**Official eMachines M68xx Thread**

[TonyBerry]

Originally posted by: MDE
Please search the thread for your problem to help keep it readable.

I did. Didn't see anything helpful.

The memory is split into two modules. One is "user" accessible and the other is under the keyboard and may void your warranty if you replace it. It uses regular PC2700 SODIMM's so you can either replace the stock 256 mb stick that is located on the bottom with a 1 gb or 512 mb stick to increase your memory. There is an issue with PC3200 memory and currently only one stick of PC3200 RAM can be used without nasty problems.

Jeers to eMachines for such an ignorant memory chip layout/design.

I ordered a single Micron 1GB PC2700 (DDR-333) SODIMM to replace the 256MB in the "user accessible" memory slot to give me a theoretical 1.256GB of RAM. I recieved, and installed, the 1GB chip and got nothing. Powered on and the screen stayed black. Okay. Maybe it doesn't like having 2 different sized chips, so I set out to install the 1GB, by itself, in the internal memory slot. After 30 minutes of taking the laptop apart to get to the memory slot, I installed the 1GB chip and powered it up. Same thing. Black screen. Okay. Maybe the 1GB chip was bad from Micron. So I installed it in a Dell P4 laptop, came up fine. So the chip is good.

What is the issue here? Do I need 2 1GB chips to make it work?

Thanks.

 

[gweilo8888]

Jeers to eMachines for such an ignorant memory chip layout/design.

In fairness to eMachines, I have to say that they didn't design this laptop - Taiwanese manufacturer Arima did. The exact same laptop, with the exact same problem accessing the memory chip, is sold by numerous other manufacturers including the much-vaunted (and way overpriced) VooDoo, as the Envy M:860, their top of the line model (with a higher-res LCD and a few other changes).

It isn't only eMachines who can see that despite this one flaw, overall this is a damned solid laptop... Yes, the memory chip position is lousy, but overall I'm still happy with this machine.

 

[ThunderPC]

The machine is very picky about RAM brands. I do know that samsung 1GB chips will work, internal or "user accessible".

 

[BlackMamba]

Not sure if anyone mentioned this, but you can use Patje's Mobility Modder to use ATI's reference drivers.

http://www.driverheaven.net/patje/

 

[chief72]

Originally posted by: MDE
Does anyone know how to get the thing to not stretch non-widescreen resolutions to fit the screen? In other words, get black bars on the sides when I run 1024x768. Playing games is a bit more challenging when you have to compensate for a distorted screen.

I spent days searching for a way to stretch without ever finding a method. From what I've read, it's something that ATI needs to include in their drivers. (You may know this, but...) There is something in the "Display" tab of Video settings, where you click on the button for the flat-panel display, that let's you turn off stretching completely - only problem is that 640x480 or 800x600 plays at 640 or 800 pixels EXACTLY - so you have DOOMII in a 4 in. box on your screen. I would think that it would be simple, but I guess they just don't feel motivated enough to add a simple "maintain aspect ratio" setting for us widescreen users. (I spent hours in the registry too, to no avail...)

Could someone send a copy of the new bios to rick_72@swbell.net? Has anyone taken the plunge and flashed a M6805-9, and if so are any changes apparent? And does anyone know if the newer Broadcom drivers are availiable anywhere? Thanks!

 

[gweilo8888]

Could someone send a copy of the new bios to rick_72@swbell.net? Has anyone taken the plunge and flashed a M6805-9, and if so are any changes apparent? And does anyone know if the newer Broadcom drivers are availiable anywhere? Thanks!

Sent...

 

[stevenmh]

Originally posted by: TonyBerry

I ordered a single Micron 1GB PC2700 (DDR-333) SODIMM to replace the 256MB in the "user accessible" memory slot to give me a theoretical 1.256GB of RAM. I recieved, and installed, the 1GB chip and got nothing. Powered on and the screen stayed black. Okay. Maybe it doesn't like having 2 different sized chips, so I set out to install the 1GB, by itself, in the internal memory slot. After 30 minutes of taking the laptop apart to get to the memory slot, I installed the 1GB chip and powered it up. Same thing. Black screen. Okay. Maybe the 1GB chip was bad from Micron. So I installed it in a Dell P4 laptop, came up fine. So the chip is good.

What is the issue here? Do I need 2 1GB chips to make it work?

I ordered a 1GB Transcend module from Newegg, and haven't had any problems, even with running the memory at 182MHz.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: chief72

Originally posted by: MDE
Does anyone know how to get the thing to not stretch non-widescreen resolutions to fit the screen? In other words, get black bars on the sides when I run 1024x768. Playing games is a bit more challenging when you have to compensate for a distorted screen.

