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Please help me tweak my new laptop for SETI!

Fardringle

Fardringle

Diamond Member
OK, so it's not really new, but it's new to me... 😉

I am the proud owner of a bouncing baby laptop! 😀
It has grey skin, black eyes, and a 14.1" face. 😛

OK, enough of that...

I recently acquired a Compaq Prosignia laptop. The system has a Mobile PII 333Mhz, 128MB SDRAM, 4 GB UDMA hard drive, and Win98SE. During normal usage, the system seems to perform the way it should. Everything runs the way I would expect a PII-333 to run. However, SETI has completed 10 WU's so far, at an AVERAGE time of 18.4 hours! Considering I have a PII-400 in my fleet that averages about 12 hours, this seems pretty high to me. I am using the Command Line client with SETI Driver, and TaskInfo tells me that SETI is using about 96-98% of CPU time. And yet, it is performing worse than my Celeron 300A, which averages about 14.5-15 hours. All of the WU's done so far have had normal Angle Ranges.

I have enabled DMA on the drives, set power management to never turn off the hard drive or put the system in standby unless it's on battery power. I've set the file access to Network Server. I have a permanent 128MB swap file. EnableSwapFileUsage is set equal to '1' in SYSTEM.INI.

The only other possible tweak I can think of is that perhaps the memory is running at CAS3. Unfortunately, I haven't found any way to get into the BIOS on this laptop (if it's even possible) so I don't know for sure.

Any suggestions you can give would be greatly appreciated!

Thanks in advance!
Fardringle
 
Sounds like you need to get into the bios on that thing but I have no idea how. Hitting the delete key dosen't work when booting?
If you can get in setting the CAS timings would help and maybe a little OC as the 66mhz FSB is a killer.

Sorry not much help.....but keeping it on top till some real help arrives 🙂
 
I vaguely remember an compaq I worked on had to hit f10 to get into the bios. Took me forever to figure it out because it didn't tell you on the startup screen. At least I think it was F10. If you havn't already you might try all the function keys. But most laptops are so OEM that it is relatively common to hide stuff like advanced memory settings.
 
I've tried all of the "F" keys, DEL, ESC, INS, PgDn, CTRL-ALT-ESC, CTRL-ALT-INS, and pounding randomly on the keyboard, but nothing seems to work to get be into the BIOS.. 🙁

I wonder if SoftFSB would work on this beast? 😀
 
Well, TweakBIOS says that my memory is running at CAS2, but I don't know the actual make or model of the motherboard, so SoftFSB won't work. Anybody know where I can get that information?
 
Depending on the motherboard type SiSoft Sandra can report the clock generator type thus enabling you to use SoftFSB.

After doing a quick search i did come up with this:

"To get into setup, you have to press the F10 key precisely when you see a blinking white square on the upper right corner of the black bootup screen. Timing is everything."

matthew
 
yah, I remember just repeatedly hitting F10. I think it also told me "keyboard error", but it let me into the bios.

Good luck.
 
"To get into setup, you have to press the F10 key precisely when you see a blinking white square on the upper right corner of the black bootup screen. Timing is everything."

Yep, that works on Compaq desktops I've worked on in the past. Unfortunately, there isn't any 'white square' ever on the screen on this thing, and I've tried pressing each of those keys repeatedly through the entire boot process with no success.. 🙁


In Sandra, where would I find the information for the clock generator? I see a line for the chipset, but none specifically for clock generator. The chipset line says, "Compaq 82443BX/ZX 440BX/ZX CPU to PCI Bridge (AGP Implemented).

Several of the system information applets tell me, "Warning. Disabled host controllers are present. Check BIOS settings." Personally, I'd LOVE to! Too bad Sandra can't tell me how to get into the BIOS! 😀
 
I work with Compaq laptops all the time at work. If you don't get the flashing block at boot that meens the Compaq tools where not loaded after the machine was fdisked. The special compaq tools make a 45meg partition on the drive and you need to install the special software to make bios changes. Rest assured they DON'T let you change the ran timeing and good stuff like that.

Bart
 
Would the Compaq Tools/BIOS allow me to change the FSB? The memory is already running at CAS2, so I'm not worried about that, but it would be nice to get a little more speed out of this thing if possible...
 
Yeah, the EX is the cut LX. 🙂 That does mean you can run 100 Mhz FSB, right? And aren't some of the older PII's unlocked..? 😉
 
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