*HP 2510p Owners Lounge*

nando4 · 10-17-2009, 10:19 AM

[ deleted - redundant ]

Yotis · 10-27-2009, 03:49 AM

Hello,

I also have a 2510p and I am very happy with that device except the speed of the HDD. Therefore I ordered a new SSD drive but this is not working like expected. The computer doesn’t recognise the drive (no HDD found and the BIOS shows all HDD options in light grey which are not selectable any more). Maybe the drive has a defect or the ZIF cable is broken.

Just to check if I did something wrong in the configuration so that I can locate the problem:
The following configuration should work, or?

Notebook HP 2510p
Replacing original 1,8 ZIF HDD with
RunCore 128GB Pro 1,8 - Fact.-No.: RCP-IV-Z1828-C

Thanks for your help.

nando4 · 10-27-2009, 04:46 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yotis

Maybe the drive has a defect or the ZIF cable is broken.

INFO: replacement ZIF cable (DD00T2HD001)

Would suggest try re-connecting the supplied 1.8" ZIF HDD with the cable and see if it works OK. If not, then likely the cable has been damaged requiring a replacement. There are DD00T2HD001 replacements on ebay starting from US$6-shipped worldwide for a genuine item. I prefer the genuine golden colored ones with foil backing and text markings on either side just because I know they work well.

Above: Left is the US$11-shipped replacement 2510P ZIF cable received from newlaptop168, right is the original cable with a scorched edge. They are identical. The fault here was the ZIF pin ends had lifted so was no longer connecting through to the ZIF socket. The scorching being the result of a failed attempt at a repair.

Using the ZIF SSD stiffener

I had missed that the stiffener is available on the ZIF SSD, thinking that perhaps such a facility exists but the ZIF connector looks so fragile that I didn't dare explore in case I broke something. Well, there is a stiffener that can be flicked up which then really does make it Zero Force Insertion (ZIF).

Suggest disconnecting the ZIF cable, wiping it clear of any remnanets from it's last position, then reseating it.

The ZIF cable only goes about 1mm into the ZIF socket. The white line on the cable lines up closer to the against the outer edge of my Toshiba ZIF HDD as shown below:

If using a non-Toshiba ZIF HDD, suggest try booting it *without* the optical drive installed just in case there is some master/slave issue between them.

spiridow · 11-01-2009, 11:05 AM

Hi,

I have been using my 2510p for more than a year now. Here's its story:

It shipped with Vista Business. I used this operating system for about 2 months. It worked quite nice, expect that it was really slow. At first I didn't complain about it because what really mattered is that I could work with it, so it was not really a big deal. But about 2 months later, my anti virus reminded me that its license would expire in two weeks. I didn't want to pay for a new license so I just continued working without doing anything about that. One day before the expiration date, I got a new warning about it. I still didn't do anything. 2 days later, it was completely broken. How suspicious!

The system was unbelievably slow and even failed to start a few times. So I decided to install a linux distribution on my machine. It was not the first time I tried a linux based operating system, but it was the first time I installed it for an everyday use. I chose Ubuntu 8.10, since it was known to be "linux for human beings". If you are new to the linux world, then Ubuntu it the right thing for you. The installation is straightforward and it is as easy to use as Windows. It's just different.

Well, it worked quite well, and the system started in less than a minute (whereas Vista required a minute and a half or something).

During the next months, my knowledge about linux operating systems grew and I tried multiple distributions:

Slitaz 2.0: Very fast OS, but still buggy and too minimal. Couldn't get wifi to work with this one. And max resolution it wanted to display was 1024x768 (screen allows 1280x800). I'll try it again in march 2010 when version 3.0 gets released.

Xubuntu 9.04: Very complete, has all the things you need. Everything worked fine with this one. I didn't try the finger sensor though, I'm not using it so it's disabled. System desktop reached in about 45 seconds from power button press.

and a lot more... (Damn Small, Puppy, Fedora, etc.)

until I discovered Arch (www.archlinux.org).

At first it can be quite confusing to install, because the base system doesn't have any graphical tool at all. You must use the command line to install it, and know your hardware.

But it's simply the best operating system I came to use. I like it's minimal base system. It doesn't come with loads of software you will never use preinstalled. Even so, you have the choice to install thousands of packets, stored on repositories, with mirrors all around the globe.

All this for free (yes, most linux distributions are free of charge).

And that's when I really started to tweak my system for better response times.

