PackardBell/ECS mobo BIOS update celeron coppermine>tuala

[benaround3]

Hello
I have a 5 year old Packard Bell and the old 1 gig celeron coppermine cpu socket 370 packed up, I am temporarily using a 667 coppermine which is too slow, I have managed to get a tualatin 1,000A 256 100 1.475 which I would like to use but the system doesn't recognise it.
THe board is a P61WF as stated on the download site.
I am told on the P Bell support site that there is a BIOS update but the info on the PBell BIOS upate page is not clear enough to work out if either of the two alternative BIOS available will work.
Also there are two BIOS updates for my board on the ECS/Elite site but they do not mention tualatin support.
Here is the link to the two Packard Bell updates:
http://support.packardbell.com/uk/item/ ... 096&g=2000
And here for the ECS:
http://www.ecs.com.tw/ECSWebSite/Produc ... 52&LanID=8
Out of the two Packard Bell updates,
1.0X is about a specific issue with the tualatin 1400, "1.4 GHz Tualatin CPU is displayed incorrectly at system startup."
1.1B is for tualatin support BUT "only on motherboards with part number 6852370500" and mine is 6852370300, one digit different.
I guess these are Packard Bell numbers and may be nothing to do with ECS
Here is a response I got from Packard Bell forum with more info about the actual cpu's, but not about the BIOS:

Have a look at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_In ... processors. According to PB your mainboard supports

#Intel Celeron FC-PGA (Flip-Chip Pin Grid Array)
* 533/66 MHz to 766/66 MHz
* 800/100 MHz to 1100/100 MHz.

You can choose one of these -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_In ... 8180_nm.29. The CPU you are looking for is this:

Code:
Model Number Frequency L2-Cache Front Side Bus Mult Voltage Socket Release Date Part Number(s)
Celeron 1100 1100 MHz 128 KiB 100 MT/s 11x 1.75 V 33 W Socket 370 August 31, 2001 RB80526RY005128

In theory, your mainboard supports the first two CPUs in this list -> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_In ... 8130_nm.29 as well (they have a bigger L2 cache)
Code:
Model Number Frequency L2-Cache Front Side Bus Mult Voltage/TDP Socket Release Date Part Number(s)
Celeron 1000A 1000 MHz 256 KiB 100 MT/s 10x 1.5 V 27.8/29.5 W Socket 370 January 3, 2002 RK80530RY001256
Celeron 1100A 1100 MHz 256 KiB 100 MT/s 11x 1.5 V 28.9/29.5 W Socket 370 January 3, 2002 RK80530RY005256


With the tualatin in place when I turned on the pc the fan came on but no lights, screen, buzzes, clicks, nothing at all.

Can you offer any guidance at all? Should it be possible to get this board to run with the tualatin?
I have emailed a query to ECS but they have not responded, and I am no longer getting responses from P Bell.

Many thanks

[KachiWachi]

I'm confused.

Do you have a Packard Bell or an ECS?

What is the current BIOS ID string?

[cp]

it's an ECS P6IWF used by packard bell in some of their budget systems.

seems like your mainboard doesn't support the tualatin pin interface and thus automatically locks out all tualatin processors by hardware.

[edwin]

So this is a hardware issue that cannot be solved by any software/bios solution then?

[cp]

without putting a pci port80 decoder card into the mainboard or connecting an oscilloscope to see if the boards starts up at all: yes, this is a hardware issue and can not be solved by any bios update.

for a hardware mod please refer to this site:
http://www.frogge.de/pepper/tua/tuareport1.html

[KachiWachi]

I didn't know if the OP was trying to do some BIOS swapping, etc...

Thanks cp.

My next question was going to be "Can the board physically accept the CPU (power, etc...)?".

[benaround3]

Thank you folks for the advice and sorry for the delay in replying...

On the strength of the advice I went out and bought a new motherboard and cpu, and also had to get a new PS and case so built a new pc last night.

TO Kachiwachi: yes, I have (HAD, now!) a P Bell with an ECS mobo.
I tried to find the BIOS string just now but failed, perhaps because I have
removed the HDD and CDROM for the new pc, although I can get in to CMOS.
THere is advice on the site for displaying the BIOS string by pressing pause during startup, but I never saw the string displayed during startup, and I can't run the BIOS finding programs because I have removed dthe HDD!

To cp...thanks for the link to the hardware mod, it looks amazing and I would like to have a go sometime, but very involved and , for me, risky!

Thanks all