Armada 1580DMT BIOS Update needed

[shadow032]

Hello from Bulgaria

I'm a HP Compaq user from forever and I've always been happy with the laptop products. I currently own a Pavilion dv6-1080eq.

I still keep the first laptop I got, it's an Armada 1580DMT. I want to bring this old fighter back to life, so I got it an 128mb ram module and planed to upgrade it. BUT it's not recognizing it. It sees only about 16mb of it. Along with this I seemed to have forgoten how to enter the bios setup.

I need a bios update, but I don't seem to be able to find it anywhere.

If you can give me a link from where I can download the latest firmware and some basic instructions on how to upgrade it, it will be great!

I've never used custumer support before and if you need some more information in order to help my case, I'll provide it.

Thanks in advance

Regards,

Yordan

[CharlesHP]

Click on the "Support & Drivers" button above and type in the search field "Armada 1580DMT", should take you to the product page.

[Huffer]

That old girl is an interesting piece of hardware. As you suggest, there is a BIOS update that makes a major difference in computer performance. It raises the maximum memory the computer will see from 64 megs to 80 megs. Sorry to say, the biggest module it will use is a 64 meg EDO laptop module. They are very hard to find these days. A PC-100 or PC-66 module will fit but will not work. I suspect your 128 meg memory stick is in fact a PC-100 module. The 16 megs you are seeing is onboard memory soldered to the motherboard and would be available even in the absence of an expansion module. The BIOS upgrade allows a 64 meg expansion module to work together with the onboard. With the older BIOS adding a 64 meg module would disable the onboard memory, making 64 megs total. The BIOS upgrade also brightens the screen and allows full plug and play operation which is essential to running Windows 2000, which is the best OS for that machine, even though it is a tad slow with 80 megs. Win98 runs pretty well but is fully obsolete now in my opinion and certainly not secure on the internet. If I recall, Windows 2000 installs all needed drivers without any assistance. The last BIOS upgrade for that model is not posted on this website. Check this old thread from the Business User's Forum. Rainald posted a link to the BIOS you need.

Old Thread

I tried the link and it still works and Rainald even posted instructions on how to make the bootable floppy you need to flash the BIOS. I also think this BIOS update adds CD booting capability to the machine. It is the most effective BIOS update I have ever come across.

[shadow032]

Tnx a lot Huffer the update process went smooth.

BUT I can't access bios setup still ...

From the tread I learned that my DIAGS partition is missing. It says there that I should see the attached text for how to bring it back ... but I see no such text attached.

About the ram ... you were right, my 128mb module fits but doesn't work. I put some old 32mb piece of laptop memory and it works, giving me a total of around 50 megs of system memory. What's so special about this EDO ram ... how can I recognise it?

Anyways ... during the bios update, I saw colour on this screen for the first time in a very long time it brings back old memories. I hope I'll have it running soon.

About this DIAGS partition ... is it on the hard drive? If it is, that would explain it missing. I took the hdd out some time ago and used it for something ... probably formated it.

[Huffer]

Yes the diagnostic/BIOS partition is on the hard drive and you can either create it on the hard drive (which requires an OS reinstall) or you can access the BIOS using a special bootable floppy disk. That disk is still available on this website in the Windows 95 driver page for the Armada 1580. It is called Computer Setup for Portables. I am having a bit of trouble getting to it right now but will post a specific link later or you can just try to get to it yourself. With only 48 megs of RAM Windows 98 would be your best OS, I am afraid. Laptop EDO is usually labelled as such but if not there is no reliable way other than trial and error to tell EDO from SDRAM. EDO does usually not come in modules larger than 64 megs. I have seen a few 128 meg EDO sticks and if you could find one of those I am told it would work in your laptop but when they were being sold they were silly expensive. Maybe not so bad now. ebay would be where I would look. Last I bought a 64 meg EDO module it cost maybe $15. 128 meg EDOs were over $100. 

Updated: link to Setup for Portables diskette image:

Setup disk

I always liked accessing the BIOS with the floppy so it does not take hard drive space to set up the diag partition.

[sakuramann]

Hi. I am really hoping to get some solution.

This Armada 1580 DMT laptop was given to us  just recently and I was trying to load Windows Me as it did not have anything on it (for the kids to play with). When I turn the machine on, it prompts "32768 KB OK"  and "Non-System disk or disk error, replace and strike any key when ready". Then I put Windows Me bootable (startup) disk, which meets required memory capacity, it starts up but gives messages "There is an error in your Config.sys..." and also "C drive does not contain FAT or FAT32 partition...". I try to do fdisk, format, scandisk, nothing works. I thought that the above solution may fix this problem so I downloaded the exe. file as above and run it in the same computer from CD trying to make the  floppy disk as other computers don't have diskette drive. It starts to make the disk, but the machine gives me error message and cannnot go any further when it tries to look for C:\image and tries to expand that.

I don't know how to create the FAT or FAT32 partition from MS DOS as it does not have any other OS loaded. Does anyone have any good solution for this problem?