With a highly tweaked rc.sysinit (init script), my 2510p laptop needed 32 seconds to reach fully loaded desktop from Power button press.

We know that the BIOS on the 2510p takes roughly 8 seconds to load so the boot time was 32-8 = 24 seconds. Which was a nice performance knowing that this machine has a 1.33 GHz dual core cpu, and a very slow hard drive.

Still, my quest for a faster boot time was not over.

I searched the web and found this thread.

So after reading this thread, I chose to replace the bottleneck hard drive with a 64 GB Runcore ZIF SSD.

It's been a whole week since I received and installed it, now.

Here are the results:

Boot time is now 9 seconds with the new SSD. That makes a 17 seconds cold start (BIOS load time + system boot time). Power button press to fully loaded desktop. I'm never buying a new laptop without an SSD. This component reduced my boot time by 15 seconds, with the exact same configuration.

For those of you who would like to try an alternative to Windows, I recommand starting with Ubuntu (version 9.10 was released last week), and then once you know a bit more about it, you can try something different.
Ubuntu : www.ubuntu.com

Of course, windows executables won't work with this operating system (unless you use "Wine" but it doesn't work with everything), so you have been warned. Hopefully there are software equivalents to help you do your work.

For example, if you're familiar with Microsoft Office (word, excel, powerpoint, etc.) then you will have no problem using the Open Office suite which is exactly the same, but free and open source.

Here's a screenshot of my everyday system:

http://omploader.org/vMm82cw/2009-11...x800_scrot.png
(this is Archlinux using the Openbox window manager, tint2 task bar, conky system monitor and firefox web browser)

Configuration possibilities with linux are close to infinity. So you can build your own system so that it fits your needs. This is what I really like with it.

I hope you liked my little story about this true beast (2510p).

Regards,

spiridow

sfsilicon · 11-01-2009, 02:50 PM

Updated eBay caddy with OCZ Vertex 60GB SSD benchmarks. Note that turning on power saving mode in XP will have a significant impact on the write performance (65 vs 31 MB/s) of the drive/caddy.

Just to complete the benchmarks I also tested boot and shutdown with no power saving enabled:
XP Boot = 24s (from pressing power button to login screen)
Login to XP desktop =~5s (most is my typing so the actual time could be 1-2s)
XP Shutdown = 13s

Folks if you can afford it do yourself a favor and get either an Intel or Indilinx SSD. Best bang for the buck in my experience.

spiridow · 11-02-2009, 01:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by nando4

Did you align the Linux partition on a 512kb boundary like shown here and here? If aligned off sector 63, as may be the case for DOS compatablity, then any 4kb read/write would occur over 2 4kb SSD NAND pages. Being aligned against a 512kb/1MB offset would make the read/write occur in a single NAND page to give maximum performance.

When I installed the OS I chose the automatic partitioning, and I didn't modify my partitions since then, so I'm not sure if it's aligned or not. I only chose the size of the partitions, but nothing like alignment.

My SSD is partitioned like this:

/ is formated as ext4
/boot is formated as ext2
/home is formated as ext4
and a swap partition

The output of sudo fdisk -l is

Code:

Disk /dev/sda: 64.0 GB, 64023257088 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 7783 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes
Disk identifier: 0x3dab324e

   Device Boot      Start         End      Blocks   Id  System
/dev/sda1   *           1          13      104422   83  Linux
/dev/sda2              14          46      265072+  82  Linux swap / Solaris
/dev/sda3              47        2596    20482875   83  Linux
/dev/sda4            2597        7783    41664577+  83  Linux

nando4 · 11-02-2009, 07:56 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by spiridow

When I installed the OS I chose the automatic partitioning, and I didn't modify my partitions since then, so I'm not sure if it's aligned or not. I only chose the size of the partitions, but nothing like alignment.

Your partitions are not aligned. The linux fdisk aligns to cyclinder boundaries and is as yet not SSD-alignment aware, so need to do it manually as discussed here. If using Win7 to create new paritions, they will be automatically aligned to 1MB boundaries.

Recommend refer also to OCZ SSD: Guide Linux - Tips, tweaks and alignment . You'll want to schedule wiper.sh to keep the performance in "as new" condition. My understanding is the 1.8" ZIF ProIV is using the same Indilinx Barefoot Controller as the OCZ Vertex/Agility, packaged in a 1.8" form factor with a sata-to-pata bridge chip so the OCZ Vertex documentation applies.

nando4 · 11-03-2009, 09:18 AM

WARNING: FSB Overclocking means higher operating temperature. Observe decent cooling precautions. I take no responsibility for any damage. User beware.

