[Amilo A] Flashy BIOS on an Amilo A 1630

[johnderby]

Hi
I am new to this forum so please bear with me. My son has upgraded his laptop to Vista, and now wants his BIOS flashing to sort out the processor speed.Have been to the Uniwill site and downloaded the update and created a bootable cd. Unfortunately the instructions from the Uniwill site are not the clearest and do not seem to correspond with the files I have.
Not wishing to mess up his BIOS and not being 100% sure what I am doing I wonder if there is anyone out there who would take pity on me and either let me have some step by step instructions or point me in the right direction.
Many thanks
Cheers

[Mariner]

You are taking quite a risk, if you decide to go for the Uniwill bios...
You must find a Uniwill model, where atleast the CPU, motherboard, chipset and graphics adapter are EXACTLY the same as in the Fijitsu model.
Keep also in mind that flashing the bios doesn't have any affect on the CPU speed.

Vista is quite a resource eater, so getting it to run properly in an old notebook is not so easy. Finding drivers that will work is even more difficult.

Start your upgrade by installing 2GB of memory, that will make a serious difference. And YES your notebook will support it, even though Fujitsu claims the maximum is 1GB...
With more memory Vista will maybe run a little better.

[johnderby]

Hi Mariner
many thanks for the reply.
The allseeing google directed me to a forum at Laptopshowcase http://www.laptopshowcase.co.uk/reviews.php?id=45
Some of the folk there seem to think the Amilo A 1630 is in fact a rebranded Uniwill and that is where I got the idea of getting the BIOS upgrade. The Vista seems to have locked the processor down to 800mhz which is what I am trying to resolve.
I did put a query on their forum but with no response yet. If you have chance could you have a look and let me have your thoughts before I have to resort to Fujitsus premium rate lines.
Thanks again
John

[propediotika]

Driver updates including BIOS update you may find here http://support.fujitsu-siemens.com/com/ ... loads.html just choose your notebook from that categories. Newest BIOS for your notebook is 1.04c

[Mariner]

Some of the folk there seem to think the Amilo A 1630 is in fact a rebranded Uniwill and that is where I got the idea of getting the BIOS upgrade. The Vista seems to have locked the processor down to 800mhz which is what I am trying to resolve.

Amilo A1630, D1840 and D1845 are notebooks made by Uniwill for Fujitsu, thats correct. But atleast the D1845 has no similar model under Uniwill brand.

Looks like there is some people in the Laptopshowcase forum, who have managed to update the A1630 with the Uniwill bios. Looks like it's working too! Nice to see also that there is people crazy enough to take the risk and test!
I think it's some what safe for you to go for it too, but remember that if something goes wrong, there is no way back. The notebook becomes a paperweight.

I updated my D1845 with the FSC bios CD once and it worked fine (an FSC bios not Uniwill!)
If I wanted to update to the Uniwill bios (which I don't!), I would do as follows:
1. Make a bootable CD with some CD burning software (in my case NERO).
2. Burn the unzipped Uniwill bios files on it.
3. Start the notebook with the CD.
4. On the CD prompt type: "f82745 258ka5.105"
5. Pray God that everything works.
6. If the notebook starts again, go to bios and load default settings.
7. Pray the God again.

Don't blame me, if it doesn't work then!!! It's completely at your own risk!

[johnderby]

Thanks for the advice folks.
I am not sure that the old 1.04 BIOS is likely to cure the problem but it probably makes sense to have it upto date as possible before venturing into anything else.
Thanks for looking at that site for me Mariner, I share your trepidation at going down this road, just as a matter of interest seeing as trashing the BIOS is going to be a first for me,theres confidence, if I make a ghost copy of the hard drive on an external hard drive together with an emergency boot disk am I likely to be able to get the laptop functioning again?
Never thought that going back to XP would start to look an attractive option!!!
Cheers all
John

[Mariner]

Ghosting your HD won't fix anything if your bios (basic input output system) is corrupted.
The bios file you downloaded is going to be "flashed" on your notebooks ROM (read only memory). BIOS is the "program" that communicates between the CPU and all the other main components on your motherboard. If the bios is not working or if something goes wrong during the flashing process, the computer just simply won't work anymore. It won't read anything from the HD (or any other device), it won't start, nothing.
The power goes on, but it's a black screen and that's it.

