HELP!: Thinkpad 760XD anger & awful sound|Hardware How-To (replace Mwave card etc.)

[=CO=Windler]

I own an IBM Thinkpad 760EL laptop and recently bought a used 760XD on eBay, which spects sound really nice on paper (higher screen resolution, slightly faster CPU, TV-out, joystick/ midi jack, MPEG2 decoder chip), but there are sever flaws those make of the 760XD a real cucumber.

I use my laptop mainly on travels for writing and for playing antique emulated and DOS games. My German model Thinkpad 760XD also has no telephony jack installed, thus I can not use the (infamously slow) Mwave modem anyway. (I also had to install the harddisk from my 760EL since my 760XD specimen lacked it.)

awful Mwave sound:

The Mwave sound/modem DSP sounds horrible and in DOS mode it only works when I launch Windows 98SE (takes quite a while to boot) and exit from there back to DOS. Booting directly into plain DOS mode of Windows 98SE crashes MWave and makes no sound. Also FASTCFG shows nonsense instead of the Soundblaster adress,IRQ and DMA in this state. Apparently the DSP loads its SoundBlaster emulator firmware only when starting windows, and thus can not be used at all from plain DOS.

I first tried to install the Mwave driver (v2.25) in a different directory ("C:\Programme\Thinkpad\MWave\"), but apparently the DOS mode driver can not handle longer paths since MWAVE.BAT always crashed when I tried to start MWave in DOS mode even after quitting Win98SE. (It took 2 days to find out why.)

The sound quality during Windows 98SE is a bad joke; DOS games have a lot of static, and MIDI files sound horrible; the pitch of some voices is very off, pitchbend and vibrato is apparently ignored completely and in some songs a triangle(?) is hammering 10 times as loud as the rest. Other GM instrument timbres seem to be made from plain sine wave with attack/decay envelope and thus sound way too quiet in the bass range. Initially drums were completely lacking. During installation the driver complained about a missing sample set.

Because the samples are not available on the IBM site anymore, I installed a 3 diskette MWave sample set (v1.00) from a different MWave card, which at least added a few halfway realistic drums and orchestra hit sounds, but the rest sounds still like plain sine wave and pitches match even worse than before. (I first tried to install that entire sound card driver (v2.33), which caused another crash.)

Also the FM sound emulation is a bad joke. I am collector of music keyboards (see http://www.informatik.fh-hamburg.de/~windle_c/TableHooters/index.html) and hear immediately the difference. Although some timbres are nice, the envelopes behave not at all like on a real SoundBlaster OPL3. (I own a "SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold" for comparison, which was the best sounding ISA sound card.) Like with midi files some vibratos and pitchbends are completely missing, and timbres are very off. Dull drums turn into a bright click or hiss, some envelopes end too fast and other timbres are way too bright (e.g. a harsh "dwellnng" instead of "woowoowoowoonnng"). As a composer I consider this quirky Mwave synth hardly usable for making music; a real SoundBlaster is much better. Perhaps genuinely some space aliens have created the Mwave chip for their own secret sinister purposes rather than what it was advertised for. ;-]

I read that Mwave could also emulate a "SoundBlaster Pro"; does anybody know how this works? (But I guess that not the emulates card but the quality of the emulator is the problem.)

The joystick jack needs a special plug that is hard to replicate by my own. I read that the video in/out plugs can be made from a sawed-off transistor. I wish I could reuse the ESS soundcard from my 760EL for the XD, however its joystick/midi jack section is unfortunately empty (traces exist, but a chip and small parts are not soldered in). Does anybody know which components could be soldered here to make that jack work? I start to hate Mwave the more I work with it.

I downloaded a Thinkpad service manual, that lists which parts are interchangable among 760 series models; the sound card unfortunately is claimed to be not interchangable. (Why? Is it perhaps only a mechanical problem?)

black screen borders:

The LCD of the 760XD has 1024*768 pixels (including about 6 bad ones) while my 760EL had only 800*600 (with an entire row of pixels too bright), but while the EL could stretch all standard resolutions to full screen, the XD makes an ugly black border around the screen in 640*480 and 800*600 resolution. The DOS text mode has a black 2cm border at top and bottom, which on my blue screen background looks like BASIC on an Atari 800XL. Thus the usable screen area is in many games smaller than with the old 760EL.

noisy fan & smouldering smell:

