High_Voltage

@rusTORK The ADT solutions implement PCI-E x4 by making use of the PCI-E lines available in the m.2 NVMe connectors. Although Y510p does have an m.2 port, it does not support NVMe and therefore doesn't have any PCI-E lines in there.

@Swung Huang Please take your time, your life is much more important than this. I'm sure some of us will easily wait 'till June (especially because by then the RTX cards will drop in price).

@Pushendu This thing will work on many laptops, including the Y510P (probably, you'll have to flash a version of BIOS with white list removed). The problem with these is that they only give you PCI-E x1, whereas the Ultrabay adapter is capable of PCI-E x8.

7 hours ago, rusTORK said:

I posted link before on Ultrabay connector - there are still a lot of them left in the world. Should be possible to build at least 100 adapters. But you have to deal with managers of the stores to sell you small numbers of connectors. Another problem is international shipping.

I think it shouldn't be much of a problem for say @Swung Huang to manufacture and sell these adapters while sourcing the connectors locally in China. Especially because he seems to have already designed / reverse-engineered functional PCBs in several different arrangements (one-piece and cable-tied versions). Not sure what is currently stopping him from doing that. Possibly, the demand is not high enough. Although, if people here confirmed that they are ready to pay @gerald's original price for the thing, this could well be a different story...

1 hour ago, Pushendu said:

Can anyone tell me if this can be used to work on?

You don't seem to understand. The problem lies nor in the PCI-E socket of the adapter, neither in the PCB manufacturing costs. It is the bit that connects to the laptop's motherboard INSIDE the ultrabay slot, that is utilizing a custom proprietary connector.

If one could find a place to purchase these connectors easily, the rest is quite straightforward and (relatively) cheap. One could potentially even design a small PCB with the connector to go inside ultrabay slot, which would break it out into a bunch of high-frequency biaxial cables that you can then solder directly to the PCI-E socket pins on the back of one of those small PCI-E boards you've linked.

The problem is not with the design. The problem is with finding where to buy those proprietary connectors for the ultrabay. If there is no way of getting them separately, people will have to desolder them from their own GPU modules and install them on blank PCBs, and this requires quite a lot of skill. 

Hi, @Zakyn, I had a look at your schematic. Not really going to check your routing to the PCI-E pinout, let's hope it is correct. Also, I hope that you are aware that the high-speed PCI-E lanes have to be routed in differential pairs with length matching (KiCad has a special feature for that) (also make sure to match the length among all the pairs).

Now, speaking of the necessary pull-up resistors on the Lenovo side, as it has already been shown by @gerald while I was writing this response, here's the situation with the additional resistors and circuits:

• 1k pull-up to +3V at pin 70 of the Ultrabay (pin SUSP# in Lenovo motherboard schematic), this is R4 in Gerald's schematic. (note that Gerald's schematic uses different pin numeration for some reason)
• R1, R5 and R6 are not installed on Gerald's adapter board, so you can just ignore them. These pins although labelled sensibly, don't appear to make any difference to ultrabay functionality
• R2 used to be installed in V2 of the adapter, but in order for it to work properly, this pin must be open. Do not install!
• 1k pull-down to ground from Ultrabay pin 94 (SLAVE_PRESENT#), this is R3 in Gerald's schematic
• Wire Ultrabay pin 98 (PLT_RST#) to PCI-E Reset pin, additionally pulling the signal up to +3V3 (that comes from your power supply)

To summarise, out of all of the resistors, you only need two (R4 and R3), plus the Reset circuit.

Also, you don't have to route SMB bus to the PCI-E slot as it is redundant. Better make solder pads for it so it can be used with my hardware mod.

@Zakyn If you send me your schematic, I might be able to help you with it. 

Does it offer any optimus-related options? Also, when right-clicking any game shortcut, do you now get an option whether to run it with intel or high performance nvidia gpu? Also, do you have intel drivers installed? 

1 hour ago, Jeklund said:

Regardless if I disable all other cards it seems to still use the integrated graphics over the external one.

