The upgrade fever finally got the best
of me...
I was wanting to go with a socket 939 mATX w/ PCI-E.
After doing the math I concluded that I couldn't build a
system I wanted for about the same money as the T6522.
Got it at CC last Sunday, unboxed it and hooked
everything up as is just to make sure everything worked
before I started tearing the guts out of it.
I haven't ran any benchmarks, but it "feels" as fast as
the upgraded T6000 I have with a 3400+ Clawhammer.
I don't really care for the Media Center Edition OS
which is nothing more than XP with a "plugin" for media
crap. Too many clicks just to watch TV (TV card is a PCI
ATI TV WONDER Elite). My old 7500 ATI AIW had a better
picture and was easier to use.
The on-board graphics are decent but I see a PCI-E card
in the not too distant future. I may axe this OEM TV
card and go with another AIW. I wonder how an Nvidia
card would work with this ATI chipset? Explode?
It has a LITE-ON DVD-RW SOHW-1633S burner. Haven't
burned anything with it yet. I guess I'll try it out
making some restore disk since the "restore" is on a
separate partition.
I bit the bullet and broke down and bought an ATI AIW
X800XL and installed it along with my WD 74GB Raptor
SATA HDD....clean install with XP Pro and all is looking
sweet!
No bios upgrade was needed to detect the SATA HDD, but
did have to rig a floppy to install the F6
drivers................
I ordered three(3) refurbished T6212 eMachines as
part of a technology uplift for my whole family
through TigerDirect.com. One machine arrived with a
loose disk drive flopping around in the case that
was dead on arrival (RMA with TigerDirect worked
fine), another machines works except that its DVDRW
drive wouldn't write, just read (took two sets of
exchanges with eMachines to finally get a working
one—had better luck with their Toshiba/Samsung drive
than their LITE-ON drives). The third machine works
perfectly. I boosted 2 machines from 2x256MB RAM to
2x512MB (total=1GB), and used the old DIMMs to
augment the third to 4x256MB (yes, you have to add
DIMMs in pairs). I upgraded the graphics with PCI
Express boards from XFX, EVA, and ChainTech (all
were 128MB GeFORCE 6600GT cards) (yes, you have to
uninstall all ATI software first) as this was
suitable for the 300 watt power supply the machine
comes with. The results are 3 machines using Athlon
64 3200+ Socket-939 that rock for little bucks! Just
wish quality control was better.
UncleVic
Dual-Core Athlon X2 4200+
CPU Upgrade on T6212
02.22.06
Advice:
Make sure video drivers support dual CPUs. My GeForce 6600GT had v7 ForceWare on it that did not.
I updated it to the latest available from nVidia
(v81.98) that does a much better job.
---------------------------------
Problem #1: Installed
new CPU (in my case, AMD Athlon X2 4200) that I
purchased from www.monarchcomputer.com. I had
difficulty removing the cooling fan assembly on the
old CPU, but found that by twisting it
back-and-forth, I finally loosened it from the
adhesive eMachines used for the Athlon 3200+. Upon
startup, I observed POST message describing CPU as a
"Hammer" machine, type unknown. Once O/S was
up-and-running, I logged in and found WinXP running
as a single CPU machine.
Speculation: Need BIOS
update.
Solution #1: Downloaded
latest BIOS from MSI site (http://www.msi.com.tw) as
a ZIP file.
---------------------------------
Problem #2: BIOS update
requires bootable floppy drive.
Solution #2: Opened up
box, and physically attached one from another
computer. Also updated BIOS settings to enable
floppy support.
---------------------------------
Problem #3: BIOS update
requires bootable floppy formatted with Win98 boot.
Solution #3: WinXP
allows you to format floppy with "Create an MS-DOS
startup disk" option that does this for you. Then
you simply add the BIOS update files to it.
---------------------------------
Problem #4: BIOS update
asks you if you want to save your old BIOS as a
file. I said "YES", and found out there was
insufficient room on the floppy to store the image.