While the 760EL needs no coolers and thus was almost silent, the 760XD contains a small fan on the graphics card, which after about an hour starts to hiss. (Mine doesn't start always, likely because its noisy bearing is damaged.) I don't think that my 760 laptops run really hot (my 760EL consumed only 18W without drive access), however both laptops always odour somehow pungent of ozone (?, likely the LCD backlight transformer) and also a bit burned like when something inside is slowly smouldering. I hope the stinkpad won't suddenly explode or burst into flames - at least my Li-Ion battery pack (from the 760EL) is not a Sony flare shell. The original 760XD battery pack is completely dead and is completely ignored when inserted (i.e. no battery icon is displayed). The standby NiCad battery (3 welded button cells) under the keyboard cover of my 760XD also show some white battey leak residues on their shrink sleeve. I hope it won't blow up. (I saw this when I disconnected the CMOS battery to reset the unknown BIOS password of the previous owner. Plugging the internal speaker into the white "password clear" jumper hole next to the CD-ROM bay did the trick.)

DRIVER NEEDED:

Does anybody know where I can download the original MWave midi sample set and MPEG hardware codec driver for the Thinkpad 760XD under Windows 98SE?

 

[rudolfka]

RE: HELP!: Thinkpad 760XD anger & awful sound | MWAVE driver needed! (760XD sucks! 760EL worked bett

hallo,

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/s.../downloadsDriversLandingPage.vm&validate=true

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-59734
search-terms: dos 760 ed



best regards,
rudolfka

Ps.: You may replace the Cells in the accu, if you wish. There are NiMH and LiIon-Accus. The NiMh-Cells you may replace yourself without any risk of explosion. The same you may do with your backup-battery

 

[=CO=Windler]

My Thinkpad batteries are both Li-Ion (one completely dead, the other ok). So far I know, refurbishing these is like disarming 2nd world war bombs, and some people claimed they contain a self-destroying safety chip to prevent installing new cells.

(I also speak German, but posted this in English to increase the chance that any worldwide search engine user may answer.)

I also have posted problems and technical questions at Thinkpads.com:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?p=223394#223394

 

[rudolfka]

hallo,
ich lebe noch! Und ich habe alle möglichen Li-Ionen-Akkus bis zum T20 bereits geöffnet, neue Zellen eingesetzt und geguckt, was passiert.
Das einzige Problem nach der 600er-Generation ist, das son Akku dann 3-4 Stunden Strom gibt und sich auch problemlos ent- und wieder aufladen läßt, das die neueren Biosse (für den Embedded Controller) von IBM aber das Eprom (die Fehlerflags) im Akkueprom auslesen und den Start (und nur diesen!) des Notebooks verweigern. Die IBM-Utilities zeigen dann immer einen toten Akku an und das Ding läuft noch 3,4 Stunden. Der einzige Weg das zu ändern, ist das Eprom des Akkus zu programmieren und es gibt dafür sogar ein fertiges Gerät, nur das ist doch so teuer, das höchstens so exzessive Bastler wie ich zu diesem Zweck dann irgendwann nach Jahren auf ihre Kosten kommen würden. Mein Englisch reicht nur zum Lesen und da ich es beruflich eigentlich nicht brauche brech ich mir dabei auch ungern einen ab und bekenne mich offen dazu, hier geboren wworden zu sein.
mit freundlichem Gruß
oder wie das bei den Angelsachsen so heißt
bäst rigards
rudolfka
Ps.: Was überhaupt nicht funktioniert: einzelne Zellen zu refreshen versuchen und Zellen verschiedenen Zustandes wieder zu reassemblieren: Dann ist der gesamte Akku nur so stark wie seine schwächste Zelle. Wer sowas mal machen will, kommt am ehesten noch zu einem vernünftigen Akku, wenn er die Innenwiderstände jeder einzelnen Zelle vermißt und nur Zellen gleichen Innenwiderstandes u n d gleicher Restkapazität neu kombiniert.

 

[=CO=Windler]

Ich brauche den 2. Akku nicht wirklich, und auf kreberregenden, hochgiftigen Kobalt-Qualm aus brennenden Lithiumakkus kann ich gerne verzichten.

Mein 1. Akku geht noch einigermaßen, und selbst der dient nur als USV falls beim Netzbetrieb der etwas lose Netzteilstecker mal wieder aus der Buchse rutscht.