Is this on a y500 or y510p? On a y510p you should keep Intel graphics enabled for the Optimus to work. On y500 internal screen acceleration isn't really possible at all... 

2 hours ago, just0 said:

Hi Guys, new to the forum,

 

 I have a y410p and just purchased a Toshiba m.2 SSD RC100, 240GB. I installed it into my laptop but the bios and Windows does not see it. Other forums have noted it's probably due to the whitelist, and lead me here as in an attempt to troubleshoot I updated my bios to v3.08. I have a few questions in regards to the process:

 

- Each time I try to download the Universal BIOS Backup Toolkit, Windows tells me there is a virus in it and deletes the file? It this a legit program and how do I get around this?

 

- Where do I find the 'patchers' needed to create the MDDED308.bin? Is there a specific reason that I have to mod my own bios, or can someone provide me with a copy of the MDDED308.bin

 

- Where do I get v2.07 of the bios?

 

I feel like I am missing alot of details... any help would be greatly appreciated. 

Hi! 

I honestly don't think your issue is caused by the whitelist. Whitelist usually only applies to wireless-capable devices, which an SSD is not. I suspect whitelisting wireless devices simplifies the FCC certification process to Lenovo or something on these lines...

Your issue is most likely caused by the fact that you have purchased an NVMe SSD, while these old laptops only support msata in the m.2 port. 

This aside, the patchers should be in the same archive everything else is in. The reasons to mod your own BIOS rather than using someone else's are to retain your Windows key and keep original ME region in place (this is something you really don't want to mess with unless you know what you're doing). 

The Backup Toolkit should be the real deal unless the link I have provided ages ago now leads to something malicious... 

30 minutes ago, Celestus said:

ou can safely put rtx 2080 and pci-e 3.0 x8 will be still enough to handle it.

This is actually a very good question! I'm really looking forward to seeing somebody try the new RTX cards with this adapter. I don't have much concern about the bandwidth, but the troubles with error 43 (if they persist) might become a real issue since the trick with older drivers likely won't work for obvious reasons. 

1 hour ago, antistatic85 said:

The process has worked without problems only my BIOS freezes me constantly after a few seconds. I have already left the EC only on V2.07 which has led to no success. The BIOS freezes me now synonymous if I have no EGPU Adpater installed. Windows can be started but without problems with and without adapter.

1 hour ago, antistatic85 said:

Adapter Version 2 (GTX970)

You need to upgrade your adapter to version 3. In order to do that, you need to either desolder the resistor or cut the track as indicated in this post.

@Andrew54 The version 2 of the adapter only works with v2.07 BIOS. Converting the adapter into version 3 by removing the resistor or cutting the track will solve your issue.

Another option for you might be to install the Svl7's modified v2.07 BIOS instead. 

Yes, the 1k resistor is pulling the signal to either low or high level (i don't remember for sure). We want it to be the opposite level. Somebody has experimentally figured out earlier that it works with 10k, but not having the resistor at all is a more reliable option. The track cutting trick is for those who don't want to solder or don't have the necessary tools. A knife or a pair of scissors should be in every house on the other hand.

On 10.08.2018 at 7:06 PM, Onepamopa said:

Does the modded bios contain any updated CPU microcode for spectre/meltdown ?

 

Also, will there be a way to use the laptop's LCD display with this mod? (If no - why?).

No, the modified BIOS only contains Nvidia fix, unlocked developer BIOS menu and wlan card whitelist removal, and is otherwise identical to V3.08 released by Lenovo. I don't think Lenovo has ever released fixes for Spectre/Meltdown for this computer.

The internal screen will work with eGPU acceleration through Optimus as long as you're using modern Nvidia card.

33 minutes ago, HCao said:

I got an adapter long time ago from gerald, but as I see in this post, there exists different versions of adapter?

Does this BIOS works with all versions?

The BIOS mod requires version 3 of the adapter. You can easily convert your older adapter into version 3 by either cutting the track, or desoldering the resistor, as indicated in this post.

