Part 1: The CPU
It all started a year and a bit ago, when someone in a Discord server I'm in sent a pretty nondescript AliExpress listing for an "I7 620M ES test version" asking whether or not it'd be an upgrade for his EliteBook. I took a look at the listing, and realised that wasn't the whole story, told him it would be a downgrade (it would have been, more on that later), and bought myself one.
The chip in question was an Auburndale CPU, a name that probably doesn't ring a bell for most, but the TL;DR of it is that it was Intel's first attempt at making a CPU with integrated graphics, which they designed, built, went "wow this is fucking terrible delay it until we can at least put it on a smaller node" - and thus Arrandale, the majority of first-generation Core i mobile CPUs was born.
Auburndale was then cancelled, destined never to see the light of day, aside from a few people residing in niche internet communities who got their hands on pre-release samples via whatever means, of which I had now become one, and I would like to share more information about.
My CPU (left) vs a retail i3 330M Note the size difference between the CPU dies)
The next hurdle was the fact that I didn't actually have any suitable machines to run it in, and I needed something that 1: supported the CPU, and 2: I could find cheap, something that can be harder said than done when it comes to finding random old garbage in Australia, since everyone seems to think their borderline useless anemic garbage actually commands some sort of value, and tries to get actual amounts of money for it. That's getting ahead of myself though - first I need to work out what machines will even do the job.
I soon worked out a pretty efficient method - search for random Arrandale chips on eBay, list down a bunch of laptops, search for BIOS dumps on Google, Yandex, etc, throw said dump into MCExtractor, and check for 106F1 microcode, which is what this chip requires to run. I did this for a while, shortlisted a few machines, and had a proper look this time.
A few eBay searches later, the perfect machine stares back at me - a beat to shit HP ProBook 4320S with a broken screen for a whopping Eighteen Dollars. Is that still too much? Yeah. Do I care? No. It's the cheapest way I'm going to get this cursed garbage running in the foreseeable future, and the broken screen isn't really a big deal because I can still benchmark it, but I'll get back to that later nonetheless.
A few days later, it arrives, and I'm free to do all the testing in the world. First though, I need to install the CPU, which goes... shockingly well! I just tear the machine apart, rip out the i3-330M it came with, pop the older, worse, but much more interesting CPU in, button it up enough to see if it powers on, and it just works, surprisingly. I thought I'd have to do some BIOS/ME fuckery but nope, it just ran out of the box.
Wow! My very own Genuine Intel CPU 0000!
Now I'm free to benchmark it, and it's pretty much as expected - terrible, to put it in one word. It's going back and forth with higher end mobile Core 2 Duos, the exact thing it was meant to replace. It's hot, slow, and thirsty, so I can 100% see why Intel chose to cancel it in favour of Arrandale, and it's led to me owning a very cool novelty CPU. If anyone's interested in exact benchmarks, you can check the HWBOT page here, where I've run a pretty wide range of synthetics, and earned a pretty reasonable amount of points in the process. A big part of why I did this was to publicize how these chips perform, and it's also pretty neat to have a whole CPU page on HWBOT that's literally just me.
That about settles it for the CPU focused part of this post, and now I can talk a bit more about the machine that got me here.
Part 2: The Probook
The current state of things - technically functional, but we can do better.
Here's the deal; I've run my benchmarks, and realistically gotten what I need from it at this point. However, the machine in itself can't be used without an external monitor, which I just kind of dislike. I also don't care enough to spend the money on a proper replacement panel though, so I have to find a compromise.
The compromise comes in the form of this filthy Pavilion DM1 I found in a drawer, a terrible, spiteful, and also broken machine, that has not so willingly contributed it's screen and bezel to this truly cursed amalgamation of different laptop bits.
ThinkPad Mini 10 vibes, anyone?
I plug the "new" screen in, tape it in place, and fashion enough of a bezel using the bezels of both machines and a lovely portion of electrical tape, making sure to leave the names of both involved machines intact, to display it's heritage. If I cared, I could have made or probably found a spacer that'd let me actually mount the new display using fancy mounting hardware, truly unheard of things, like screws, but I didn't care enough then and I still don't now. Tape works, and it is now a fully self contained machine. I throw as many random stickers as I have laying around on the top chassis, and that's about it - the most miserable, yet simultaneously hilariously enjoyable machine I've ever owned.
The final product - isn't she beautiful?