Luckily on these tree notebooks the bios chip is on a socket, so the damaged chip can easily be removed. Then it's just a question of finding a new chip with a working bios burned on it and off you go again!
On most of the notebooks the whole motherboard would have to be changed = cost is as much as a new notebook.

There is many people out there who think that the D1845 is the same notebook as the Uniwill 258SAx and has flashed the Uniwill bios to it, a non working notebook as a result. The D1840 is quite close to the 258SAx, so that might work. The D1845 is quite close to the 257SA1, so that might work too. And your A1630 is VERY close to the 258KA0, so it should work... maybe...

[saabmania2]

hi,
the uniwill 258kao bios works fine on the Amilo A1630 and this is needed if you want windows vista to work properly i have the uniwill 1.05 bios on 2 of my A1630's and run vista on both with no problems at all.
Paul

[johnderby]

Thanks Paul.
Glad someone could make this work, am afraid FS have not been very forthcoming with any help or advice.
At the moment we have rolled his laptop back to XP to keep him working and when I get chance in a few weeks I may have another ***** at getting it working.
Would it be alright to contact you then if I get any problems?
Cheers

[fcs001fcs]

Hi All,

I just wanted to let people know my experience with the Amilo A1630 and XP and then Windows 7 64.

A few months ago I wanted to rescue our old Amilo a1630 for my wife to use for email and Skype. When using Skype is generated a Skype warning that the PC was not performing enough to use Skype Video correctly. The video uses a lot of resources and the PC could not keep up. I was using XP at the time.

I investigated here and other forums and it helped me out a great deal.

The result was that I found out that I could upgrade the memory to 2 Gig with the Fujitsu BIOS 104c. I did this and the memory worked great.

I still had an issue with the AMD processor running at only 798 MHz. In the various forums I found out that AMD has a patch for my processor under XP. My processor is AMD Athlon 64 3700+. I installed the patch from AMD and the processor was finally working at maximum capacity 2.4 GHz (2400 MHz). You must make sure that the Power Settings in XP are set for "Maximum Performance" as this is how XP controls the throttle of the CPU frequency. It theoretically will adjust the CPU frequency based on the load in the other power settings but since my Laptop is away plug-in the the mains I leave it on "Maximum Performance".

It was working well then but still every once in a while I would get the Skype warning mentioned above.

I then decided to upgrade to Windows 7 64 bit version to see if that would help. I did a clean install with Win 7 64. I then had the same problem with the CPU only working at 798 MHz. The AMD patch would not install with Win 7 64, I suspect it was because of the 64 bit issue and that AMD has not developed the patch for Win 7.

Further investigation revealed that the BIOS update to the Uniwill 105 version (see prior posts) corrected this problem in Vista. I was nervous about trying this but really had no other choice if I wanted to stay with Win 7. I update the BIOS to Uniwill 105 version.

When I first reboot I had a CRC error in the BIOS but subsequently it booted up OK. Windows 7 64 now allows the CPU to run at 2.4 GHz as it should and Skype runs great with no warnings as yet.

I just wanted to let other A1630 users know of my experience but PLEASE NOTE that the Uniwill BIOS update could make your A1630 unusable if something goes wrong. Use at your own risk!!

Edit: I forgot to mention that when going to Win 7 I could not get a driver for the O2Micro Card Bus Accelerator. It shows up in the Device Manager as "Base System Device". There seems to be no 64 bit drivers for this rather old device. I do not use the Card Reader so I just left it as it is.

[CaptainIs]

hi,
the uniwill 258kao bios works fine on the Amilo A1630 and this is needed if you want windows vista to work properly i have the uniwill 1.05 bios on 2 of my A1630's and run vista on both with no problems at all.
Paul

Hello,
I have amilo A1630 ..can you please sent me the bios file {uniwill 1.05 bios} and to explain how can i install this?
My email is Giokaki@yahoo.gr
Thanks