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

[dubak]

Hi everybody,
in last 2 days I've been trying to find any possible information on this topic. Quite a few I found on this web and also on the lenovo forums. However, it seems to me that this problem hasn't yet been solved.

And I think there are quite many T61/X61 which where the original HDDs are being swaped for SSDs. And therefore quite many of us unhappy T61/X61 customers who would even be willing to pay few $$ to someone being able to hack the BIOS to enable the SATA 300.

I'm sure I'm not the only one. If someone spends ~$800 on a fast SSD drive and cannot actually use it at full speed, I think everybody will bi willing to spend a bit more fore someone who will be able to unleash the full SSD potential on the T61/X61

If Lenovo is not willing to do this for us, we should find our own solution. And the one who makes it I'm sure he can make profit on that.

dubak

[User Retired 2]

7-22-2010 PROBLEM SOLVED!! Patched R61/T61/X61 sata-II bios available here.

_______________________________________________________________________________________

Just today I've posted a request on thinkpads.com for a hacked bios fix solution. All that is necessary is decompressing the bios, disassembly, altering the offending byte(s), repack and distribute to the enjoyment of users. T61p worthy of the time investment.

T61p bios hack for ICH8M SATA-II 3Gbps (+history), quoted below:

Problem

Current-gen Indilinx, Samsung and Intel SSDs are seeing their SATA-II ~260MB/s sequential read/writes capped to SATA-I 1.5Gbps 130MB/s. The high performance Intel X25M G2 also sees multithreaded 4kb reads being capped from it's SATA-II 162MB/s level to 130MB/s SATA-I as shown here and here.

Affected Systems

All Santa Rosa based Lenovo Thinkpads using ICH8M I/O chipset are bios capped to 1.5Gbps link speed. Lenovo's reason being 'standardising' 1.5Gbps operation for ultrabay compatibility explained here.

The Solution 1. T61p's ICH8M I/O chipset's sata controller is capped to 1.5Gbps mode by the bios setting CAP.ISS to 1.5Gbps mode as shown here. 2. Request Lenovo community attempt to hack the bios byte(s) to change CAP.ISS to the 3Gbps setting. A previous request went out months ago on MydigitalLife here, a premier bios hacking community, with no useful response.

History

i. Lenovo advertised SATA-II capability with the T61p in the tabook shown here.

ii. Intel advertised ICH8M I/O chipset's SATA-II 3GBps performance as a key benefit of upgrading from ICH7M.

iii. Many are running the ultrabays with the Marvell 88SA8040 sata-to-pata chip with 3Gbps HDDs without any problems shown here and here.

iv. Same-gen HP 8510W also with the ICH8M I/O controller and FX570M graphics has SATA-II capability. Does this mean the 8510W bios would work on the T61P?

Note: I am not a T61P owner, just someone who was asked by T61P owners to investigate this problem.

[ZaZ]

This is the way it's going to be. Despite my misgivings, I'm going to allow this thread to move forward, but as soon as this thread devolves into the merits of doing this or a discussion of Lenovo's decision to cap the T61 era machines, this will be closed. If you have anything to contribute to the subject, please feel to post. I would also add you're doing this at your own risk. If you brick your machine or void your warranty, you're on your own.

[BNHabs]

I think it can be done! Come on people!

[darkwish]

There is a guy who made a BIOS modification that swaps the FN and CTRL button functions in the lenovo forums. Perhaps one of you could contact him to see if he can tackle your SATA2 cap problem.

http://forums.lenovo.com/t5/T400-T50...ED/td-p/199662

[LaptopGun]

Mark's explanation sounds a lot more believable than what I thought was the "company line." I mean Lenovo capped it in order to save power.

Current Lenovo drives have firmware set to 1.5 Gb/s data rates.

Exchanging these drives for after-market drives which support SATA bus of 3.0 Gb/s should provide for the higher data rate at the overall system level

That's a new wrinkle for all Thinkpad users, not just 61 generation users So my Thinkpad's original hard drive had the same (barely noticeable) cap. Oh well, at least I don't want to worry about that. The 7K200 has been relegated to my UltraBay.

Did Lenovo ever offer the T or X61 with a SSD as default? If so I guess they would have to have a firmware flash. I just doubt a 2007-08 era SSD (besides the original X-25M and Lenovo only used Samsungs back then) would saturate the SATA 1 speeds. Ok, the people who need this are also bringing their own SSDs to the party anyway

[erik]

Did Lenovo ever offer the T or X61 with a SSD as default?

only as a CTO option (and a very expensive one at that )

[jketzetera]

Nando4,

The Mydigitallife forum has a quite active BIOS modding community. If I am not mistaken, there is a guy called Yen that is a skilled Thinkpad BIOS modder.

[BNHabs]

Nando4,

The Mydigitallife forum has a quite active BIOS modding community. If I am not mistaken, there is a guy called Yen that is a skilled Thinkpad BIOS modder.

Would it be possible to ask him for us

[LaptopGun]

only as a CTO option (and a very expensive one at that )

Can't say I'm surprised. It would have had to have been the SLC Samsung