Kurt Stephens

I have a T22 running Linux. For the most part, I’m pleased with performance, but the hardware reliablity and customer service has been absmal.

The keyboard failed after 2 weeks (I’m a light typist), then after about 2 months PCMCIA slot 1 died. After about 6 hours of debugging the slot, IBM tech support refused to service the slot unless I restored the OS (I was running the stock W2K) to prove it was a hardware problem. The restore program corrupted my partition table (thus lost the restore partition). Since IBM does not ship restore CDs with the T22 I had to wait 4 days to reinstall and then wait another 2 days for a return box. They replaced the system board after 2 days.

After 7 months the 32Gb drive started to go bad (clacking seek retries to cylinder 0). IBM would not replace the drive unless I could prove that there was a problem by running their HD diagnostic software overnight. Since I did not want to lose my hard work configuring the machine by running the hard drive into the ground, I purchased a new 40Gb drive and a 120Gb for my server. The 120Gb is used solely for dump and tar backups of my TP partitions. After 4 days of lost income, I have still not been able to make the 32Gb drive fail like it was so now I have a “spare” when IBM wants a “system restore” before another round of servicing.

I’ve heard that IBM does not manufacture ThinkPads anymore; they are designed by IBM but manufactured by Acer. I paid a hefty price for “IBM reliability and service” and got neither. Maybe I got the bad lemon in a big bushel. I like to know if anyone else has had problems with their ThinkPad; drop me a line.

Since this is my primary development machine, I decided to install RedHat. I had researched some info from the Linux on a ThinkPad but I found some of the pages vague when it came to specific software versions and PCMCIA hardware. I’ve decided to catalog all issues I ran into during installation and configuration.

Hardware:

• ThinkPad T22 – 2647-M6U
• 1400×1040 TFT
• 1G PIII
• 512 MB
• 32 GB HD (upgraded to 40 GB HD)
• DVD
• Orinoco Gold PCMCIA
• IBM Ultraport Camera II
• Docking Station

• NVidia GeForce2 PCI video card w/ dual monitor support

Software Versions:

• RedHat 7.3
• kernel 2.4.18-3smp
• pcmcia 3.1.29
• orinoco 6.10
• thinkpad 3.0pre2
• tpctl 3.0pre2
• tp 3.0pre2

• VMWARE 3.1.1

System Configuration:

• kernel config.h
• /etc/lilo.conf
• ntlilo script
• C:\boot.ini
• /etc/pcmcia/config
• /etc/pcmcia/config.opts
• /etc/pcmcia/wavelan2_cs.conf

• /etc/X11/XF86Config

System setup

Partition Setup

I used GNU parted 1.4.18 to reduce the main W2K partition to 6 GB. DO NOT USE Partition Magic 4.0 or 6.0! Then, I created another primary VFAT partition of 4 GB for my data and apps to be shared. Another extended partition for the remainder, leaving the hidden W2K partition. The extended partition contains 1GB swap and the rest as root.

OS Installation

Standard RedHat 7.1 Network install. Then rpm —freshened the latests versions.

I used LILO to place the boot sector on the root partition (not the MBR) because I still boot directly to W2K. I use the W2K boot loader to run LILO. I wrote a small script around lilo to copy the LILO boot sector to C:\linux.bs. Then I added an entry in C:\boot.ini.

Video

During boot I use VESA 1280X1024 text console (see /etc/lilo.conf).

Sound

No issues here.

ThinkPad Utilities

The Linux ThinkPad utilitites need 2.4.10 or better so RedHat’s 2.4.3 kernel update is no good.

The 3.0 version of tpctl is split into kernel and user programs.
Currently when I run "tpctl --info-all" I get:

tpctl: SMAPI BIOS error 0x86 ("function is not supported") -- exiting.
Oct 29 23:04:47 ion07 kernel: smapi: SMAPI BIOS return codes differ!

ntptcl seems to work but only in read-only mode.

ORINOCO Wireless

The ORINOCO wireless 6.10 drivers will not compile under 2.4.2 or 2.4.3. I tried the 6.02 drivers but they did not seem to work with 40-bit WiFi encryption.

You will need unpack pcmcia-cs-3.1.29 then unpack wlli610.tgz inside the pcmcia-cs directory. Run “./Build” then “sudo ./Install”

VMWARE

VMWARE 3.X is simply an excellent product. I highly recommend purchasing it. I’ve created a basic W2K drive image that I can rollback or restore if I have any problems. I avoid using the W2K primary partition except for DVD playing just incase I have another hardware problem.

vmware-config.pl will compile new vmmon and vmnet drivers for the 2.4.13 kernel, this is normal.