I'm glad you posted this, I have an EEEPC 701 sitting downstairs I was trying to come up with a use for!

Let me know how you go!

So cool! The Asus Eee PC was one of the first netbooks. I remember being blown away by how small they were when new. I don't own one so I can't test the tool but still wanted to comment some appreciation. I have a slightly later netbook with an Atom CPU that is running as a low power server to this day, easily 10+ years of service. : )

Kenpachi wrote on 2024-04-09, 11:29:

Hope it is useful, that native 640x480 LCD really does look neat playing some old titles.

Everything I've read says that the screen on the eee701 is in fact 800x480, not 640x480. Is the screen 4:3 native or is it 16:9? Clarify if you can.

I didn't think any netbooks had a 4:3 screen. I have an old Acer Aspire one with its 9" screen, but it's 16:9 and 1024x600 native resolution.

I'd love to find an old eee701 to test your little utility on - especially if in fact the little screen really is native 4:3 and will play DOS games at the proper 4:3 resolutions not stretched to fill a 16:9 display. If it's 4:3 native, that would make it unique among netbooks of the mid-2000s era. And, with SBEMU / VSBHDA it would be the literally perfect DOS portable system.

Also, does Throttle not work on the eee701? How about CPUSpd?

Hi Zyzzle,
Thanks for the correction - i believe you are right, i think it is 800x480.
Let me double check and confirm...

I only have DOS, so i could only check by loading up Duke3D in 640x480, and it is stretching horizontally.

Looks like I'll have to figure out a way to disable stretching!

Thanks for confirming 800x480 display!

I found a way to map 1:1 native pixel mode, thereby disabline stretching on my Acer Aspire One, through a custom video BIOS driver from Intel, but of course I don't think that will work for the Eee701. And, it takes up about 64kb of low DOS memory to do so, as the driver has to "replace" the vBIOS and copy it to low RAM to modify. Perhaps a more sophisticated way to directly disable stretching on the eee701 may be found, thereby requiring no low memory mirror of the video BIOS.

Good luck in your search for a possibe fix!

Thanks for the heads up - it looks like the LCD (A070VW04v0) is really basic and has no scaling capability, so the i915g / GMA900 has to do the scaling, likely only controlled by the vbios as you've done.
The solution would be pretty similar i think, doesnt the Acer Aspire One have i945 / GMA950?

Yes, i945 chipset and GMA950 graphics / vbios on Acer Aspire One.

Perhaps GMA900 vbios can be hacked to do native 1:1 instead of stretching by default. I looked and can see that no one previously has released such a utility / hack for the EEE701.

Would be cool to look into.
I wasnt able to find any modded bios on the GMA950 or GMA900, but it would be good to get the stock & modded vbios together and have a look!
I wonder if GMABooster wrote to registers or other configuration space (perhaps even SMBus) to make its clock adjustment changes... I'm assuming so, as it could make these changes on the fly without reboot - I don't know much about windows and vbios, I'm only guessing that clock settings are pulled from vbios and sit in a register which the PLL or clock divider references.
If that is the case, it sure would be handy to be able to switch scaling on and off from a DOS prompt by manipulating that register. Perhaps even underclock it further too!

Cosmic wrote on 2024-04-13, 06:08:

So cool! The Asus Eee PC was one of the first netbooks. I remember being blown away by how small they were when new. I don't own one so I can't test the tool but still wanted to comment some appreciation. I have a slightly later netbook with an Atom CPU that is running as a low power server to this day, easily 10+ years of service. : )

Hi Cosmic,
Sorry i missed your message, i got caught up looking into resolution and pixel stretching.
Yeah they certainly have their charm, and my daughter loves it.
That's pretty cool! They are pretty handy and still tick a lot of boxes for specific applications! And good reliability by the sound of it!
I had a Samsung at the time, and it saw a lot more travel than any of my other tech, well except my PSP...
I guess tablets have kinda taken over these days... I'm just not a fan of touchscreens!

Kenpachi wrote on 2024-04-09, 11:29:

Hi Everyone, […]
Show full quote

Hi Everyone,

.

If there's any bugs please let me know, I have so little time these days but I'll make sure to check in here if it's not working.

https://hyperreal.com.au/index.html

Hey,

i am the original owner of a asus eee 701 and it is factory clocked to 900mhz. After using SetFSB to decrease the FSB to 50mhz it runs at 450mhz. It is powerfull enough to play mortal kombat 4 and many others.

But all I want is to reduce power consumption and have more battery life. Switching to one of those ddr2 modules with only two chips found old HP laserjet machines can reduce power consumption a lot. Because two chips use less power than 8. But it is only 128mb or 256mb of capacity.
The links: https://www.ebay.de/itm/153006388201
https://www.ebay.de/itm/176588639160

If you are making a vBios, can you also enable undervolting of the GPU via a small app? Is it possible to undervolt the CPU with your ewsFSB app? What about RAM? After underclocking tr FSB I am sure the RAM module would run at 1.6V just fine.

