Acer Travelmate 2200 CPU upgrade

[RojBlake]

Hi, Can anyone help please, I want to upgrade from the Celeron to a full P4. Is this possible and if so which P4 mobile chip do I need? I have tried two P4 chips so far, a desktop version and a mobile version with no luck. Am I chasing a pipe dream or is there a way to do this upgrade????

Best regards,

James...

 

[dwellman]

These are your best bets for Mobile P4s that could work:
SL7X5
SL7DU
SL7DT
SL7DS

However, there is the issue that the Acer BIOS probably has SpeedStep support stripped out so your P4 will only run at, er, probably 1.2 Ghz.

 

[RojBlake]

Hi dwellman, thanks for your quick response. I have been told that the 2200 and 2700 are the same motherboard. Will the 2700 bios work and would it put back the speedstep support.

 

[dwellman]

I cannot verify that the 2200 and the 2700 are identical in every way except for the BIOS code (but it looks darned close), but you can certainly try (to be honest, I probably would).

I've crossflashed things before (Dell CP to CPi, for example). I think at the very worse it won't let you. . . but you know there's alwyas that chance of it never booting again.

 

[belix]

I gave this a shot about 5 min after I bought my 2200. Its been a while but this is as much as I can recal.

It will not post with a P4 below 2.4. It may have been 2.2, not sure

Once I got it to post with a 2.4 I couldnt start the system off of the battery. It kept comming up with an 'Incorect Battery' warning. I had to start it on the power adapter. Once it posted on the adapter I could unplug it and it would boot the rest of the way just fine.

As for the bios flashing, I did give that a shot aswell. Either the bios was the same for both and it showed up as a 2200 in the bios anyways. Or I got an 'Incorect ROM' error, and couldnt flash it with the 2700s bios. I believe it was the latter.

I fought with this for a while thinking it may have just been a bad battery. A few weeks ago I went back to the celeron D, and its working fine now. I figure it was a power issue caused by using the P4. Drawing too much or too little gave it a messed up reading. It may work though, with a different P4. If you're comfortable ripping down a laptop give it a try and let me know how it goes.

 

[RojBlake]

I gave this a shot about 5 min after I bought my 2200. Its been a while but this is as much as I can recal.

It will not post with a P4 below 2.4. It may have been 2.2, not sure

Once I got it to post with a 2.4 I couldnt start the system off of the battery. It kept comming up with an 'Incorect Battery' warning. I had to start it on the power adapter. Once it posted on the adapter I could unplug it and it would boot the rest of the way just fine.

As for the bios flashing, I did give that a shot aswell. Either the bios was the same for both and it showed up as a 2200 in the bios anyways. Or I got an 'Incorect ROM' error, and couldnt flash it with the 2700s bios. I believe it was the latter.

I fought with this for a while thinking it may have just been a bad battery. A few weeks ago I went back to the celeron D, and its working fine now. I figure it was a power issue caused by using the P4. Drawing too much or too little gave it a messed up reading. It may work though, with a different P4. If you're comfortable ripping down a laptop give it a try and let me know how it goes.

Hi,

I have tried three different P4's in the 2200, all different generations. Newest chip wouldn't post. Chip of the same gen as the Celeron would post but only on the mains. Chip that was one gen older posted fine, however was no faster than the Celeron and had less functionality.

I have put the Celeron back in and resigned to the inevitable, this laptop is not capable of running a P4 .