Bios Modding the Emachines

[Papahyooie]

Ok so ive successfully flashed an Emachines W3653 bios to the retail version of the board, a ECS Elitegroup 945GCT-M3. The bios popped in just fine through winflash, and booted right up! Which means I can now disable speedstep, C1E, etc, and more importantly, OVERCLOCK!
So it was time to see what that little e1200's got!

So i usually just pick a number and see if it boots to see where I should start. The stock FSB is 200mhz, so I went with 250mhz FSB. Didnt boot so I backed it down a little. Then backed it down a little more... then a little more... then alot more. Finally decided to start at the bottom end and work my way up. So... I came out with grand stable total of...

201mhz FSB!

...

Really? 1607 mhz. Epic. At 202 mhz FSB it take windows 10 minutes to boot, but after that it seems fine even after playing a bit of WoW. At 203 mhz FSB it refuses to detect the hard drives. Now ive never known a chip to only OC 7 mhz. And ive also never known a machine not to detect hard drives because of too high an OC. They either boot and are stable, boot and arent stable, or dont boot atall, in my experience. Is this common? Now I realize that it might have something to do with the fact that its not the correct bios, in which case theres just nothing for it. But has anyone had this happen and found a setting to get around it?

I disabled spread spectrum (*doh didnt see it at first) and locked the memory to 667 mhz, and got it up to 202mhz FSB. 203 wont detect the drives.

Anybody know anything about this?

EDIT: Just realized this should probably be in the overclocking forum. Sorry, I thought general hardware at first since it was about modding the bios.

 

[Papahyooie]

aw nobody has any idea? I still havent figured anything out, been perusing the settings for hours.

 

[andrewsmc]

You, me

 

[Papahyooie]

Im thinking something to do with the northbridge or southbridge... unfortunately no voltage options for either... as a matter of fact, no voltage options atall, not even for core or mem. Stupid ECS.

 

[Papahyooie]

Ok so i seem to be the only person posting here... oh well.

So i installed an IDE drive instead of the sata hard drive because I noticed it was detecting the IDE DVD drive, but not the sata hard drive. And lo and behold she boots at 250mhz FSB! Gonna test for stability soon, but it survived a windows install at that, so it should be fine.
Now this isnt ideal because the mobo only has one IDE port, so that means the CD drive and the hard drive have to be plugged into the same port... this is a no-no of course. But obviously the mobo's sata just doesnt like the overclock so what about putting in a pci sata card? The pci-e x1 slot is blocked by the video card, so I'd need to use a PCI card. Are these fast enough to not hinder performance? They are bootable right? I think i have one in the bottom of my closet somewhere. I think that would work, if not or if its too slow, then i'll just get rid of the CD drive and use ISO's, jump drives, etc, and plug in a usb drive whenever i need it.

Obviously nobody cares... WHY DOESNT ANYONE CARE??? IVE OVERCLOCKED AN EMACHINES FERCHRISSAKES! And to 2ghz on an e1200 too... not stellar, but its a freakin emachines!

 

[Velvet Wafer]

whats an emachines?

 

[LittleLizard]

whats an emachines?

emachines is an oem maker just like alienware or gateway. An emachines is an oem computer from that brand.

 

[Papahyooie]

Its a cheap, but decent offbrand from gateway known for being just good enough, normally shunned by hardware enthusiasts, but they shouldnt be because they support decent processors and the newer ones have pci-e x16 graphics slots, and therefore you can make a really decent machine out of one.