54 minutes ago, balint234 said:

the ones i marked with red were the 4 pins that wasnt square by default all the others were squares.

This has been the EPS 12V 8 pin connector, used for supplying power to CPU VRMs on some motherboards. You are really lucky it didn't burn your card, as voltages in this connector have the opposite polarity to the PCI-e one.

52 minutes ago, balint234 said:

i tested the gpu in a pc that has no integrated graphics in it and it is obvious now that it needs the 8 pin

Yeah, that screenshot is exactly what was happening back then with my friend's MSI R9 280. Looks like you do need an 8-pin then...

3 hours ago, balint234 said:

@High_Voltage

As the father of nvidia support. :’D

Any ideas?

First of all, I'd try getting an actual 8-pin connector. A 6-pin to 8-pin adapter should do the job. I can vaguely remember my friend getting some AMD gpu from MSI which would refuse to work with a 6-pin plug in the 8-pin port. (Not that it physically shouldn't work, but they're doing some additional detection on the port to ensure all 8 pins are present).

Then, I'd make sure the power supply is OK and all the ports are clean from dust and are connected together firmly. And only then I'd have another look at drivers and other software stuff.

After you do all the checks on hardware, it might be a good idea to try booting off something like an Ubuntu LiveCD and seeing whether it is possible to get the card to function with linux's drivers.

@Kuneroll, As I've written in literally every BIOS mod installation guide, the Error 43 is going to be quite common when NVidia's latest 1000 series GPUs are used. Please, follow this guide in order to fix it. This guide has also been confirmed working by @MWichni and his GTX1070ti.

Yet, there is this guide, which claims among other things the usage of AMD eGPUs with the internal screen.

@Marvin Glad to hear everything worked as intended!

Regarding the usage of the PCI-E riser, you simply never know whether it works. Good quality risers (which use cables similar to those @Swung Huang has in his adapter) can sometimes give you several meters of extension (there was a LinusTechTips video about it somewhere...). Yet, it is strange that even a short generic quality adapter was enough to degrade the connection in your case. Degradation of signal integrity might depend a lot on @gerald's PCB layout, PCB material specs and how well the matching of lane track lengths and RF impedances has been performed.

My advice would probably be to find someone to borrow a higher quality riser from and try it yourself (or maybe some sort of PC parts shop would agree to accept the return if it doesn't work in your system).

It won't. But you can do it manually from BIOS after the update (it should be somewhere in the last tab I guess).

Sounds like something very bad has happened to your ultrabay card... Before throwing that in the bin though, I'd try cleaning the Ultrabay contacts both on motherboard and on the egpu.

I don't think there are any BIOS settings (even in the extended menu) that could've killed the external 755. My only guess would be that it has overheated and died for some reason. You can take it apart and check its fan and thermal paste to know for sure.

You can of course flash yourself with stock bios and reset settings to factory defaults just to make sure it's not that.

Unfortunately, I don't have any more ideas of what could this have been.

What was the problem with HD7950 then?

So, one AMD card worked, but the other didn't. I wonder whether the problem is really the card or something else. Do the fans spin up at all?

Very cool! Another successful result with the y500 version of the mod!

Regarding the non-working Nvidia, can you check the model of the card? The HD7950 is an AMD GPU, not Nvidia. Also, did you make sure that separate power (6pin/8pin connectors) is supplied to the card before testing?

I personally don't see any reason for Nvidia not to work, as @Swung Huang has previously reported GTX 1070 working on Y400. Therefore whatever model your card is, the problem is most likely the card itself, not the BIOS mod or the adapter.

They do have their own variant of switchable graphics, though. IIRC it also works by switching with Intel integrated graphics. But yeah, looks like in our case Optimus is the only solution for switchable graphics.

Yet, it looks like thanks to some new features in Windows 10 it should be possible to get internal screen working using these clever hacks. By doing this, one can get internal screen operation with AMD cards and on computers like Y500/Y400, which have their Intel GPU permanently disabled.