INFO: Overclocking the 2510P using grub2 bootloader

Can overclock starting at grub2 bootloader which maintains the faster speed independently of whatever operating systems you are booting into. Eg: OSX. See here for instructions. Using this method means steps 1-3 below for Linux are redundant. Step4 and Step5 can be used to maintain the overclocked state after resume-from-standby using the standalone binary.

INFO: Overclocking the 2510P in Linux

Warning: O/C can damage components, observe cooling precautions. Summarizing from SoftFSB OCing 4 Linux (Dev) thread here and here.

The steps required to successfully overclock a 2510P's ics9lprs355 PLL in Linux are below. This was tested on my 9.04 Jaunty system. Previously I needed to boot into Windows, run setfsb, then warm boot into Linux to overclock. Steps below could be applied to other systems, modifying the system specific parameters in (1) and (2). Combing the overclock with Xorg Intel 2.9.0 X3100 driver results in noticably brisker graphics response. I found the overclock needed to be done after the wifi radio had been turned on otherwise the wifi card failed to initiate. So rather than use init scripts, I overclock via /etc/gdm/PostLogin/Default.

1. Enable SMBUS to allow communication with the PLL

The 2510P bios disables the ICH8M SMBus. Enable it by setting bit 3=0 at RCBA+3418H (Function Disable register). RCBA is stored at 0/31/0 F0-F3h. So can identify the RCBA address with a setpci (Linux) or Baredit (Windows).

Code:

$ setpci -s 0:1f.0 f0.l
fed90001

RCBA=FED90001 on the 2510P. "read_dword 0xFED93418" in grub2's commandline tells me the bios set value of the Function Disable is 0x33C000D. The rightmost digit 0xD=1101 (bit3:0). So we want 0x5=0101. Three ways 0x33C0005 can be written to the 0xFED93418, the first being the simplest.

(i) Download and install grub2 1.94b3 or newer and place the following entry in your Linux boot menuitem. grub2 replaces legacy grub in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala).

/boot/grub/grub.cfg

Code:

write_dword 0xFED93418 0x33C0005

(ii) Or use the DIY ViDock DOS bootdisk supplied with pt.exe, and do the write using 'pt MEM write 4 0xFED93418 0x33c0005' , then chainload Linux using the supplied grub4dos by running 'grub'.

(iii) Or recompile the kernel doing the equivalent memory write in kernel code.

You'll know when this has been successfully implemented as the SMBus device will appear on lspci output:

Code:

$ lspci | grep -i smbus
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)

2. Install lfsb with 2510P's ics9lprs355 PLL support

Download lfsb-ics9lprs355.tgz. It has a lfsb precompiled x86 binary. Can also compile it yourself by downloading lfsb-0.4.1, extracting it and copying the lfsb-ics9lprs355.tgz files over the lfsb source and then 'make' it.

Copy lfsb into the path /usr/local/bin

3. Test overclocking

NOTE: lfsb does not show the correct CPU frequency in the examples below.

Test overclocking with one of the following frequencies: 133 142 150 158 167 175. I use 167 (ie: 1.2Ghz -> 1.5Ghz), checking the faster glxgears response with the faster FSB.

Code:

# glxgears
3141 frames in 5.0 seconds = 628.014 FPS
3144 frames in 5.0 seconds = 628.709 FPS
3149 frames in 5.0 seconds = 629.635 FPS
^C
# modprobe i2c_dev
# modprobe i2c_i801
# lfsb -y ics9lprs355 167
-------------------------------------------------------------
CPU frequency : 17.32 MHz (estimated)
PLL ics9lprs355 is supported.
-------------------------------------------------------------
Changing to:
FSB=167 MHz
FSB frequency changed.
-------------------------------------------------------------
CPU frequency : 34.02 MHz (estimated)
FSB=167 MHz
-------------------------------------------------------------
# glxgears
3938 frames in 5.0 seconds = 787.588 FPS \
3930 frames in 5.0 seconds = 785.827 FPS  -- Improved rendering speed 
3922 frames in 5.0 seconds = 784.286 FPS /

4. Add overclock to be automated on startup

If overclocking is stable, add to be automatically started up:

/etc/modules

Code:

# wifi - before the i2c drivers 
iwlagn

# Add i2c modules to be able to communicate with the PLL for overclocking
i2c_dev
i2c_i801

/etc/gdm/PostLogin/Default

Code:

# Overclock 2510P from 133->167 FSB
/usr/local/bin/lfsb -y ics9lprs355 167

5. Add overclock upon resume-from-standby or resume-from-hibernate

Create script as shown below. For unknown reason I can only overclock up to 150Mhz FSB after a resume. 158Mhz results in video garbage and system hanging.

