If by some marvelous chance the TPG chat has anyone who wants to join and help with I would shit my pants
Who wants to play with garbage?
Everyone nowadays seems to need a computer for… something. On some level, somewhere in the world, a computer could be used to do a lot of different things. I’m not only talking in foreign countries, but even in your country, reader. I live in america and I can’t tell you how many people have been happy to just get a Yonah based laptop that they can get some bank stuff done and do their email and taxes.
So… I’ve been thinking. As parts for things seem to get harder to get, gpu’s being an example, what if we made an effort to enhance older platforms to be useable in modern times? This could be in any sense really, but I’m thinking about hardware that is everywhere and costs absolutely nothing to both acquire but also enhance.
Take for example my Recent Laptop Thread that actually started this one. You can get PM based laptops for nothing, they’re specterless/meltless, and with a little creativity you could add an SBC and end up with a pretty nice secure system. I wouldn’t go with a B130 though unless you want a fun challenge, go with something that at least has SATA. X3
In any case, it can be had for nothing, overclocked with literally trash, and then with some software and some magic and maybe another wire or two you have a 32 bit chugger. From there, IMO, you should just add what you want, and such can be done very easily, and I have many ideas as to how to do so.
What this project is NOT
This is not going to show you how to play 2021’s newest titles on your grandma’s athlon X2 machine, sorry. This is not a gaming rig thread, though certainly a user could make one, or a guide on how to make a machine to hack the government or some dumb shit.
This thread is here to document hardware that gives the user more freedom than modern, brand new, soldered, and locked down hardware. A user should be able to come in here, choose a platform that interests them, be able to research a machine they want, and then build it.
I will also be building machines and selling them in a thread as I go along. If someone wants one of my projects I’ll drop it for total of the parts I have plus shipping, but otherwise a finished product is the goal, overall. Even just instructions on how to make something nice.
Ok, so where do we start?
Right now, I am working with a Dell Inspiron B130. Its a very capable machine, however it has one downside. Its IDE based. So I inherently have speed issues with the hard drive. However, I have a gigabit ethernet jack and an intel PRO NIC. So if I got an SBC that had msata or m.2, I could just make some rsync scripts to handle hard drive stuff, etc etc.
Basically, I am trying to find what would be a limit to a machine, and finding ways to completely ignore that there is a limitation. This could be anything from basic mods, to 3D printing entire new bottom cases and just adding whatever feature I want. I DO want to do that, however that’ll be when I am playing with SBC’s. I don’t exactly have money to do that rn, so I’ll just play with what I have access to.
ATM I am looking into a few different chipsets, playing with pinmodding, trying out some processors, and playing with ram. I will soon however be digging into the complete logistics of laptop ram, and low voltage and ultra low voltage pentium M’s. I want to find the fastest ram that a 915GL can handle (the chipset in my B130), lowest latency, best timings etc, and try to get something good out of just a pentium M before adding like a GPU dock to the system or going up to SBC’s and intranet stuff.
There is, however, quite a bit of work to be done.
I have noticed in my short time with my B130 that the battery system does not report correctly. Prior to pinmodding, full charge was 94%. Either adding the pinmod has now caved in my battery, which I doubt, or the slight voltage difference has thrown everything out of whack, and it just doesn’t know what the hell its reading, which is what I’m pretty sure is happening. The computer in the battery however reports correctly, and if I check the SMART data, it’ll report correctly.
This seems to be rampant throughout the system, and its a very normal Centrino series 2 machine, normal Dothan core, normal i915. Nothing special, same i2c sensors as literally every other one of these laptops.
There is a toolkit for windows called Notebook Hardware Control.
This thing allows you to control literally everything about a centrino laptop. You can edit the bloody power phases in speedstep, any of the 64 steps. You can live edit voltages, get temp of the die and PLA individually of the CPU, like, its a really cool tool.
Why isn’t this shit in linux?
So I want to port this thing to linux and make it so if you have a centrino system, you can just open a terminal, type NXCentrino or something, and boom you’re overclocking and doing whatever the fuck.
The eventual big brain play here is to have openfirmware on my machine and make an easy installer for coreboot and then ignore NHC altogether, but thats super far ahead and an end game play at best.
The Plan Right Now
I want to nail down what platforms would be best to “Reclaim”. Theres features that a user could find desirable. Here are the features I am interested in making documents about for other users.
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Overclocking / Overvolting / Underclocking / Undervolting
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Firmware flashing
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Moddable Hardware (changing screens, backlit keyboards, diff speakers, etc)
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Change mobile parts out for desktop parts (Turion for Athlon, etc)
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GPU Docks via expresscard
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Other Nonsensical Expansion
Below are notes and links to blogs and other posts I have found interesting, and the posts following are about their reserved subjects. Any new data will be edited in and the edit will be dated.
The point of this thread, and project in general, is to inspire the community to start thinking differently about technology, and possibly push for a different type of recycling. Should the end user find something they like about this sort of thing, maybe they can start a business or just make some money selling a few systems here and there.
Your bat, my ball.
http://www.notebookreview.com/news/pin-modding-and-overclocking-a-pentium-m-guide/
https://www.dell.com/support/home/en-us/product-support/product/inspiron-b130/drivers
By popular demand, terms / acronyms you should know when entering this project
PM - Pentium M, PMB for banias, PMD for dothan
C1 - First series of Core, the Yonah line
C2 - Second series, Core 2, the Meron line
G3 - powerpc G3 750 processors
G4 - powerpc G4 74/5/XX processors
NHC - Notebook Hardware Control
NXC - My redo of NHC for linux, or at least when I mention it, this is how it’ll be labeled
PLA (cpu ram context) - referring to the board the die / memory is mounted to, probably wrong, idc
ITP - in this post
ULV - Ultra Low Voltage
LV - Low Voltage
SBC - Single Board Computer
If there are any terms or acronyms that need to be explained, notify me, I’ll put it in this table here
Users Involved on L1:
@Aremis