Solution #4: You can
try doing the save with another blank floppy
inserted at the right time. But I took a
brave/foolhardy leap of faith and just said "NO"
here a second time.
---------------------------------
Problem #5: BIOS update
fails with a "The Program file's BIOS Lock string
doesn't match with your system!" message.
Speculation: The flash
program from MSI is designed to upgrade older
versions of their own BIOS programs, not those of
their OEM clients.
Solution #5: With a
little Internet searching, I found a workaround.
Just start the flash program with a "/nlb" qualifier
on the line. In my case, the command looks like:
AWFL855A.EXE /nlb W7093AMS.380
This worked beautifully!
Special thanks for "dos-freak" who posted the
solution on the www.wimbios.com site (see http://www.wimsbios.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=4211&).
---------------------------------
Problem #6: System
boot, but with missing devices like the network and
firewire (IEEE 1394).
Solution #6: Go into
the BIOS settings and reset to recommended defaults.
Also, carefully peruse the device enable/disabled
settings and fix where appropriate.
---------------------------------
Problem #7: The Realtek
AC'97 sound became disabled, and removal/rediscovery
of the device could not make the device error go
away (as seen in the Device Manager). Naturally,
playing a video or CD had no sound either.
Solution #7: Reinstallation
of the SOUNDMAN utility from the install partition
(my D Drive) took care of it. I had a heck of a time
finding the product due to the special object
handler eMachines installed on these directory,
making Searching via Explorer a difficult
enterprise. I used the Command Prompt (the MS-DOS
command box) to navigate the directory, and I
eventually found it under D:\I386\Apps\... path.
Also, [when] I shutdown either
player [Microsoft Media Player 10 or PowerDVD 5.0],
sometimes an unknown job (won't show up in Task
Manager by name, but will show continuous CPU
consumption of 30%) will be left running. Logging
off and on does not clear it, but reboot does. And
once, I got a BSOD (Blue Screen of Death) on one of
those shutdowns, with the following message:
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
.
.
.
ALCXWDM.SYS...address F69DFBF6,...
The ALCXWDM.SYS driver is the
Realtek AC'97 driver for the onboard sound chipset.
The current driver I had installed, factory fresh
from eMachines in October 2005, is an 11/17/2004
driver version 5.10.0.5750. Cruising the Internet
yields results that suggest Microsoft has seen this
"stop code" quite a few times, and directs the
customer to the vendor Realtek (http://www.realtek.com.tw/)
for latest drivers.
Turns out there have been recent updates, as fresh
as February 15, 2006. I installed this
latest update, v3.8, and the strange behavior has
seemed to go away.
---------------------------------
And that how I did it!
UncleVic
Retail Bios Flash
07.22.06
I successfully flashed the bios
on my T6522 [MS-7093 (RS480M2-IL)] with MSI's V3.9
from a CD using
THIS .iso file.
1. Set 1st boot order to CD in CMOS
settings.
2. Burn the iso file. (I used Nero)
3. Restart with CD in drive.
4. Just sit back and watch it
go! It is self booting and self executing. Hands
free!
Warning: This method does NOT give you any
option to backup your original bios file!!!
TD25x
T6212 CPU Upgrade
10.24.06
Upgrade [using AMD Athlon 64 4000+ / 1MB Cache /
2000MHz FSB / San Diego Core CPU] went without a
hitch [using the original bios Version W7093AE7
v4.0B5 that's on the eMachines support website],
just plug and play.
emachinefan
Another CPU upgrade
12.14.06
I just finished upgrading my
former T6212's 3200+ to an FX-55.... Very easy
upgrade... just drop and lock.
Significant performance increases across the board.
Some of you might wonder why I went with an FX-55
instead of an x2 and the reason is simply the FX-55
cost me 120$ from newegg..
rcd412
Unofficial eMachines Tech Info