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

[dogmatix.keeper]

Sorry middleton. Can you quickly look at my other questions?

1. Is the newest middleton bios recommended and does it also enable SATAII on T61p?

2. With the bios mod one loose the guarantee, but how is it handled in practice by lenovo that means do they check it? Has somebody experience with it? Before sending the notebook to lenovo for repairing it, one could flash the bios with the official bios from lenovo but It could be the case that the notebook is in a way damaged that a flashing is no more possible.

using a mod bios is always on your own risk, and *most probably* it will void your laptop warranty.

it's your call (your decision to make).

[dogmatix.keeper]

What is CTRL-FN swap?

just take a look at your laptop's keyboard. the fix is to switch the position of the Fn key & Ctrl key.

Some of us prefer that the lower left key is a Ctrl key, instead of an Fn.

[EnglishCoder]

I have an x61s, and have been waiting for the 2.22-1.03 bios patch to come out of beta, but it seems it's taking a while, so I'm a little concerned that there may be problems.

Anyone tried the phoenix flash recovery sofware after a bad flash?

It looks as though it may be necessary to flash from a non-64 bit OS (rather than from a CD) - is this the case?

Has anyone flashed an x61s with Middleton's latest 2.22-1.03 bios?

Also, I wasn't sure whether I could use the previous 2.21 mod, as my machine has already been flashed with the official 2.22

@Middleton - It's a shame you're not able to take donations anymore, as I would have donated towards your efforts... maybe you could sell something on ebay, that I could buy.

[Bert Kwok]

Hello all. This is a good place to be with BIOS modders bestowing gifts upon us! I inherited my 26 month old T61 from my employers and will be fitting a Crucial M4 in the boot drive bay. I see there is Middleton 2.27-1.08 from post #75 and Middleton 2.29-1.08 from post #580.
I note there is no separate BIOS files for Dual IDA or NOT in the newest Middleton revision. I presume that the newer files are Dual IDA only as stable function is now well confirmed. Is my assumption correct?

Downloading the BIOS files does indeed show the 2.29-1.08 as "Dual IDA". It must be stable.

[middleton]

Sorry guys, don't have much time to answer in this thread (I'm very busy at the moment). Just want to provide you some information:

- dual IDA patches (from page 8) have been downloaded about 1500 times.
- new BIOS versions (from page 58) have been downloaded about 750 times.

We haven't seen mass negative feedback so far. I think all the beta BIOS versions will become recommended from the next month.

[Bert Kwok]

Sorry guys, don't have much time to answer in this thread (I'm very busy at the moment). Just want to provide you some information:

- dual IDA patches (from page 8) have been downloaded about 1500 times.
- new BIOS versions (from page 58) have been downloaded about 750 times.

We haven't seen mass negative feedback so far. I think all the beta BIOS versions will become recommended from the next month.

BIOS file 2.29-1.08. Flashed using ISO image. It is stable on my T61 7300, battered the machine with many arduous tasks on a Win 7 x64 install. Works a treat. Saturates SATA 2 with a Crucial M4. Many thanks middleton BIOS modder.

CrystalDiskMark 3.0.1 x64 (C) 2007-2010 hiyohiyo
Crystal Dew World : http://crystalmark.info/
-----------------------------------------------------------------------
* MB/s = 1,000,000 byte/s [SATA/300 = 300,000,000 byte/s]

Sequential Read : 254.880 MB/s
Sequential Write : 108.677 MB/s
Random Read 512KB : 235.791 MB/s
Random Write 512KB : 108.598 MB/s
Random Read 4KB (QD=1) : 16.653 MB/s [ 4065.8 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=1) : 35.245 MB/s [ 8604.7 IOPS]
Random Read 4KB (QD=32) : 125.834 MB/s [ 30721.1 IOPS]
Random Write 4KB (QD=32) : 96.323 MB/s [ 23516.3 IOPS]

Test : 100 MB [C: 21.2% (12.6/59.5 GB)] (x5)
Date : 2011/06/22 1:24:58
OS : Windows 7 Ultimate Edition SP1 [6.1 Build 7601] (x64)

[chx_panda]

:d Good News

[middleton]

To all

After quite a long testing, all the beta patches have become recommended ones. You can download them from page 8.

[Kamika007z]

Thank you so much middleton!!

[Bert Kwok]

After one week I can safely say that the modded BIOS by middleton is completely sound. I have had cause to continually swap ultrabay drives whilst installing applications for what is now my own machine rather than my employers. I eject the ultrabay drive using the Win 7 taskbar utility and replace with the combi drive or a 500Gb spinpoint while applications are still open. Not a single problem or complaint from the OS or machine, it is totally stable.
Be in no doubt that if you do not have the money for the latest machine but yearn for a performance increase the BIOS mod unlocking Sata 3 performance and maybe an SSD purchase will buy you time before having to spend yet more money. Many thanks to one of the communities givers and the others here that have made this possible