Dell 5150 bios hack HELP

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smoothmove

Limp Gawd
Joined
Jul 11, 2004
Messages
248
I am interested in reworking the Bios of a 5150 to accept Dual Core CPU's.

The Dimension 5150 has a 945G chipset which supports the Dual core 820 -840 CPU. When you install it, you get the Unsupported CPU message in screen, BUT no error Beep code. This leads me to believe that it is a BIOS that was programed to not allow Dual Core Chips instead of a chipset issue.

Anyone?

Anyone tried a similar upgrade flash of a Dell board?

If so, how did you do it? Problems, etc...

I am willing to try it, but don't know if the bios will take the flash or which one to try
 
not sure about the dell bios, but if it were an Award bios, I'd bet the secret is in the microcode update that is just a modular part of the bios.

Might be something similar in the Dell bios. Dunno though...maybe someone that deals with Bios more could be of help...especially if they know assembly (the language the bios is programmed in)
 
smoothmove said:
I am interested in reworking the Bios of a 5150 to accept Dual Core CPU's.

The Dimension 5150 has a 945G chipset which supports the Dual core 820 -840 CPU. When you install it, you get the Unsupported CPU message in screen, BUT no error Beep code. This leads me to believe that it is a BIOS that was programed to not allow Dual Core Chips instead of a chipset issue.

Anyone?

Anyone tried a similar upgrade flash of a Dell board?

If so, how did you do it? Problems, etc...

I am willing to try it, but don't know if the bios will take the flash or which one to try
Click to expand...

This doesn't suprise me at all. And thanks for the heads up I was just ready to buy a dual core for my 5150. My advice is try over at notebook forums. Dell did the exact same thing to the i9300/XPS2 Notebooks. A modified bios flash was all that was needed to make the i9300 believe it was an XPS2 and accept the 6800Ultra and 7800GTX mobile graphics cards. Someone there might be able to help you make a modified bios. From my understanding when they orginally did the bios hack for the notebooks it was extremly simple.
 
The best bios to try to modify would probally be the XPS-400, however there do appear to be differences with the motherboard. Mainly the addition of a 4x PCIE slot.
 
How do you force a bios flash. With the Dell utility, will not continue if it reads a different motherboard.

I am willing to try it, but need to know how.

Thanks
 
smoothmove said:
I am interested in reworking the Bios of a 5150 to accept Dual Core CPU's.

The Dimension 5150 has a 945G chipset which supports the Dual core 820 -840 CPU.
Click to expand...
Having a supported chipset is not the only requirement. Motherboards have different platform ratings. The "platform compatibility number" is printed on the CPU: 05A (95W) or 05B (130W), for dual core models. This applies to all motheroards, in OEM systems or retail boxed.

For example, if the motherboard doesn't support 05B CPUs and you plug in a 05B processor, you will likely have a very short lived motherboard. :p

The 5150 only included up to the P4 650 (3.4GHz, 84W, 04A platform). It's possible that the board could theoretically use 05A platform CPUs, but unlikely that you will get a BIOS to support it. Why? Because there's no physical difference between a 05A and 05B CPU, and most people don't even know what it means. Plug in the wrong one and it will probably kill the board. Dell will not make a BIOS to support it for that reason, and seriously other than inserting or swapping AWARD/AMI/Phoenix modular blocks, no one really hacks BIOSs.

The XPS Gen2/9300 hack worked because both used the same motherboard. It's very unwise to try to cross-flash a GX620/5150 since the boards are very different (look at the open case product views, rotated northbridge on the GX620). There is no other system with the same motherboard as the 5150 that uses dual core CPUs. IOW, you're out of luck.
 
smoothmove said:
How do you force a bios flash. With the Dell utility, will not continue if it reads a different motherboard.

I am willing to try it, but need to know how.

Thanks
Click to expand...


From what I remember from talking to the person that did it for the XPS2 it was as easy as disabling a single call feature of the program. This made the program ignore that it was the wrong platform for the bios. Let me see if I can find the email from the person that did it for the XPS2 I will see if I can email him and get him to disclose exactly how he did it.
 
Sorry for opening an old thread but my info may help someone who wants dual core in a Dell 5150 Dimension PC.

The 5150 used by my wife was purchased last October (2005) and has the A05 firmware. It originally shipped with a P4 630 3hz HT cpu.

Today I received a Pentium D 820 2.8Ghz. This cpu works in the 5150. I do get an error about incompatibility at boot but the BIOS reports dual core. The system boots fine and has been running great since then running batch conversions and large image resizing in CS2.

I am not saying that this will work for everyone (there are quite a few threads on the net about this), so good luck if you try it.
 
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