 

[rudolfka]

hallo,
ich bin da nicht so ängstlich, da ich bereits im Studium mit solchen Sachen wie Arsen, chlorierten, bromierten und jodierten Aromaten, Nitriersäure usf. umgegangen bin. Aber bis jetzt hab ich son Teil auch noch nicht kurzgeschlossen. Muß ich direkt mal probieren bei Gelegenheit! Alletrdings bei den Preisen für nagelneue Nachbauakkus hat meine Lust auf weitere Experimente doch auch spürbar abgenommen, zahl´ich doch nur noch 20 Euro pro Akku mehr ohne die Bastelei. Das einzige Problem, wo ich nach wie vor bastele, sind die 760er und x20-Akkus. Die sind schwer neu zubekommen oder sehr sehr teuer.
mfG
rudolfka

 

[=CO=Windler]

How-To build a Frankenpad... (Replace Mwave card etc.)

These are my Thinkpad 760 modification experiences. Before you open the thing, I strictly recommend to download the IBM service manual for it, because some components (power switch, microphone cable, plenty of different screw lengths) are not that easiy to re-install correctly than they look like.

NOTES: Despite the service manual everywhere mentiones nylon screws those are claimed to be not re-usable, I found neither in my 760EL nor my XD any of them. All screws were simply of black painted steel.

The service manual claims that the entire system board assembly has to be taken out of the case to remove any cards. In reality in most cases this is not necessary; it is sufficient only to remove the sheet metal cover to access the electronics, unless you want to reach the bottom of the main board or the CPU card.

exchange sound card (get rid of Mwave):

I now have managed to transplant the ESS soundcard from my 760EL into the 760XD and vice versa. The DOS sound rocks now and makes no crashes at all. Also FM works great. Only the different synth tom timbres seem to be less noticeble than on my SoundBlaster AWE64 Gold, but that may be also due to the tiny speakers.

hot MPEG chip:

The MPEG decoder chip on the enhanced video card of the XD is cooled by the sheet metal of the PC-Card chute. Mine apparently ran tremendously hot, since its naked silicon die (like with Athlon XP) has left a discoloured square burn mark on the metal, which shape indicated that only the rim had good contact with the metal. (The chip looks intact and the die is still shiny.) Thus I added a blob of heat conductive paste for better contact.

improve cooling, fix fan assembly:

I oiled the fan by removing the silver center sticker on its cast metal back and adding a drop of silicone oil to the bearing. Then carefully push the propeller a few times in (propeller facing down) to make the oil flow into the bearing. Before re-sticking the sticker, remove oil residues with isopropanol and a Q-Tip from the metal surface (otherwise it wouldn't stick.)

The fan bearing is a strange construction that sits loosely in its hole, and apparently the magnet force attempts to push the fan capstan upward out of the bearing when the plastic circlip is removed. Unfortunately the sheet metal cover is bolted to the casted bottom and thus can not be safely removed to take out the propeller assembly for cleaning.

My fan cable was halfway crushed between the metallic fan case and DC/DC card, thus I insulated it with adhesive film. I am not sure why my 760XD smells a little burnt and somehow sweaty. However the small transformer on the DC/DC card smells a bit this way, and the blue plastic foil around the coil looks a bit melted (like shrink wrap). The yellow foil of my EL trafo isn't distorted this way.

To reduce fan noise, I soldered a potentiometer (medium size 2.2k trimmer) into the fan line. There is little space left in the case, thus I removed the anyway useles modem eject slider and hotglued the trimmer there. Because the trimmer was too thick, I pinched out with a string cutter the center plastic rail under that slider and instead hotglued a flat plastic board a little lower to secure the trimmer against falling down and shorting the PCB underneath. I also replaced the modem jack cover with a piece of holed sheet metal (from an old speaker grill) to improve ventilation.

After the mod, the fan didn't start at all anymore despite fully cranked up fan trimmer and an hour of operation (in DOS mode, on the carpet floor in winter), thus I expected that I damaged the fan cables somewhere. Thus I took everything apart again, measured the fan cables and tested the fan with a power supply, but everything seems to be perfectly intact. Thus my only conclusion is that the cooler ESS soundcard, heat paste on the MPEG chip and the open modem jack hole has become sufficient now to keep the thing cool enough to prevent the fan from starting. (Previously mine made noise after about 45 minutes, but it only started sometimes and only after the laptop was powered on again.)

keyboard assembly:

In the 760 series the keyboard PCB, speakers, CMOS battery and rechargeable standby battery are located under the keyboard palm rest.

