Demonfire

So I just bought a Lenovo T60p for college work and gaming in hopes that the firegl mobility v5250 could be softmodded to a mobility x1700, its equivilent Radeon card.

Using mobilitymodder.net to mod the 7.4 cats, I was hoping it would convert it to an x1700 or at least make it just as fast.

However, for some reason it seems that the catalyst drivers are running on it but for all intents and purposes windows and CCC still recognizes it as a FireGL v5250 and treats it as such with the GL settings instead.

This confuses me as I dont see how it could both run the cats and be using professional settings at the same time.

I know there is some way to manually edit some files to force the drivers to see it as a X1700 instead, but im not sure what files those are and just what to edit.

Any help would be much obliged in getting this problem solved

ps: as a last resort, is there a possibility of just flashing the bios to the mobility x1700 bios and overriding all fireGL settings?

Spike

I am not sure about lashing the bios, but if flashing that also changes the Device ID to the ID of the x1700 then the drivers would reconize it. But here is how to edit the modified inf file:

Open the modified inf file and look for:
"ATI MOBILITY FireGL V5250" = ati2mtag_M56GL, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_71D4

Replace that line with:
"ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1700 " = ati2mtag_M56, PCI\VEN_1002&DEV_71D4

Make sure there are 3 spaces between the X1700 and the "

Now when you would install the driver is will use the X1700 device settings. Make sure to uninstall the previous driver first before installing the new one.

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dc443

I have the exact same "problem". I have done the mobility mod, and i have also changed the line in the INF file so that its M56 instead of M56GL. Every time the video card is still using the FireGL settings even though it is recognized as whatever I put into the quotes when I edited the file.

It is confusing because these are RADEON drivers and there shouldnt be any reason why they would have firegl support...

One interesting thing I noticed was that when I was running the 7.5 Cats modded with the tool, OpenGL applications had NO hardware acceleration (stuff runs at 0.5 to 1 fps). I have since reinstalled the Lenovo drivers and thankfully openGL applications work on that.

I am pretty certain that flashing the BIOS woudl work but I want to know 1) if it is possible to fix it if something goes wrong during the flash, because I do not want to send this thing back to Lenovo, and 2) where on the damn internet I can find the x1700 BIOS...?

Spike, are there any other things we could try other than changing that line in the INF file? Should I try older drivers? Would they be more likely to fail to recognize this card? Maybe go back to a driver before the x1700/v5250 was released and make it think it's running a X1600?

dc443

Update:

I tried the mobility modder with the 7.6 cats and replacing that line just as was suggested, and it resulted in the same thing as when I tried it with the 7.5 catalysts, that is, it was recognized by the installer and windows as the "ATI MOBILITY RADEON X1700 " (yes with three spaces), but upon reboot it 1) did not get any faster, 2) lost all OpenGL game support as well as the ability to force Antialiasing through CCC, and 3) CCC still had the Workstation tab. (I had the exact same symptoms with my previous attempt using cat 7.5)

Demonfire

yeah, same thing as what they all said, it still only recognizes it as a firegl 5250, and when you force it by modifiying the line to say M56 instead of M56gl it loses all GL support. Either way, it doesnt run any faster in DirectX games than with the fireGL drivers.

I honestly think the best way is to flash the bios, which would probably require an external floppy drive and definatly the X1700 bios.

If you have any other ideas, awesome, but i think we need to flash the bios.

Spike

I think that there are also FireGL settings in the bios. I don't know if there are mods on the internet to make the 5250 a x1700, but else you could try and see if that works before flashing the bios.

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Demonfire

as a testament to how hard anything to find about this problem on the net is, the first thing that comes up when you search for "firegl 5250 to X1700" in google is this thread right here

Some people are saying that there are actual PCB differences between the Firegl and the Radeon, but I really hope its just bios based...

In which case I would like to formally ask ANYBODY who has a Mobility Radeon X1700 to PLEASE post up a copy of their bios for experimentation.

My only worry is that there isnt any good way to return the card to its original bios if it ends up messing things up because were dealing with a laptop here, not a desktop where we could swap out the card.

Tread carefully, i guess...

dc443

Yeah, this whole thing is a royal pain because all you can ever find are Radeon 9x00 to FireGL mods on the internet.

At least my laptop is capable of running every game I've thrown at it and does not get hot enough to lock up. It's nice for lanning, I just wish it wouldn't be obsolete for that task in 1-2 years.

Pascal_TTH

I have a similar problem with modded ATI last FireGL with MobilityModder. When I run Cinebench 9.5, there were no hardware acceleration.

After checking registry, it was missing this entry :

Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers]
[HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\OpenGLDrivers\atifglws]
"Version"=dword:00000002
"DriverVersion"=dword:00000001
"Flags"=dword:00000001
"Dll"="Atioglgl.dll"

I found this was missing by installing Lenovo driver and search for atiogl in registry. With Lenovo driver, there were two entries with atioglgl.dll. But with FireGL driver from ATI modded with mobilityModder, the first key was wrong and tell about atioglxx.dll (or atioglx1.dll) like with regular Catalyst instead of atioglgl.dll and the second key simply missing.

I think it's a small issue with the modder.

