Accelerate SSD using ASUS EeePC 901 as an example

This afternoon, one of our unregistered readers told me about how he managed to flash the SSD of his EeePC. Unfortunately, I do not have the opportunity to invite him to Habr, so he proposed to publish his article. So this is what can be done.

Introduction

Hello. Recently on Habrahabr I skipped an article describing SSD flashing program Acer Aspire One 110 . However, it can also be used to flash other SSD drives. For example, drive popular ASUS EeePC 901 .

Eee Features

Immediately it is worth noting: unlike AAO, there are two drives in the hedgehogs, so without disassembling the netbook it’s impossible to rebuild the drives in the EeePC — the IDE controller is to blame. If you try to flash the second disk in its place ( secondary slave ), then during the firmware the disk will be lost and will no longer be recognized. If you flash the first disk, the system will no longer detect the second. Presumably, in this firmware, the disk is defined as a single-drive master or native firmware gives a signal that it is worth looking for other devices. In any case, I have not reached the assembler yet, so in this example we will put the second SSD in the slot for the first one and flash it there, after which we will return it to its rightful place.

Cooking tool

First we follow the link to the original manual and make a bootable USB flash drive. Now on the flash drive there are two firmware for SSD, two utilities for flashing and a menu on the bat-files.
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First you need to decide what firmware to use - the bundle includes 2.M0J and 2.M1B (files AP2M0J.BIN and AP2M1B.BIN, respectively). I decided to flash 2.M1B because of the increased write buffer and, consequently, higher speed (although its use reduces the disk size by about 5%). By default, the utility uses 2.M0J , so you will need to copy the firmware file from SSD \ erase to SSD \ flash \ 8G and SSD \ flash \ 8G .

Cooking pattern

After that, you need to configure the removal of the current firmware. In the SSD \ erase folder there is a utility for deleting the current firmware of the drive and preparing the controller to fill the firmware. To configure, go to this folder and open the menu.bat file for editing. Directly removing the firmware in it performs the first line, in our case it needs to be fixed to

eraseall.exe 368 M AP2M1B.BIN

This command erases the firmware on the secondary master device and prepares it for firmware 2.M1B . 368 - the second IDE channel (0x170); if you need to sew on the first channel, then the numbers should be put 496 (0x1F0) . The letter “ M ” means master , in the case of a slave firmware, you will need to replace it with “ S ”. After the device is configured, the name of the firmware file is displayed.

Removing the firmware is configured, now you need to configure its fill in the drive. To do this, go to the SSD \ flash \ 16G folder and open the settings file - PARAM.INI . This example shows the settings for SSD 16Gb from eee901 Linux .

[General Info]
VendorName=Samopal Inc.
ProductName=Flash module
ModelName=16G SSD
[Flash Info]
Flh_MakeCode=SAMSUNG
Flh_DeviceCode=2048
Flh_Capacity=16384
Flh_Number=8
[Card Info]
DeviceType=fixed
ISP_MPBINCode=AP2M1B.BIN
IDEAddress=0x170
IDEType=0xA0


We will understand what these settings are.

Fields VendorName , ProductName and ModelName can be any - they only affect the definition of the disk.
The FlashInfo section describes which device to search for; in our case, this is a search for a 16-gigabyte disk on eight Samsung 2-gigabyte chips. This section is a kind of set of conditions for the filter: if the device does not match this description, it will not be sewn.
Here:
- Flh_MakeCode - the code of the manufacturer of the memory chips, mainly “SAMSUNG” and “INTEL / MICRON”;
- Flh_DeviceCode - chip volume;
- Flh_Capacity — full volume of the drive;
- Flh_Number - the number of memory chips.

In the Card Info section, information about the firmware:
- Leave the DeviceType unchanged because no other possible values ​​could be found;
- ISP_MPBINCode is the name of the file with the firmware (the firmware must match the one under which we cleaned the drive);
- IDEAddress - IDE channel address (0x1F0 for the first or 0x170 for the second);
- IDEType — select master / slave device (0xA0 for master or 0xB0 for slave).

We start to sew

So, the main parameters of the firmware are selected, now is the time to make a backup of the system and start the firmware.

Disassemble the device (for Eee, the instruction can be taken here ), remove the SSD from the IDE2 connector and rearrange it in IDE1. This configuration does not fit into the case, so you have to sew in a disassembled state. We boot from the flash drive and sew the device as in the original manual: first we delete the current flash, then we choose our own version (in this example it is 16G) and sew it.

Dressing room

You should not expect any miracles from the firmware, but it is quite capable of providing the required 40/25 (read / write, Mb / s) for SLC and 40/12 for the MLC . In addition, thanks to the buffer, on small recording volumes (in my case up to about 50 MB), the card can record at a speed of 30 Mb / s and more.

Conclusion

This article was prepared for publication in the Sandbox , however, it was decided to ask to publish it in a thematic blog.
Tiptop