My 760XD (from eBay) initially didn't start due to keyboard lid switch problems; it likely thought the lid stayed open. I also had to disconnect its keyboard battery to reset the BIOS password, thus I unscrewed the palm rest to reach the components inside. (Nowadays I know that unscrewing the case top cover and pulling out the keyboard connector would be an easier way to disconnect the CMOS battery power.)

CAUTION: The tiny plastic lever of the keyboard lid microswitch cracks off very easily. Thus do not attempt to push down the unscrewed keyboard PCB back into place while the keyboard lid is closed, because in closed position the keyboard switch slider is pushed in and cracks off the lever unless the lever is carefully pushed in manually. Thus better leave the lid open or put an object (e.g. the palm rest) between keyboard and case bottom to prevent it from shutting completely.

In my XD I cracked off this microswitch lever; despite I glued it back into place (use an aligator clip to hold the lever and apply a tiny drop of superglue on the lever, NOT the switch), the lever didn't spring out fully anymore and thus the switch could not detect when the lid was open. Thus I later swapped the intact keyboard PCB from my EL (which has different looking ICs) into my XD, which makes no problem.

The foil cables are pushed in a special connector socket that has a moveable top part. Pull this top up to unlock before you pull out the cable. To re-install it, insert the cable back into the slot and gently push the top down to lock it. When I bough my 760EL years ago (for still 150EUR with defective keyboard), the only defect was that one of these cables was loose.

Also the speaker jacks on the keyboard PCB cracks off easily, thus do not bend it when you pull out the speaker cable. (I cracked off and had to resolder the right speaker jack in my XD 3 times when I first worked with the PCB.)

loudspeaker repair & different types:

My 760EL and 760XD have very different loudspeaker types. While the EL ones have an uncovered semitransparent black plastic diaphragm and open chassis holes, my XD ones have a shiny silver sheet aluminium grill with big round holes in front of a transparent diaphragm, and the chassis holes on the back are glued tight with a black felt ring.

When intact, both sorts sound astonishingly good regarding how tiny these yellcoins are. IMO their sound quality beats many 8cm speakers found in lousy clock radios. However in direct comparison both speaker types differ a lot. I noticed this when I exchanged the keyboard PCB assembly between both models first toghether with the speakers (after I instealled the ESS sound card in my XD).

The 760EL speakers sound a little dull and hollow, and in many games (e.g. on MAME arcade emulator) they were too quiet to hear them well. Installed in the XD they kept the same characteristics.

The 760XD speakers play at least twice as loud and sound quite bright and much more powerful. Unfortunately my right speaker was damaged and thus made a bright crackling distortion also in bass sounds, which was very disturbing. I expect that the voice coil rattled against the magnet gap beause either something was bent or melted or windings came loose by thermical overload. Thus I took out the speaker, carefully peeled off the felt ring and pryed with a screwdriver to bend the sheet metal chassis and cover of the playing speaker until distortion nearly disappeared. (I collect music keyboards and succesfully fixed many sound toy speakers this way.) I also carefully pushed in the flexible foil diaphragm to bend the voice coil. I manged this way to strongly reduce the crackling, but could not eliminate it completely. However after I glued the felt ring back into place (with a glue stick), the distortion disappeared almost completely. Only at high volume there are sometimes small residues of crackling, but it distorts only barely more than the other. I also glued a layer of window insulation foam rubber on the magnet and the rechargable battery to prevent rumbling.

I know a bit about high-end hifi (e.g. I modified and regularly use a Grundig 6199 tube amplifier from 1963 and have built my own TML speaker boxes), and I think that also these tiny loudspeaker chassis in the 760XD were likely developed by very bright propellerheads, since they not only sound tremendously better, but also don't look at all like average other small speakers. The diaphragm is embossed of thin foil with an unusually curved pattern (similar like in modern headphones) that apparently was designed to re-shaped and distribute partial vibrations similarly like the star shaped structure in the patented Manger loudspeaker. Also the relatively thick felt on the rear chassis holes likely works similar like a Variovent (a Dynaudio patented, non-linear air duct for speaker cabinets that damps large amplitudes stronger), and also the different hole sizes in the aluminium front cover certainly do something important like a sonic lense to spread the sound wave or even partly reflect it back to the diaphragm to interact with partial vibrations.

Objectively these 0.5W yellcoins are certainly not considered hifi, but the conditions under that they work are really extreme; they are tiny, there is almost no chamber volume behind them, the magnet lies directly above the harddrive and the effectivity and amplitude is enormous in ratio to their diameter. And despite all this they don't distort too much and even make a little bass.

