[ltp] Refurbing a TP600e 21645-5JU for Knoppix/Linux

[Shingo Tamaru]

The topic of upgrading a TP600E/770X/Z has been intensively
discussed in the forum,
www.thinkpads.com
Please take a look at this forum for more info. I will give you
a summary of the ultimate TP600E configuration I can think of,

The fastest CPU TP600E can take is PIII-850 running at
700MHz. Along with this upgrade, you may also want to
change the fan assy to the one designed for TP600X.

If you replace the CPU from PII to PIII, the FSB will be
changed to 100MHz. So you should disable the onboard
RAM because it is PC66 and too slow to work at 100MHz.
Also, you will encounter 127 error on boot after putting
PIII but there is a way of eliminating this error.
For more info about how to disable the RAM, see
http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4046

You can put two sticks of 256MB SDRAM, meaning that
the max memory is 256x2=512MB after disabling the
onboard RAM.

The TP600E bios is too old and does not enable the L2 cache.
So if you plan on using Linux, you should take the following steps
to take full advantage of the PIII.
1:Create a small DOS partition at the beginning of the HDD.
(10MB is enough)
2:Install DOS(FreeDOS, DR-DOS or whatever)
3:Boot DOS first
4:Enable L2 cache using a DOS app called 'cache-enabler 1.20'
(http://dennemoso.homeip.net/ is the distribution site of this app,
but this site is dead for while. I can give it to you if you want.)
5:Load the Linux kernel using loadlin.

If you are brave enough to do all these upgrades, your TP600E
will be as fast as TP600X. Think about that.

Shingo