IS THIS WORTH THE TROUBLE? Sony VGN-SZ18GP VAIO PhoenixBIOS R0096N0 full unlock

[Maxinator500]

Did not work.

Well then I just sacrifice the "Hard Disk Password" menu for that (options are preserved).
You may re-download the archive.

[kagari_15]

Maxinator500

There we are! It worked! Sony must have mutilated the BIOS to get to so much trouble to get there...

And I finally found the options of interest such as thermal control. Though at one point the HDD went missing and the debug menu once disappeared (error on my part...testing if the settings does work) but returned after returning to default settings...

Now that's sorted I can now squeeze out some funds to get this laptop to work. Much thanks! This is one for the records!

~kagari_15

[kagari_15]

Update on the VAIO:

Found another BIOS limit - the infamous 3GB limit. Just installed 2GB sticks after we finally found some and got them here. Yes. Took that long!

Tried each of the sticks and they worked fine. Made sure to disconnect the SRAM battery before installing the two sticks together and the boot screen still says "3072M System RAM Passed" or something similar.

Another problem is the RAM still runs at 266 (aka 533MHz) instead of the faster 333 (667MHz) which is supposedly supported by the chipset (along with 4GB of maximum memory...i945GM) and the RAM has the timing tables to run at 667MHz

Any info on this? Yet another Sony thing...? Even if I wanted another laptop...there's no other one that can be had so have to stick to it...with the trouble that had to be gone through...

[kagari_15]

Sorry for the extremely late update. Was trying to do things on the laptop (and my Toshiba broke so that's another issue)

The VAIO still has the 3GB memory deal and not running full speed. When I started modding nVidia drivers (used 309.08) for the Go 7400 with Windows 7, another problem showed up: the shared VRAM reads 1007 MB for a total of 1071 MB (64 dedicated MB).

   

This seem to be part of the problem, if anyone has insight or experience with this? Internet says there could be an option for this in BIOS? The one available setting is for the Intel GMA which is POS in comparison

[VainerAlves82]

Maxinator500

There we are! It worked! Sony must have mutilated the BIOS to get to so much trouble to get there...

And I finally found the options of interest such as thermal control. Though at one point the HDD went missing and the debug menu once disappeared (error on my part...testing if the settings does work) but returned after returning to default settings...

Now that's sorted I can now squeeze out some funds to get this laptop to work. Much thanks! This is one for the records!

~kagari_15

Hi there!

kagari_15 Did you still have the file that worked? If yes could you upload to somewhere please?

As you I have a Vaio SZ1HP for retro gaming and also i'm coming from a Toshiba Satellite (mine was a P15) that was broken.

So I flashed mine two times with bios provided by Maxinator500 (downloaded from google drive) but still don't have the storage/cpu menus besides appering new bios items (LCD stretching is a good option that didn't have) . I've tried to load setup defaults with no luck.

Hope you can help me!

Thank you!

VainerAlves82