God I feel like such a noob for even asking about this... It's been years since I've opened a BIOS editor, and Phoenix roms scare the hell out of me. I'll try and get to the point. The hardware: I have an emachines N-10 laptop with a w340a based motherboard. The motherboard is listed as "4001189R - Motherboard w/NVIDIA C51MV w/o 1394 (FRU)". It is running BIOS version 79.10 The problem: I can't seem to get a TL-52 to boot in this thing. It boots, recognizes and identifies the CPU in the bios, and then gives the error "Fatal Error !!! Please change CPU !!!" and won't allow the POST process to finish. A little google-fu shows several others who have encountered the same problem. The weirdness: There are several other laptops that use this same exact board that can use the TL-50, TL-52, TL-54, etc just fine. They use the exact same bios (downloaded for each model and confirmed via MD5). My only suspicion is that maybe the BIOS is restricting it to certain batches or serial number ranges of processors to prevent people from doing non-OEM swaps? Am I headed in the right direction? Perhaps a BIOS mod is not what is needed for this issue? Any insight is appreciated edit: I am not requesting a BIOS mod at this point, but to be thorough, the BIOS version I am running is here: hxxp://global-download.gateway.com/GDFiles/BIOS/BIOS/BIOS_Gateway_79.10_A_A.zip?acerid=634164032750007714&Step1=NOTEBOOK&Step2=MX%20SERIES&Step3=MX3410&OS=ALL&LC=en&BC=GATEWAY&SC=PA_6G
Well, after days of searching, just a bit more searching seems to have revealed an answer. Gateway is hoarding the BIOS! It appears that version 79.10 is listed for all models with this board, but those running dual core processors do not have BIOS downloads available. For example, the MT3418 uses a single core Turion and has 79.10 listed. The MT3419 uses the Turion X2 (same board of course) and does not have any download available. This is consistent across the board, and there appears to be an effort to prevent those with lesser models from getting ahold of it (there are several discussions around about trying to find the BIOS, none of which bore fruit). So it seems a BIOS mod is not necessary, and my BIOS search begins!