Cold Boot Prob --- A BETTER WAY

[Griffsta]

OK everyone.
To all those who've been wanting to attempt the cold boot fix on your CUSL2 and weren't happy with dodgy pin bending and socket gouging, not to mention wrapping wire between pins, THERE IS A MORE ELEGANT WAY !

OK, first this is much easier to attempt if your board is not installed in your case.

First af all work out what pins you need to modify, the site below has a good diagram and chart. Be sure to take note that the pin diagram is viewed from the pin side of the chip, ie. UNDER the motherboard, you could very likely fry your CPU if you were to do the wrong pins.


What I did was disassemble the socket mechanism. The sliding top on the ZIF socket unclips showing the pin contacts underneath. All I did here was to find out which pin needed to be insulated (the one you'd normally bend)and inserted a small piece of cable insulation into the hole. I used an old CD-ROM audio cable, stripped some insulation and cut off a bit about 2mm long.

If you look at the way the CPU pins slide against the contacts put the insulation where the pin will slide against it. Put your socket back together again and try your CPU in it. If you take it out again and the pin is 'slightly' bent, then you know you got it right, the pin was unable to move against the contact and was slightly bent.

To short the pins a bit of soldering experience is required. I used the same light gauge wire I removed the insulation from and soldered it to the pins on the back of the motherboard socket.

Work out the best route for the wire to make soldering easier, when you get to the last pin just bend the wire back and forth to break off the remaining bit.

This method ensure you don't damage your CPU by snapping a pin or having wires wrapped around pins that could potentially short to other pins.

If you ever want to sell your motherboard the process is easy to reverse. I have done 2 boards this way and both worked flawlessly, I set them to boot at 1.95 Volts.

I hope this is of some use to someone out there.

Regards

Griff


[Edited by eddie on 02-18-2001 at 07:33 AM]

[eddie_abx]

I have removed the link you used because that link is banned from CUSL2.COM.You may use this wire trick link http://www.cotty.btinternet.co.uk/vidpin.htm or any other address except for the one you used.

[rdmpe]

Well, that sounds like the best solution for ppl who have a 1.65 or lower vcore! Much better than bending pins. As for the soldering vs. a U-shaped piece of wire in the holes, they both have their advantages. I'm decent at soldering, but I only have the massive gun type soldering iron, not too suited for fine work. Soldering opens more options for connecting several pins easily, whereas would probably be difficult to get the cpu in the socket with more than one u-shaped wire in the way. Very crafty solution! I think ppl should be very careful with any soldering of the mobo. These things have something like 7 layers of traces throughout them, so they are pretty sophisticated. Excess heat could cause damage to traces or delamination of the pcb layers.

I went with the wire in the holes method, since I didn't need to insulate any pins, and I didn't want to remove my mobo again. It is working perfectly, and I can now cold boot to 1015, where my previous limit was 966 to 973. Too bad asus didn't provide a better way to deal with this.

Do the other i815 boards (MSI, ABIT, etc.) have this prob too?