so I bought it. The speedstep seems to make a slight difference in power usage (making it similar in power usage to my X20) but it's all worked out well since the addition of SSE allows it to play just about all divx/xvid videos that I have, which it struggled with quite badly with just the PII

My ebay purchased PIII 650 MMC-2 arrived, and it is either a dud or just isn't right for my 600E. The seller did say that he verified it working before the sale. The model is PMM65002101AB . Looks like I'll be sticking with my PII 300 600E, and will use my new PIII 650 as a coaster. Oh well, it was a fun exercise.

I broke down yesterday after reading all the messages of success WRT installing WiFi in a 600X and slapped a spare Intel 802.11b WiFi/modem combo card into one of my shop 600Xs.

I installed IBM's Access Connections on the system (W2K) and have had no problems connecting to my 11b WAP from approx. 6 feet or so. I've got antennae on the way and hope to find a way to install them in the display, but will settle for installing them in the base if necessary.

BTW, the modem portion of the card works just fine with the combo card drivers loaded, in fact I daresay it works better than the original modem only card.

Regards,

James

James, any luck installing an antenna? Mine arrived today.

I took the 600X apart. It's the first time I've had the screen out and there's NOWHERE for these antennae to go. They are only 15" long, which is part of the problem. The other problem is the tight clearance of the 600X screen in the cover.

It looks like the screen has two backlights; one on the bottom of the screen and one on the left side.

I may be able to get one on top of the screen if I stretch the wire to its limit... delicately of course, and another one on the bottom.

The antennae have a metal box attached to the end, and I don't know how much of that box acts as antenna and how much is structurally used to attach to the machine in question. So that's another big issue I have right now. For the curious, the box measures about 4x4x39mm. Tabs on the end extend the clip to 61mm total.

Bah. More to follow.

I installed antennae in my 600X. What a complete hassle. It's a VERY tight squeeze. You cannot install them vertically on the sides. There's just no room.

I clipped the very ends off the long metal boxes, and installed one at the top of the screen, and one at the bottom. I completely disassembled the 600X to run the wires to the MinoPCI area and didn't leave enough slack for one of them. I tried to pull it through some more and yanked the connector off of it!

There's no hole for the wires to go through, so they are clamped pretty firmly in place. Three more inches on the leads would be great. Extender cables would be great because you could take the machine apart properly again.

But the other one seems to be OK for now. I have "Good" signal strength two rooms away. Will try downstairs tomorrow.

Lessons learned: 15" will probably be JUST enough length for 600X antennae; you should be VERY comfortable disassembling your machine, or following the HMM instructions; it really is a royal PITA. Don't do it unless you're a masochist or you just HAVE to open up both your PC Card slots for some reason.

i have a 600e and want to upgrade it with a celeron mmc2 500MHz cpu has any one done this and can it work thank for your input

I have a TP 600 and want to run a DVD player on it...any ideas to make it work?