Hi,
I just wrote so that I may give you some info you'd probably be very interested in (and to ask for some help as well). I'm really not affiliated with ANY company, please believe me on that, as it will sound like an advertising message. You complain (and rightfully so) about locked BIOSes. Yes, no multiplier setting, no voltage adjustment setting, no nothing. Well, a friend just bought a laptop from someone who got it in the USA while working there (to be able to speak via the internet with the family home). When he got home, he sold it to make some extra cash for the family. Thankfully there is nothing American that interferes with the fact that it's being used in Romania (power supply works at both voltages, all it needed was a socket converter, I can get an Expresscard TV tuner from Avermedia that supports DVB-T, PAL, SECAM, etc. - America has ATSC and NTSC - and so on). The laptop model is HP Pavilion dv6626us. This one appears to have fixed specs, meaning that you can't buy it upgraded or with optional components like the HP Expresscard TV tuner (that would be bad since HP doesn't make European versions of their TV tuners - there is no model supporting DVB-T, although PAL, at least, works fine. Probably SECAM as well, but you can only get TV stations with that standard in France, who invented the standard, and maybe a few other countries). You get it with 2x512 DDR-667 sticks, a T5250 CPU at 1.5 GHz, 160 GB hard drive, etc. It supports 2x2048 DDR-667 sticks, and well...I hoped you can give me some more info on this. CPU-Z says the socket is FCPGA 478, which would probably mean something similar to the desktop socket 478. The best CPUs for this socket are some Extreme Edition Mobile Core 2 Duos at 2.8 GHz and 2.6 if I recall correctly. I would assume they have the multiplier unlocked. I wouldn't worry about heat since this CPU is made on the 65 nm production process, while some of the Extreme Editions are made on 45 nm (Intel has handy lists with sorting filters at processorfinder.intel.com) and I would assume those made on 45 nm don't generate as much heat as the 65 nm ones.
However. The BIOS might not recognize the Extreme Editions, and most definitely it won't allow you to change the multiplier speed. This is where I could be of assistance to you. esupport.com offers custom-written BIOSes. Well, apparently things work like this(as far as I know it): BIOS makers like American Megatrends, Phoenix, Award (taken over by Phoenix) and maybe there are others, release some sort of reference versions of their BIOSes that one shouldn't install on any machine. Motherboard makers adapt the BIOSes to their specific motherboard models. Well, these guys at esupport appear to take the latest version of the BIOS from any BIOS manufacturer and adapt it to the motherboard you have. And to get an upgrade (costs 30$ if I recall correctly) they must have your board's model in their labs to be able to write a custom BIOS for it. I was thinking of getting a custom BIOS for a Dell machine I have, that of course has many BIOS options missing. I still haven't done it, though, because the priority is in getting a BIOS for an obscure and kinda low-end motherboard I have (and the Dell works fine so far with its' own BIOS). The latest-latest-latest BIOS, that wasn't even an official release, doesn't recognize the video card I put into it. Along with that, the latest BIOS is kinda crappy on allocating IRQs and other stuff like that. I tried buying the BIOS in 2006 or last year. You had to either go online with the computer you wanted to upgrade and install an ActiveX control that detected the exact motherboard model by the BIOS string, or enter the information manually. Then you got an automatic e-mail from a bot, saying we got an excellent BIOS upgrade for your motherboard. Click here to buy. You had to pay first! And after that, you might have gotten the BIOS via e-mail, or an apologetic e-mail saying oh, well, you already have the latest BIOS. We don't have an updated version, feel free to check again six months later. We had to authorize your card because blah blah. They did refund the money, though.
Right now it was really hard to get to the page where you could enter the BIOS info manually (
http://esupport.com/forms/leads/bios_upgradeform3.cfm). I checked it out of curiosity, to see if it still works (still don't have the money to order an upgrade, though). They might have changed policy. Hopefully they did. You see, you paid that small fee and they refunded it if they didn't have the BIOS (happened back when I tried to order). All is well, but while the money was in their accounts, they might have got interest out of it from the bank. Scam-ish. Besides that, they have some sort of customer testimonials. Most of the people say wtf, I just got the BIOS I already had! Very few said oh yeah baby, I can finally plug in that video card that didn't work or something.
Just said it so that maybe if you have 30 $ to spare, you might want to order a BIOS from them. Make sure you have the latest version flashed on your laptop before that. I even plan on going online and ordering the BIOS with a very old 386 laptop running at 20 MHz, with 2 MB of ram (you can install Windows '95 at most on 386 systems - '98 asks for a 486 CPU during installation) but right now I need a bigger hard drive for it so that I can install something other than Windows 3.11 (couldn't install '95 on just 40 MB). That thing has an IBM BIOS or something.
The other suggestion: there are programs on the net, that enable you to edit BIOSes. Part of customizing BIOSes means hiding options the motherboard doesn't have, or that you don't want the user to see. And of course HP, Dell, Toshiba, Acer, whatever, will never ever want to let you change the CPU multiplier, even if you have an Extreme Edition CPU. Maybe the CPU voltages can be changed as well.
First you would need the specific flasher for your BIOS type. Then, you need the BIOS editor for your type of BIOS. And then you can load the BIOS file and edit what is editable, what is read-only, and what's hidden in the BIOS. Example: a friend of mine still has 5.25 floppy drives. He loves them. Don't ask. And he also hates multi-core and multi-CPU. Don't ask. So, he wanted the ultimate single-core system that can support two floppies and have as many regular PCI slots as possible. On the AMD platforms, apparently there is no motherboard with PCI Express and two floppy support, with the AM2 socket at most. On Intel platforms, he found an Abit model with LGA775 with PCI Express, generally a very good board. The ultimate Intel single core was an Extreme Edition Pentium 4 with HyperThreading at 3.73 GHz or so, that can be overclocked to something like 4.1 GHz as I remember reading on a forum (the last-last one was a Celeron model made on the Core 2 architecture, Celeron 440 if I'm not mistaking). Ok, what about two floppy support ? He downloaded the latest BIOS from Abit (remember, before buying the board) and loaded the BIOS in the editor. Well, there IS support for two floppy drives, but the option for the second drive is hidden. It can be enabled with that editor, though. And since floppy drives are ONLY accessible via BIOS, that's everything you ever need for the second floppy drive to be detected.
If you want me to tell you what the BIOS editors' names are for AMI (American Megatrends) and Award BIOSes, let me know and I'll ask
him. I don't know the names because I haven't been playing with them.
Why I want to thank you:
if it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have known about overclocking. I plan on getting an Extreme Edition CPU for my friend's HP dv6626us laptop. Might work, might not. Doesn't work because of the BIOS ? No problem, I'll try esupport. Same for the multiplier control thingy. But if you increase the speed...you might need a bit of voltage increase. Even if it supports it (motherboard model is Quanta 30CC, as reported by CPU-Z) it's not shown in the BIOS for sure. Because of you I know that overclocking with FSB increases shouldn't be done while on battery power. How about proper overclocking, with proper voltage increases (assuming it's possible like on a normal motherboard) ?
Thanks again for all the wonderful info.
... then it went BSOD on me 
