IBM Laptop Lore

by Bill Cattey

Last Modified: $Date: 2002/09/25 02:10:51 $

Caveat for the T30 with SXGA+: By default, the T30 will turn off the LCD screen after 5 minutes of idle time. On only SXGA+ (high resolution) systems, when you hit a key or move the mouse, the screen does NOT come back on. The screen WILL come back on if you suspend and resume (by closing and opening the laptop, or by using the Fn-F4 key sequence.)

Here are step-by-step instructions on how to disable the LCD off timer in the BIOS of the IBM T30 laptop.

1. Boot into the BIOS by holding the F1 key at power up.
2. See that "Config" is highlit, and press the ENTER key to choose that screen.
3. Use the down arrow key to highlight "Power" and press the ENTER key to choose that screen.
4. Use the down arrow key to highlight "LCD off timer".
5. Use the F5 key to change values until "Disabled" is shown.
6. Press the F10 key to exit the BIOS.
7. See that "Yes" is highlit in the Setup Confirmation pop-up, and press the ENTER key to confirm the exit from the BIOS.
8. IMPORTANT: The change does not take effect until the next time the machine is power cycled. Press and hold the power switch when you see the IBM Thinkpad startup screen to shut off the power.
9. Power up the machine. You're done!

The IBM laptops ship with a hidden partition that contains maintenance diagnostics, and the ability to re-install windows. The Athena install disables booting of this partition, but you can re-enable it.

The Athena install overwrites the IBM-supplied boot loader with Grub. You won't be able to use the F11 key to boot the maintenance partition, but you can tell grub to boot it. The tricky thing is that the partition is hidden so that Windows won't generate a drive letter for it, and wont let you scribble on it. Unfortunately grub won't boot invisible partitions. In order to preserve the Windows behavior, you need to add a line to your Windows configuration.

Your old /boot/grub/grub.conf file probably looks something like this:

# grub.conf created by Linux Athena installer
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,6)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Linux-Athena
        root   (hd0,6)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-10 ro root=/dev/hda7
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-10.img
title Linux-Athena (single user mode)
        root   (hd0,6)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-10 single ro root=/dev/hda7
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-10.img
title Windows XP Professional
        rootnoverify (hd0,0)
        chainloader +1

You need to tell the windows boot to hide the maintenance partition, in case it was un-hidden at some point in the past by adding the line:
hide (hd0,1)
as the first thing that the grub Windows boot-up will do.

Then add a section that unhides the maintenance partition and boots it. When you are done your new /boot/grub/grub.conf file will look something like this:

# grub.conf created by Linux Athena installer
default=0
timeout=5
splashimage=(hd0,6)/boot/grub/splash.xpm.gz
title Linux-Athena
        root   (hd0,6)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-10 ro root=/dev/hda7
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-10.img
title Linux-Athena (single user mode)
        root   (hd0,6)
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.4.18-10 single ro root=/dev/hda7
        initrd /boot/initrd-2.4.18-10.img
title Windows XP Professional
        hide (hd0,1)
        rootnoverify (hd0,0)
        chainloader +1
title IBM Maintenance Partition
        unhide (hd0,1)
        rootnoverify (hd0,1)
        chainloader +1

To change from wired to wireless operation:

1. Modify /etc/modules.conf to comment out the wired network adapter and add the orinoco_pci wireless adapter. The wired adapter will either be eepro100 or e100. So your file becomes either:

# alias eth0 eepro100
alias eth0 orinoco_pci

or:


# alias eth0 e100
alias eth0 orinoco_pci

2. Reboot

To change from wireless back to wired, comment out the orinoco_pci adapter, un-comment the wired adapter, and reboot.

The behavior on resume from hibernation is a little odd. Normally one expects to hit the power switch and see a screen that give a status report of the resume. Instead you will see the grub boot screen. When you choose the option to boot windows, then windows resumes from the hibernation state.