I found this topic/forum when searching how to have the OpenGL (to set AA and AF) tab even with FireGL drivers.

Spike

have you also tried changing atioglgl.dll to atioglxx.dll, because atioglgl.dll is not anymore in the drivers so when you link to that from the registry it will also not work. And i thought that atioglgl.dll is replaced with atioglxx.dll.

I added those registry settings to my new version so it will be in the update. It is added for the FireGL cards. The problem was that those lines are not in the inf files so by adding that it should be fixed. If you want you can test my new version so i am sure then that it works. If you want then send me an email at info@drivercleaner.net. I would really appreciate it if someone can test it.

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dc443

Hey, here's a list of bios dumps that includes one of the mobility X1700 from an Asus laptop.
http://bios.egore911.de/
Maybe somebody could try it.

Demonfire

Thanks so much for finding this!

Now we just need a brave soul to perform a flash on their new expensive laptop.

I might, given a few week or two of careful research into recovery methods...

kavboy

Hi!
If you tell me how to do it I'll try it out!

Demonfire

http://www.techpowerup.com/downloads...lash_1.25.html


use this tool here and get the X1700 bios off that page that the man provided and its totally straightfoward.

edit: you can also use this guide: http://forums.techpowerup.com/showthread.php?t=11

kpoman

Hi ! I am also interested in having this card setup as a X1700. I tested modding the CCC and it worked for the Catalyst itself but couldnt find the driver even specifying the correct folder How do you deinstall the originally delivered driver and put a new one ? Which new one to put ? Is there a way to download only the display driver and not all the ccc stuff ? Is 1393 the score you are getting on 3DMARK 2005 ? I think it is too much slow and am very frustrated right now with this notebook T60P, for example without svideo out! Please if someone has the response for these questions I would be grateful to get them !
Thank you

kavboy

Well, it is not as easy as I thought. I tried to run Atiwinflash but it says: "Unsupported ROM type". Then I tried to run Atiflah from the bootdisk but it said that No Flash ROM and that something is missing from this ROM.gz file I downloaded. I tried to find a sulotion for that but I didn't find any useful information except that many people have the same problem with their x1600 card. So, please help...

kavboy

What can I do with this rom.gz file?? How can I unzip it??? The bios flash utility recognizes .rom files only. Anybody any idea??

Demonfire

you need winrar to open the file: www.rarlab.com

kavboy

I tried it already but it says: ! The archive is either in unknown format or damaged. I tried to download it several times but I still get the same answer

kavboy

Well, I tried everything. Without success. I have the .rom file (2 versions actually), tried to flash the BIOS but it stops with an error message. Actually I tried it with Atiflash, Winflash and a Lenovo tool. The Lenovo tool stops with this: "Part Table Signature not found in the Interface". The other 2 tools stop with other error messages.
I didn't give it up completely yet but I'm sick and tired with this f*cking laptop. It was soooo expensive and it is not worth it at all...

Demonfire

Hmm, perhaps the x1700/5250 are too new to be recognized by these tools and simply require more time to program them in. Confusing, however, it that its obvious that some utility was able to at least read and rip the bios, or else we would not have this copy of it.

Ill keep researching, but i think a quick email to the makers of one of those utilities might be more helpful.

dc443

I ordered my T60p 15.4" widescreen (1680x1050) on May 8th 07 from the Lenovo site and it cost $1547 after tax, a much better deal than my college offered...

Why is it not worth it?

maximal42

Hi, anything new in getting this through?
I'm just considering buying this laptop, so...
What a pitty it doesn't have the s-video out.

mxrev134

im having the same issue. any news on this upgrade?

dc443

Well, it looks like Lenovo released drivers, but this was a few months back...

Lenovo Support & downloads - Video driver (ATI Mobility RADEON / FIREGL PCI Express-2) for Windows 2000 / XP - ThinkPad R60, T60, T60p (2007, 2008, 2009, 2613, 2623, 2637, 8741, 8742, 8743, 8744, 8745, 8746), Z61m, Z61p


Does anybody know how to perhaps dig inside this file and change around some stuff, hopefully to accomplish what we're trying to get here?

On various forums I'm hearing estimations of the v5250 being like 12% or 10% slower than a Radeon X1700, but honestly the real performance I'm getting is a lot less (about half?)... I wonder if these people know something I don't, but there just doesn't seem to be that many people around here who have this video chip.

Seherezka

Hi,

has there been any progress with this problem? I've been looking everywhere, even tried some Chinese pages, but no luck so far.

I'm still desperately trying to make my T60p more powerful for gaming, since I won't be buying new laptop anytime soon.

If any1 knows something new, please share your knowledge.

dc443

I am waiting for a solution as well.

GAguy

The last post may 21th and still no solution??

tjdfalcon

I realize this is a very old topic, but I am willing to attempt this. I have located a mobility x1700 bios, but I would like to back up the original firegl 5250 bios. The problem is that no program seems to be able to back it up. I have used Atiflash, ati tray tools, and gpu-z and it either said that it did not have a bios or it said that my hardware does not allow the backup.
Help would be appreciated.

Mac Daddy

Yes it is an old topic and Spikes area to maintain. I will leave this up to him I can't offer you any help.

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