Greetings from the sunny side of the Alps!

David

Hi David,
Thanks for your interest!
Unfortunately I'm working 80hrs+ per week, so between that and the kids, I've not so much as glanced at this (or any other projects, aside from a false start on a dISAppointment PCB a few months back) since back in April!
That's great to know about the DDR2 modules, nice work!
Checking my notes, only a high/low (or 'standard'/low) voltage mode are possible, no granular vCore control is possible, as far as i know.
During my research into the BIOS versions, there was some info that indicated that there were some early releases that had the 900Mhz clock (BIOS 8804, dated 2007-07-25), and the 'standard'/higher vCore, which they dropped down and underclocked to 630Mhz (BIOS 0302 onwards, 2007-10-10), which it seems they did specifically to extend the battery life of the OEM stock units.
This leads me to believe that raising the vCore will enable mine (630Mhz stock clock) to run beyond the ~720Mhz limit that i discovered during testing of ewsFSB, up to 900Mhz like yours (and beyond i assume). Similarly to yourself though, I was more interested in underclocking to try and expand the 701 down lower to cover the slower 386 era games so I didn't explore overclocking and raising the vCore, and it certainly indicates that there is the possibility of lowering your vCore to gain battery life. In my notes there is also the ability to adjust the backlight, which could also extend the battery life further, and also the PCI clock speed.
While I enjoy working on these projects, I really can't spare any time at the moment, but happy to add them to the to-do list.
In the meantime, perhaps an alternative BIOS could be considered if you decide to go that direction.
If I do make any progress with ewsFSB or on the vBios mod, I will definitely be updating here!
All the best from down here in Australia!

I see some talk about the screen support for 640x480 - it's something I was dealing with my 701 for quite a while.

I found what is basically a driver meant for car screens and it helps to get that resolution running, however its quite bad at running games: https://www.cartft.com/en/support/drivers/Intel_800x480/

Very cool, thanks Munx!
Hopefully there is some source to dig through here!
I only got to looking at zyzzle's method, and the Linux drivers, but i didn't get to digging very deep, and that's about as far as i got before life got in the way.
The more data the better! Cheers!

Kenpachi wrote on 2024-12-11, 10:36:

Hi David, Thanks for your interest! Unfortunately I'm working 80hrs+ per week, so between that and the kids, I've not so much as […]
Show full quote

Hi David,
Thanks for your interest!
Unfortunately I'm working 80hrs+ per week, so between that and the kids, I've not so much as glanced at this (or any other projects, aside from a false start on a dISAppointment PCB a few months back) since back in April!
That's great to know about the DDR2 modules, nice work!
Checking my notes, only a high/low (or 'standard'/low) voltage mode are possible, no granular vCore control is possible, as far as i know.
During my research into the BIOS versions, there was some info that indicated that there were some early releases that had the 900Mhz clock (BIOS 8804, dated 2007-07-25), and the 'standard'/higher vCore, which they dropped down and underclocked to 630Mhz (BIOS 0302 onwards, 2007-10-10), which it seems they did specifically to extend the battery life of the OEM stock units.
This leads me to believe that raising the vCore will enable mine (630Mhz stock clock) to run beyond the ~720Mhz limit that i discovered during testing of ewsFSB, up to 900Mhz like yours (and beyond i assume). Similarly to yourself though, I was more interested in underclocking to try and expand the 701 down lower to cover the slower 386 era games so I didn't explore overclocking and raising the vCore, and it certainly indicates that there is the possibility of lowering your vCore to gain battery life. In my notes there is also the ability to adjust the backlight, which could also extend the battery life further, and also the PCI clock speed.
While I enjoy working on these projects, I really can't spare any time at the moment, but happy to add them to the to-do list.
In the meantime, perhaps an alternative BIOS could be considered if you decide to go that direction.
If I do make any progress with ewsFSB or on the vBios mod, I will definitely be updating here!
All the best from down here in Australia!

How are things down under?

I managed to somehow underclock it to 125MHz! It is stable, and it happened by chance. I am sure the reading is correct because XP is slugish and CPU utilization is high but there are no programs to put stress on the cpu. If there was a way to disable CPU cache with an app like intel XTU, this would be 486 performance.

Note that I used BIOS ver. 9010, TitleBarBattery.exe, nircmd.exe, MemSet.exe, eeectl.exe and a very high quality ddr2 ram from Infineon (made in Germany) with 4chips and 256MB of capacity. I believe it can be underclocked even lower but I am happy with the result. I took a few hours of tweaking.

If anyone has a way to downvolt ddr2, intel gm910 or celeron m please let me know. I want that extra long battery life.

Been pretty warm! Already had a number of days over 43°C!

Unfortunately my break was not conducive to getting around to any of my projects... still was great to get away from work for a while!

That's quite a feat! Well done on the 125MHz!
An undervolt could really make a huge difference.

I will be sure to see what changes can be made to the chipset next time i can free up some time!