This
section is dedicated to YOU, the ones who use these
eMachines day in and day out, who go and find the latest
drivers, look for the latest upgrades, who try to make
their machine perform at its best. The following posts
are comments, from end users, on what you have found out
that has worked for you. Since these posts are end user
contributions, use the info contained here at your own
risk.
Perils of BIOS Flashing
11.08.2004
My PC was sold in the UK as an Advent 3207...basically a
1.9 GHz P4 on a Trigem Dublin motherboard. I've been
getting some errors in Windows XP, specifically AMLI:
ACPI BIOS is attempting to write to an illegal IO port
address (0x70), which lies in the 0x70 - 0x71 protected
address range. This could lead to system
instability....and system instability was exactly what I
was getting! So I hunted round on the web for the latest
BIOS [here] and reflashed. All seemed to be ok in the
flashing, but when I rebooted the system didn't find the
floppy or the hard drives. Whoops. Sinking feeling.
OK Next I try to get into the BIOS at the POST to try to
fix that only to find that the BIOS is now password
protected (it wasn't with the old BIOS) and "password",
"phoenix" or any other obvious passwords don't work.
Back to that url where I got the new BIOS for a download
of the Dublin mobo manual.... A bit of reading and I
found that the factory settings for the jumpers on the
motherboard are to have the BIOS password protected.
Obviously my original BIOS wasn't looking to see how the
jumpers were set whereas the new one does. After I'd
changed that I could get into the BIOS settings...load
up the defaults and all was ok, and no unwanted writes
to the IO port.
Just wanted to share with you in case anyone else gets
stuck with a similar problem. The only downside is that
my original Advent startup screen logo (which usually
hides the POST results) is now replaced by a new garish
logo accompanied by some Taiwanese script!!!!!! raygannon
CPU Upgrade
11.04.06
I replaced the CPU, Power Supply and Memory in my
T4160. Only took about 15 minutes, and 5 of those were
blowing out the dust
I got a 2.5GHz P4, while still keeping the 400MHz Front
Side Bus.
Here's the specs on the CPU:
Processor Specifications from Intel's website:
sSpec Number: SL6GT
CPU Speed: 2.50 GHz
Bus Speed: 400 MHz
Bus/Core Ratio: 25
L2 Cache Size: 512 KB
L2 Cache Speed: 2.5 GHz
Package Type: 478 pin
Manufacturing Technology: 0.13 micron
Core Voltage: 1.525V
I also added 1.5GB of PC133 RAM, and a new 320W MicroATX
power supply.
Power Supply $23
Memory: $69
Processor: $65
Total: $157
All is working fine, and I have added another 3 years at
least to the life of this PC.
Sprung |
Unofficial eMachines Tech Info