I spent days searching for a way to stretch without ever finding a method. From what I've read, it's something that ATI needs to include in their drivers. (You may know this, but...) There is something in the "Display" tab of Video settings, where you click on the button for the flat-panel display, that let's you turn off stretching completely - only problem is that 640x480 or 800x600 plays at 640 or 800 pixels EXACTLY - so you have DOOMII in a 4 in. box on your screen. I would think that it would be simple, but I guess they just don't feel motivated enough to add a simple "maintain aspect ratio" setting for us widescreen users. (I spent hours in the registry too, to no avail...)

DUH! I should have looked there in the first place
. Thanks.

 

[Dologan]

Hi,
I am since last Friday one more of the proud owners of an M6805, one of the last ones available at J&R before they were replaced by the newer models. Doesn't bother me too much, since just before I bought it the price was lowered by $100. You may wonder why I bought from J&R.com instead of somewhere else, but that's because I live in Mexico and that was the only online seller that accepted my Mexican credit card. For the same reason I could not benefit from the $100 mail-in rebate, but oh well, $1400 was quite a deal IMO for this puppy, nonetheless.

Anyway, after having bounced back and forth from New York to Los Angeles for a couple times due to the ineptitude of some UPS employee it finally arrived to my hands in Mexico City, packed with the dreaded 4200 RPM, 60 GB hard drive. I have a 5400 RPM 40 GB Hitachi Travelstar in my old laptop, but I'm doubting whether the hassle of cloning/switching the drives and the 40-60 tradeoff are worth it. I certainly would make good use of the extra 60 GB, considering I'd like to set up a WinXP Pro/Linux dual boot and store a healthy amount of music and movies on it, but I think I could live with 40 GB by keeping all my music on my desktop "server" and only carrying around the essential. On the other hand, it kinda hurts to neglect (and eventually sell) my old lap with the generous 60 GB that are IMO too big for it (old lap is a Compaq Presario 900US with a defective mobo that can't take two DIMMs (or more than 256 MB, who knows) without becoming unstable), so I am toying with the idea of perhaps getting a used/cheap 30/40 GB, 4200 RPM drive to put into the old one and keep the 60 GB as backup/reserve drive (the original Toshiba HD of the Compaq lap died on me a couple months ago, so I now know I'd appreciate a reserve drive).

Would the performance gain from the 4200-->5400, 2MB-->8MB cache be worth the hassle? I've seen the seek time, transfer rate numbers, etc. stats but can anyone who has upgraded their hard drives say that the jump is noticeable enough during use to warrant the trade-off? Of course, everything boils down to personal preference, but what would YOU do in my situation? Switch the drives? Keep 'em as they are? Buy an extra drive (considering I'm a university student with somewhat shallow pockets)? Thank you for your opinion.

 

[ThunderPC]

By all means, switxh the drives. The HD performance difference "feels" much faster than the spec sheets indicate.

 

[jEnus]

Can someone send me the new bois to hotrodstepside@msn.com ?
Has anyone tried this new bois out on their laptop, and if so, which model did you flash it on and what were the end results. I have a 6807.

 

[srodick]

I bought a single 512 MB from Newegg for my 6809:

Crucial 200 pin 512MB DDR SO-DIMM PC-2700 - OEM
Model# CT6464X335.16T
Item # N82E16820145502

Works fine.

 

[MDE]

There is a noticeable difference between the 4200RPM and 5400RPM drives, my replacement M6805 feels sluggish compared to my first one that had a 5400RPM drive.

Can someone find a host for the BIOS files so we don't have everyone and the world asking for them? At least PM whoever has the files.

 

[imported_haris]

Has anyone run into a problem playing games online? Currently I'm running UT2004 via my wireless connection and I'm running into a problem occasionally. For no apparent reason the game seems to be losing it's connection to the server for a couple of seconds. This occurs roughly every 5-10 mins right now.

As far as I can tell I have an excellent connection with no obstacles between my router and my laptop. I have also upgraded all of my drivers (including the broadcom wireless). Any ideas/suggestions on fixing this issue?

 

[gweilo8888]

Originally posted by: haris
Has anyone run into a problem playing games online? Currently I'm running UT2004 via my wireless connection and I'm running into a problem occasionally. For no apparent reason the game seems to be losing it's connection to the server for a couple of seconds. This occurs roughly every 5-10 mins right now.

