svl7

Hey, welcome!! Great offer, I never used ICD so far... I've got one little question about it. Some people say it can scratch the die, is this a common issue? I'd like to hear what you'd say about this. I'm interested, but first of all I need to get my GPU fixed

Hmm, call Alienware and start begging? A nice rep should be able to help you.

Well, usually not just for fun. If a card hasn't beed tried in your system, you can email him and ask whether you can test the card - if it works, fine... if not, you can send it back without having to pay the usual restock fee. It's a nice deal imo, but they don't have 485m cards. Here you can find the details.

Great, thanks! I've only found the PM25LV010 on ebay, should theoretically work. I'll probably buy a cheap programmer which works on the PM25LV010 and see whether it can also programm the LD... if not I can still get a PM25LV010 and try it on the GPU.

The reason why almost nobody has bought a 485m for testing is because they're so incredibly expensive, especially compared to the 6970m (which can be bought for a very decent price imo). I was tempted by a relatively cheap second-hand 485m recently, but since it's the same GF104 architecture as the 470m I have my doubts about the compatibility in the M15x... would be great to see someone testing a GF104 card in a M17x.

Some old-school stuff from Death, R.I.P. Chuck Schuldiner http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EESH5yQSf_M

I only own an Alienware M15x, hahaha. All the stuff I tried with the JW was on the machine of a friend of mine, who was kind enough to let me rip apart his precious system, lol I was talking about the system BIOS, not the vbios. The JH and JW have similar mobos, so the JW may work with the JH BIOS, but that's a crazy idea. I only thought about it because the 6970m seems to work in the JH, but not in the JW, even though they are almost identical hardware.wise. But I can't just flash the JH BIOS on the JW, it's not my system and I don't want to brick it. Some guy at NBR finally tried to put the 6970m in his JH and it works, but it won't go to 3d clocks without manipulating the clocks and the performance seems to be less than it should be. Disassembling the G73 is not really easy, especially when you do it for the first couple of times. You'll need to disconnect all cables from the mobo, remove an incredible amount of screws, (about 4 different types, no counting the special GPU screws) and take out the mobo from the system to get access to the GPU. The heatsink needs some modding, otherwise it won't fit on the 6970m. - A lot of work, and nothing I'd recommend doing withouth ESD protection and a steady hand. It's easy to mess up with all those fragile cables, but if you're working concentrated it's totally possible to exchange the GPU, but it's really time-consuming.

Well, the 6970m seems to work in the JH, but there are still some problems... I only tested it in the JW, and unfortunately I wasn't successful. Maybe it would work when flashing the JH BIOS on the JW, but that's too crazy, lol.

Thanks!! Yeah me too... but I somehow got interested in being able to reprogramm it myself... could be useful for future experiments, hahaha. So I'm looking at this option as well.

Yes, if the gap between the die and the heatsink can get minimized by removing the thermal pads, the temps can really improve. Recently I got to the conclusion, that the vram modules aren't running that hot... the modules on the back of the 470m which I put in the M15x weren't cooled at all by a heatsink or similar, and it worked fine. I realized that in the G73JW the gap between heatsink and vram modules was pretty huge and Asus filled it with a chewing-gum like paste, and the system worked fine too. I guess the vram modules don't need as much cooling as generally assumed... I should try measuring the temps of the modules under load sometime.

That's not unusal, he's pretty busy I guess. I'm not in a big hurry since I should study instead of playing games If it was really urgent I would've bombed him with emails, lol.

Yes, I'm in contact with Kris, he told me he can reprogramm the chip, then I asked how much it would cost, but I haven't got an answer so far.

No, I haven't tried it yet. Have to look up the atiflash commands first (in case I can bypass the GPU at POST), and I need time as well Maybe I can try it tomorrow, I like the idea of this little hack, but I'm still a bit sceptical, lol. Don't want to really fry the card. It's not easy to make sure that the wires don't accidentally short something...

Yes, thank you, I'll look into it, found this link yesterday, see my previous post

Thanks, I've found this link yesterday, and I thought about trying it... Maybe I'll do it tomorrow and see what happens. I have the datasheet of the flash chip on the card and maybe I can somehow bypass the GPU at POST... would be cool. First of all I have to check the atiflash commands again, so that I can make an autoexec.bat for blind flashing (in case it works). That was a slow post... I haven't seen it when I posted the other reply, weird.

