TOSHIBA M200 CPU UPGRADE

Over the recent Holiday Season, I was looking for a good portable system for the wife to use which met certain requirements:  Smaller, lighter, and faster then the current Dell D600 she was using.  Also, the system must cost less than a new one with the same features.  The objective was a 12.1" notebook with good battery life, more than 512MB of RAM, and a CPU faster than 1.6GHz (the D600's CPU). 

After spending dozens of hours researching possible used systems as candidates, I came across the Toshiba M200 convertible tablet in a forum where members discussed upgrading its 1.5GHz Banias to a 2.0GHz Dothan.  The Dothan 2.0GHz was a great option because it provided plenty of speed, was cheap on eBay ($130), and did not consume any more power than the Banias.  Convinced, I downloaded the update utility.

The tricky part was looking for an inexpensive M200 in great condition.  Luckily, Tiger Direct had a Factory Reconditioned M200 for $429.  Being reconditioned by Toshiba itself, and sold by a major e-tailer gave me supreme confidence in my purchase. 

Satisfied, I ordered the M200 and the CPU.  As you can see below, it is an SL7EM, also known as the Pentium M 755, 2GHz, 2MB of cache, and 400MHz FSB.  The M200 can only take 400FSB CPUs, not 533FSB.  The fastest 400FSB is the Pentium M 765, 2.1GHz, but is impossible to find. 

A week later, I had everything and was ready to go...

The M200 looked like a well-maintained but obviously used system.  The palmrests and most of the keys had become shiny due to wear.  No part of it was physically damaged or broken.  A quick power-on with the OLD CPU confirmed that it was working 100%.  It booted to Windows XP Tablet Edition setup.  The best part is that there were no stuck or dead pixels!

The first thing we need to do is remove the bottom cover.  After doing so, we are greeted by the M200's guts.  The CPU is at the upper right area under the X-shaped copper retainer.  The heatpipe cooler can also be clearly seen. 

Simply unscrew the retainer and cooler, unsecure the old CPU, replace with the new one, and attach the cooler and retainer.  Be sure to tighten the screws of the cooler and retainer in a cross-pattern, just like how you would the lug nuts on a vehicle wheels.

Going back to the downloaded utility mentioned earlier, I ran it on the system it was downloaded on, and it then asked to create a boot floppy.  So using my ultra fast 4x USB FDD made by YE-DATA, it made the disk in no time at all.  The USB FDD was then plugged into the M200 and powered up.  Luckily, the CPU worked without any problems, and we just need to update the M200 BIOS microcode to properly adjust the clockspeed and other CPU parameters.  The M200 automatically detected the USB FDD, booted off the floppy disk, and the Toshiba update utility was displayed onscreen.  Following the instructions provided by the good people in the forum, the system was configured in less than a minute. 

To be sure, I installed XP and checked the reported CPU speed.  2.0GHz!  Ain't nothing like a plan that just works!  Again, many thanks to the great people in the forum.