As far as I can tell I have an excellent connection with no obstacles between my router and my laptop. I have also upgraded all of my drivers (including the broadcom wireless). Any ideas/suggestions on fixing this issue?

Nope, exactly the opposite - I've played Far Cry for hours at a time, with most of the settings at or near the highest level, across my wireless LAN and then across the Internet to the United Kingdom, against my brother - and it has been silky smooth. That's only on 768/384KB DSL as well.

 

[gweilo8888]

Originally posted by: MDE
Can someone find a host for the BIOS files so we don't have everyone and the world asking for them? At least PM whoever has the files.

I'm temporarily stopping sending out the BIOS update. I'm in communication with one guy who's tried it (I've not had time yet), and he tells me that his restore DVDs no longer work, so it may be that they're tied to the BIOS level of your machine.

To the guy who originally gave us the BIOS update, is there any chance of burning a copy of your restore DVDs so we can check them for differences against the older versions?

 

[ThunderPC]

Originally posted by: gweilo8888

Originally posted by: MDE
Can someone find a host for the BIOS files so we don't have everyone and the world asking for them? At least PM whoever has the files.

I'm temporarily stopping sending out the BIOS update. I'm in communication with one guy who's tried it (I've not had time yet), and he tells me that his restore DVDs no longer work, so it may be that they're tied to the BIOS level of your machine.

To the guy who originally gave us the BIOS update, is there any chance of burning a copy of your restore DVDs so we can check them for differences against the older versions?

That would probably be a bad idea since the PID is automatically entered on the ghost images. I know I personally wouldn't want everyone using my product ID on their machine.

 

[gweilo8888]

Originally posted by: ThunderPC

That would probably be a bad idea since the PID is automatically entered on the ghost images. I know I personally wouldn't want everyone using my product ID on their machine.

Is it? Man, you learn something every day... Guess it should have occurred to me that it doesn't ask for it when you install from the DVD.

Hmm - what could there be that would stop the DVD installing after a BIOS update?

 

[ThunderPC]

No clue on the DVD issue. I just got finished flashing mine, but have no desire to restore right now . I will hopefully be getting a 7200RPM drive soon, so I will see how it goes then. On a really really bright note, I can confirm that the powernow trick now works on the m6809 with the new BIOS.

 

[syarost]

I used my m6805 image on m6809, then transferred the image to my m6811. Ghstwalker, which comes with GHOST will change the PID.

The restore DVD for the m6811 has a an image that is not a standard ghost image. It comprises of M6811 US Build 1.1, 04/06/02 - 12:01:55, 42 Files, 1.44Gb, with a suffix of INP.
There is no GHOST.EXE on the DVD. The full size of the DVD is 3.71GB.

 

[TonyBerry]

The machine is very picky about RAM brands. I do know that samsung 1GB chips will work, internal or "user accessible".

I ordered a 1GB Transcend module from Newegg, and haven't had any problems, even with running the memory at 182MHz.

Well, NewEgg was my first stop, but I apparently overlooked DDR-333 (PC2700) SODIMM's as I didn't see a 1GB module there. I ended up going with UpgradeNation.

Here's the 1GB module that DOESN'T work...

1GB SODIMM

Guess I'll put an order in from NewEgg...

Thanks.

 

[TonyBerry]

Originally posted by: srodick
I bought a single 512 MB from Newegg for my 6809:

Crucial 200 pin 512MB DDR SO-DIMM PC-2700 - OEM
Model# CT6464X335.16T
Item # N82E16820145502

Works fine.

Did you end up with 768MB of RAM then? I was wondering if I add a 1GB stick to the "user slot" and not mess with the internal slot, I'd end up with 1.256GB.

 

[srodick]

Yeah, I ended up with 768, which I really needed.

 

[TonyBerry]

I ordered the 1GB Transcend module from NewEgg... it should be here Monday. We'll see if it will give me 1.256GB.

 

[Irish80122]

I have had this thread emailed to me for over a month now with debating if I want to get a Emachines or not, and I am still not sure. I am debating over getting a m6811 or a HP, Compaq or Toshiba. I love the Emachines, and I love all that they give you, but I am not sure with a lot that I have seen on this board. While the cosmetic crack isn't a huge deal, it worries me. Also, I am not sure with all of the problems you are having if I should go for the m6811 or if I should go for a different brand and probably end up with a Pentium 4 instead (that alone kills me, I am an AMD guy most of the time). If you had it all to do over again, would you get this laptop? Would you recommend something like this to me, or a Toshiba or HP? Thanks for your help!