These are two very good thoughts. About the eeprom chips on the GPU board, no, there's only one, and no free solder joint for another one. I'll look into a programmer, hope I can a cheap one that works for my chip, or for a different, compatible IC which I can buy easily.

Most of your page is blank, tried to reload it several times... either my browser has problems with it, or something else is wrong. So I can't make fun of your paste job, since I can't see it... Could you check whether it loads for you? And maybe put the guide in a spoiler, the post is so loooooooooooooong

Before you start designing the chassis you'll need to find a mobo that fits your needs. I recently saw a picture of a Clevo mobo prototype with two MXM slots and a socket for a desktop CPU... but it's huuuuge, guess it's for an 18 inch system. Adding something additional to a mobo more or less impossible, unless the PCB is already designed for the additional components (without having them on it). Reasons for this are for example the power/voltage supply circuits and the parts involved in them. Usually they're rated for just about the max power that the board can draw. You can't just push additional 100W through them. Besides this there's the problem with the bus, the controller, firmware etc... and of course all the highly integrated conducting paths (multi layer PCB)

I somehow doubt that there will be enough space on the mobo for a second MXM module... but if you could somehow connect a second MXM module with the mobo you could probably adjust the case for it... You still need room for the cooling. I think a 15 inch system with two GPUs is only possible if there's no ODD, as this should give you enough additional room.

Ah, ok. So you can program them with macros and similar stuff? Pretty neat trick, even though it looks fugly.

Where? Couldn't find it so far, though I've only looked on some sites I know, and I might have missed it. On the chip it says: Pm25LD010 CE1040 HMT 22CG (or HMI, hard to read...) Sounds good, I haven't really read through the datasheets yet, and didn't look for similar chips, but if there's an alternative it's always good to know. I haven't really had time to look for a programmer yet, if you have specific information about a working programmer for this chip I'd be really glad to hear it. The best solution of course would be to simply leave the chip on the PCB and reprogramm it, but if there's no (affordable) programmer which can flash this specific chip, I'll have to look into finding an alternative chip which can get flashed by a cheap programmer (which would be awesome anyway, for testing stuff with the vbios). I'll do some research when I find time and see whether I somehow can find a neat solution. Let me know if you have some helpful information about this, I'd really appreciate it! I'm not that experienced with programming eeproms and similar, only played around with a CPLD demoboard a bit, that's about it with microcontroller and flash stuff, lol.

Monster notebook...!! What kind of keys are these exactly (the ones on the right side)?

Have you tried a power drain (removing the AC plug and the battery, then pushing (and holding down) the power button for 10-20 seconds), and then tried to boot again? I'm not an M14x specialist though...

This would be absolutely fantastic, especially with the specs you have in your mind, but it's not gonna be cheap, not at all. And it requires a lot of time and even more skills. Would you design the PCB yourself? A big problem is that you usually don't get access to all the necessary datasheets and standards (e.g. MXM to name on). It costs quite some money to get access to all the necessary data. (The only specs that I know got leaked somehow and can be found on the web are the PCI-e ) If you know some people in the right place and access to professional software and tools it could work, but it sounds a lot easier than it is (unfortunately) and like mentioned before, a mobo prototype costs an insanely amount of money... a highly integrated multi-layer PCB prototype isn't something that can just be made quickly, and it needs a lot of testing afterwards (which requires some highly sensitive gear). But I probably don't need to tell you this, lol. Anyway, you'll definitely need some other skilled people who're interested in this and want to participate in such a project... and as I said, you somehow need access to documentations and tools... which unfortunately isn't very easy to get. Good connections are very important for this... Such a system would be simply ass-kicking, but it's a very long, expensive way, and only for one single piece I can't really see it happen. A much easier way would be to take an existing mobo and simply make a cool chassis, but this doesn't make a lot of sense of course since the design of the chassis gets limited by the existing mobo...

Shame on me, I never played this, lol... but I always thought it must be a lot of fun. Will definitely start playing it once I have time.