Middleton BIOS on ThinkPads

[balanga]

Has anyone attempted to install the Middleton BIOS on a ThinkPad X61?

I tried a few years ago on a previous laptop but it never rebooted. Just wondered if anyone here had tried....

 

[ralphbsz]

Why? What advantage does it have? The possible disadvantages are many.

 

[balanga]

According to the link:-

SATA-II Mod: While the X61/T61/R61/X300 possess a SATA-II interface (up to 3.0 GBit/s), they were limited to SATA-I (up to 1.5 GBit/s) in the BIOS to maintain compatibility with the SATA-to-PATA controller found in the Ultrabay Slim SATA HDD Adapter, which could not handle SATA-II's maximum bus speed. Normal hard drives will rarely max out SATA I speeds, but nowadays, SSDs can handle the full 3.0 GBit/s (and more).

Also, among other things:-

Whitelist removed​

If you try to use the MiniPCI-Express slot with Non-Lenovo cards you'll get an Error 1802 after starting. This fix removes the whitelist so you can use cards of any manufacturer.

 

[GlitchyDot]

I have Middleton on my T61 and 8GB of memory. First time i destroyed my better motherboard but second time it was success. I restarted/removed usb flash or cd to soon. You need to wait a bit until it restarts if i believe.

 

[Phishfry]

First time i destroyed my better motherboard but

That is fine. To destroy a motherboard that is not AT Compatible.

How did they not get sued using whitelists?
I can't think of a less IBM Compatible computer than one with a PCIe whitelist.
The essence of broken by design.

 

[yuripv79]

How did they not get sued using whitelists?

I think the same way we are not getting sued for not allowing pfsense, ghostbsd, .... (you get the idea) on these forums

 

[GlitchyDot]

How did they not get sued using whitelists?

They would loose all the community thats why. Im sure if they could - they would but by end of the day - community is what is holding ThinkPad`s together

 

[Phishfry]

I think the same way we are not getting sued for not allowin

Sarcasm I hope.
Defective by design.
Settled out of court by megacorp.
Thinkpad owners get $.10 cent per machine.

They stopped doing it for some reason??
Maybe because Dell sold authorized dell accessories too but machines miniPCIe slots work with anything.
HP I would expect such sales tactics. IBM>Lenovo I did not.

 

[thedaemon]

I am going to attempt the Middleton BIOS on my x61 tablet soon, as I ordered the IPS replacement screen and have to install the BIOS to use the new screen. Wish me luck!

 

[balanga]

I am going to attempt the Middleton BIOS on my x61 tablet soon, as I ordered the IPS replacement screen and have to install the BIOS to use the new screen. Wish me luck!

Good luck!

Are you intending to do any benchmarking to see if it makes a difference?

Also, how are you intending to do the upgrade?

I was contemplating applying it via the LAN, which I believe is possible but have never seen instructions for the procedure.
I assume this could be done via a PXE server...

 

[thedaemon]

Good luck!

Are you intending to do any benchmarking to see if it makes a difference?

Also, how are you intending to do the upgrade?

I was contemplating applying it via the LAN, which I believe is possible but have never seen instructions for the procedure.
I assume this could be done via a PXE server...

Going to install Windows XP 32bit on a spare drive. I was reading that you should only use 32bit older Windows. https://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Middleton's_BIOS I didn't intend to do any benchmarking, but I might do some. My main concern is the higher resolution screen working

 

[GlitchyDot]

i might be wrong as i did almost 10 years ago, but i think i without windows just bootable usb or cd rom.

 

[balanga]

i might be wrong as i did almost 10 years ago, but i think i without windows just bootable usb or cd rom.

Do you mean a DOS bootable USB stick, or could it be syslinux?

And can I create such from FreeBSD?

 

[GlitchyDot]

I can not remmember as it was so long ago ... but if you search thinkpad forum you should find old post with it and how to deal with it.

 

[sag]

Do you mean a DOS bootable USB stick, or could it be syslinux?

And can I create such from FreeBSD?

Years ago I made a DOS-bootable USB stick in FreeBSD by using qemu. If I recall correctly, I used a FreeDOS iso as the A: drive and my stick as C:. Just launched the VM and went through the FreeDOS install process.

 

[blackbird9]

I've installed middleton on both X61 and T61, a few years back. Worked well. It provides whitelist removal and doubles sata bandwidth, and enables 8GB RAM support, from memory. I made a bootable CD with it and boot the laptop from a usb CD drive to install it. I remember running memtest86 with 8GB installed and it completed all tests, no problems. The increased sata bandwidth combined with an SSD makes the machine run quite a lot faster. It's worthwhile.