Thus when you replace in a 760 series Thinkpad the speakers or keyboard assembly that contains them, always watch out to get the right ones. The aluminium covered speakers sound better and especially much louder than the plain black ones. But I also recommend not to turn them unneccessarily loud, since their construction is so extreme that there is certainly a high risk of mechanical or thermical damage. (In sound toys with similar tiny speakers it happens often that the voice coil melts itself through the plastic diaphragm.)

QUESTIONS:

* Does anybody know how to overclock the 166MHz Pentium MMX CPU to 200MHz?

Is this safely possibly or will the thing overheat. It looks like a heatpipe at the lower front rim of the system board assembly. Is there one? (I havent' taken out the entire mainboard yet.)

* What are the many unused case openings intended for?

There is e.g. a wide rectangular hole on the left side of the CD drive and a smaller one above the front IR port, those are shut with a plastic board. What are they for?

* Were there ever 760 series Thinkpads with Nylon screws? (claimed in IBM service manual)

 

[harald612]

Hello,

I have also a TP 760XD and I like it very much! But I don't like the Mwave sound card, because it is not running under Knoppix. Is it easy to replace it with an ESS sound card?

Best regards

Harald

 

[=CO=Windler]

Replacing Mwave with ESS soundcard is easy.

You only need the ESS soundcard from another 760 series Thinkpad. It's basically a simple plug'n'play upgrade without any other modifications (beside different software drivers. In DOS the ESS card is recognized by games without any additional drivers.)

You only need to know how to dismantle the laptop properly without damaging foil cables etc. But you can find this in the IBM service manuals. Send the nasty Mwave card back to the space aliens to phone home with. It is really not good for anything else.

 

[harald612]

Thank you for your response! Yes, then I will change the Mwave card with an ESS1688 sound card. Because this Mwave card is not supported from Linux. I tried different distributions. No success! But now, I hope in the future I can hear my lovely 760XD.

 

[skeeter]

hab noch ne ESS
chip:ES1688F
FRU:46H5775

 

[tom_k]

Hi =CO=Windler

The "wide rectangular hole on the left side of the CD drive"
is for the TV-Tuner .
Actually never in my life i saw one ,
but vol3hmm.pdf contains a description (side 599) .

The "smaller one above the front IR port" is called "name label"
(vol3hmm.pdf ; e.g. side 516) .

Its long ago since i took out srews from my 760`s ,
but iirc they are not silicon coated .

regards tom_k
________
2648-DG1 98se.... 1GB 40/20GB ath5001x+ 240Wh etc

TP Links: HMM | TP driver + tool matrix | TypeNr > all Downloads

 

[=CO=Windler]

Its long ago since i took out srews from my 760`s ,
but iirc they are not silicon coated .

I did not say silicon but nylon. The service manual claims the screws would be of nylon (i.e. plastic instead of metal) and therefore should be discarded and replaced with a new one everytime a screw is removed.

Or was the "take always new screws" warning simply intended by IBM as a warranty void scratch marker to detect whether a customer had screwed it open by himself.

The screws in mine are of black painted steel.

The "wide rectangular hole on the left side of the CD drive"
is for the TV-Tuner .

In the IBM service manual they only mentioned a TV tuner for a much older 486er Thinkpad.

 

[tom_k]

Hi =CO=Windler

"Nylon screws" :
I suppose you mean the entries in vol4hmm.pdf
Seems as if they were used in all TP´s listed in vol4hmm ,
but at side 193 you can read "nylon coating" , which is what i supposed , never found a srew entirely made of nylon , kevlar or another plastic

i`m quite sure the TV tuner also exists for 760 series , though i never saw one .
See also IBM Thinkpad 760XD Bastelseite by the admin of thinkpad-portal.com (which is now offline , more info :
http://thinkpad-forum.de/thread.php?threadid=8865 + http://thinkpad-forum.de/thread.php?threadid=10059

regards tom_k

 

[=CO=Windler]

"Nylon screws" :
I suppose you mean the entries in vol4hmm.pdf
Seems as if they were used in all TP´s listed in vol4hmm ,
but at side 193 you can read "nylon coating" , which is what i supposed , never found a srew entirely made of nylon , kevlar or another plastic

Plastic screws are not that uncommon. In various devices they are used to hold PCBs and avoid short circuits where they touch the traces. I found them e.g. in a stereo set and likely also some PC mainboards were mounted this way.