/etc/pm/sleep.d/02overclock

Code:

#!/bin/bash
case $1 in
   hibernate)
       ;;
   suspend)
       ;;
   resume|thaw)
       # need to re-init the i2c bus after a resume
       modprobe -r i2c-dev; modprobe i2c-dev
       modprobe -r i2c-i801; modprobe i2c-i801
       
       # 158 freezes the video after standby.. 150 is still OK
       /usr/local/bin/lfsb -y ics9lprs355 150
       ;;
   *)
       ;;
esac

nando4 · 11-14-2009, 11:45 AM

INFO: Undo the slave PATA 30MB/s sequential write speed capping

The cause of this slowdown appears to be a combination of two things: (i) the bios writes 0x3033 to 0/31/1 54h, implying the master and slave should be running full 66Mhz/ATA100 timings with 80 cable connector. Running Linux's 'setpci -s 0:31.1 54.l' or checking in grub2 confirms this to be the case. This should theoretically set the fastest timings for both channels but my testing found this not to be the case. 0/31/1 54h must be 0x1033 for the fast 66Mhz timings on both channels. Seems the ICH8M is reading bit 13 reversed (slave timings) so it needs to be 0. (ii) the Windows IDE driver changes the bios set 0x3033 to 0x1011. The net result is the ICH8M slave channel uses 33Mhz rather than 66Mhz internal timings. I used baredit to manually set the 66Mhz timing by writing 0x1033. Upon the very next run of Crystaldiskmark with my 500GB HDD as slave, without any need for a reboot sees 60MB/s writes as seen on the master channel. Up from the ~20MB seen in the 33Mhz mode. I simulated the result on the 64GB Runcore ProIV ZIF SSD on the master channel and we see it too has < 30MB/s sequential writes when running in 33Mhz mode as seen by the Crystaldiskmark results. Right: baredit image of 2510P 0/31/1 54h. Info as extracted from ICH8M I/O datasheet.
	33Mhz master+slave	66Mhz master+slave

How to set the slave channel into 66Mhz mode for the faster write performance?

Quote:

1. Download Baredit
2. Navigate to 0/31/1, byte 54, change it from 0x1011 to 0x1033
3. Click "write"-> Save. Test with CrystalDiskmark to confirm the fast writes.
4. If satisfied, repeat 1-3, click Apply on Startup. c:\bar_save\baredit will be
added to your Startup using c:\bar_save\bar-edit.ini for it's parameters

A resume-from-standby will lose this setting, so need the following to run after a resume. Can use the resume-setfsb.vbs script that runs in a loop infinitely looking for a resume event. Just need to add c:\barsave\baredit in the script to run when it detects a resume event.

There must be a registry setting somewhere to prevent the driver from running 33Mhz mode, but where??
To see the same faster writes in Linux, ensure add a 'setpci -s 0:1f.1 54.l=1033' into /etc/gdm/PostLogin/Default as well as create an entry in /etc/pm/sleep.d like shown in the post above this one.

UPDATE: Root cause analysis

The reason why the Windows driver is switching slave into the 40pin 33Mhz mode is because the ATAPI data against the HDD is set to 40pin cable mode. It would seem the bios sets this in the drive. hdparm doesn't have an option to change it either. See below:

tudorlaptop · 11-15-2009, 11:10 AM

I have a HP 2510p. Whilst looking for a cure to the speaker connection being loose, I found this thread. I am curious to see that the performance can be improved with a new hard drive. As someone who is not as savvy as most of the posters seem to be, could you tell me how easy is it to install the 64 GB Runcore ZIF SSD. Is it a simple matter of making an image of the current disk, removing it, and then putting in the new disk and putting the image onto it? (I use acronis for this) Will I need any additional connection hardware to install the SDD?

As an aside can someone advise how I can find instructions to take the laptop apart so I can do something to the speaker connection. At present I only get sound if I press hard on the case just next to the touchpad.

Please be gentle with a newbie poster

Thanks

Tudorlaptop