Compaq Presario Laptop - CPU

[Guest]

The entire Compaq organization is unable to provide any information on upgrading an AMD K6-2 400MHz to K6-III+ CPU, and on a scale of 1-10 they score 1 by default.
The following site shows two pages of dipswitch settings for the 1683-1694 laptop range, these vary for K6-2 from 350MHz to 475MHz and 2.0 - 2.2 volts, but again Compaq does not seem to know what any of the dipswitches are for.
http://WWW5.compaq.com/athome/support/msgs/1683-1694/removal-19a.html (Pls note the WWW5 part)
My laptop is a Presario 1690 with a K6-2 400MHz 2.2v CPU.
BIOS is Phoenix Trchnologies 4.06
SMBIOS?DMI is version 2.20
Chipset is Acer Labs Inc. (ALI) ALI 1541
Memory is 192MB of PC-100 SDRAM
FSB is 100MHz
AGP bus is 66MHz
PCI bus is 33MHz
Display is 14" TFT
I would appreciate any advice or tips from any Laptop Gurus who take the time to visit the above site.
And yes, now I know I should have purchased a Dell instead.

 

[Guest]

Okay, I've looked at the switches until I'm blue in the face. I don't know a thing about the k6-2 so I went to AMD's site for the voltage info, but the data sheet is ~5.5 megs and I'm on a dialup... I assume the voltages (2.0, 2.1, etc.) are the cpu core voltages?? (These are all guesses.)

If so, it looks like SW2 and SW1, J10 control this.

SW1 seems to change with the type of screen and the CPU speed. You could probably set up some type of matrix to figure out which switches change and when.

SW1, J 1-5 seem to change with the CPU speed.

SW1, J 6-9 seem to change with the screen type. You might be able to break it down further than that.

As to what each jumper specifically does, who knows?

I'm curious, what makes you think you can upgrade this thing? In general, the first rule of thumb in laptop purchasing is that you'll never be able to upgrade the CPU. (There may be some exceptions and I've heard that there are supposed to be some corporate models that may claim this.)

I'm quite sure you'd have the same issues with any laptop you purchased, not just Compaq.

Mike

 

[Guest]

Thanks for the fast response. The reason I decided to try to upgrade was twofold, first the DVD-ROM drive failed, and after going round in ever diminishing circles with Compaq Help techies, I ended up buying and fitting a new drive. When I looked at the Removals page I noticed that the CPU could be removed and was not hot wired in, i.e. Socket 7.
Tom has an article dated November 6, under CPU GUIDE titled "Socket 7 good for years", this gives full details on the K6-2, K6-2+ and the K6-III+.
The basic difference is that the K6-2 has onboard L2 cache, the K6-2+ and K6-III+ have 128kb and 256Kb on-die cache, and if fitted use the onboard cache as L3 cache.
The other main difference is that the latter two are 0.18um instead of 0.25um and use less voltage (Mobile type CPUs)
The core and I/O voltages are as follows:-
K6-2 2.0-2.2 and 3.1-3.5
K6-2+ 1.4-2.0 and 3.0-3.3
K6-III+ 1.4-2.0 and 3.0-3.3
these are from memory, Tom's article gives full specs.
Once again thanks for your help and input (100% more than I received from Compaq); I will try setting up the dfferent dipswitch settings on some sort of matrix, and see what transpires