Sony VAIO cpu upgrade problem

[WT]

I have a Sony VAIO PCV-210 minitower with a 266 Celeron (cacheless) cpu. This is my wife's PC and after one of my frequent upgrades, my old school 300A Celeron is free to pop in to replace the 266. I could not get it to boot at all with the 300A on this board. I of course removed the B21 pin tape I had applied which allowed me to run it at 450. Since this board is an older LX, it will not run at that speed, hence the tape removal. I'm POSITIVE there is no tape residue on the pin also. This cpu was running just a week ago but will not boot now. I changed the onboard jumper to 300 (not that it makes a difference, as even at 300 the 266 works OK, due to locked mult's.) I even removed the dual cooling fans I had on the 300A and mounted the heatsink from the 266 onto the 300A, figuring it might be a short on the cpu fan pins. It is also seated properly as it has a locking mechanism and makes a solid "click" when its inserted. Another reason I switched heatsinks was to make sure it wasn't a clearance issue with the larger heatsink from my 300A. Finally, there IS a BIOS update available but why would it not accept a 300 when a 266 works ? These particular PCs' came with anything from the 266 Celeron to a PII 333 in them (highest supported cpu) so obviously a 300A SHOULD work. My next test is to put the 300A back in my old system and make sure it still works, but I highly doubt the cpu gave up the ghost while sitting in my desk for a week. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Sony VAIO support page

 

[WT]

An update to my above situation. I tested the 300A in another PC, it works fine. I then borrowed a working Celeron 333 and it too does not boot in the Sony PC. Testing my last available option, I flashed the BIOS to the newest version, getting a "This BIOS does not support flash" message, then immediately underneath a further message that the flash was successful. A reboot left me with the same BIOS version so I guess this thing will forever be stuck with a 266 cpu :frown:

On to bigger and better things !

 

[Slikkster]

your problem appears to be that even with the latest Sony bios for this board, it won't support that cpu. This motherboard apparently is a Genuine Intel AL440LX board. Intel upgraded the board's bios themselves to version "P14". Sony only updated it (according to its revision) to "P07".

Take a look at the Intel specs on supported processors for this board. Supported Processors on this board, depending on bios revision

Now, that's one thing. However, what to do? Well, one guy writes in an older newsgroup post how he flashed this board to an Intel bios vs. Sony Bios.


How to flash this to an Intel bios vs. Sony Bios

You'll see that you have new options, including going up to a Celeron 433mhz...not a bad upgrade.

 

[WT]

Thanks for the info slikkster. What's totally confusing is why the 300A Celeron won't work, as even Intel's site says the board supports a 266-300 cpu with its current BIOS. Since its my wife's PC, I may have to hang it up and leave it as is. Now I feel bad for the lil' cpu that could, as that 300A@450 has served me well since 1997

 

[Slikkster]

WT, look again at the Intel site. It does support PII 300 with the standard bios, but the 300A is a Celeron, as you know. You'll see on the chart (see the link in my previous post) that the 300A cpu support requires bios revision P10 or higher. Sony doesn't offer that. Intel does, with their current P14 revision. I'd flash it to Intel's bios, myself. Your call.

 

[WT]

Many thanks again slikkster ! I had researched the Intel BIOS upgrade previously but was still worried since no one provided enough details for me to really want to go ahead with the project. I had bookmarked this page Bills AL440LX Install Guide and referred back to it to make sure everything was applicable. I'm amazed Sony would go to all that trouble to write a BIOS specifically for only 2 chips, when it would seem easier to use a more "standard" BIOS such as Intel's which would provide more options in the long run. One thing I will miss if I decide to do this is that Sony logo at bootup, along with the purty chimes it plays

One last thing, I see no way to back up the BIOS before a flash, and I tried a 200 series BIOS flash last night downloaded from the Sony site, with no change the the revision number of the BIOS. Would the Intel BIOS provide something to take care of that issue, just in case?

 

[Slikkster]

I'm not sure if it will give you the option or not (to backup the bios). But one thing I noticed in Bill's instructions is to use the Intel utility (included in the bios download) to make a dos bootdisk. It says on Bill's site that a Windows-created boot disk won't work.

The new bios should definitely change the bios revision number when you boot. Otherwise, it hasn't flashed. Make sure you do the jumper pin thing as Bill mentions. I'm not sure why one would have to remove all devices in Device Manager for a simple bios update, however.

 

[WT]

<< I'm not sure why one would have to remove all devices in Device Manager for a simple bios update >>



Reading it again I see that this is mentioned under the later BIOS version 10 he was speaking of. I don't think I will need that one, as I only need support for the 300A Celeron included with version 8. Now if I had a spare 466 Celeron lying around, the newest version 14 BIOS supports that !

<< BIOS P14 was released on April 22nd - While not officially sanctioned by Intel, this BIOS version also gives you the clock multiplier settings to allow you to use the 466 MHz PPGA Celeron processors with a PPGA-Slot 1 converter board. >>

 

[Slikkster]

Cool...let me know how it turns out.