T60p
From Foomagic
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Specifications:
CPU Core Duo T2600
CPU Frequency 2.16 GHz
Hard drive 100 GB
RAM 1024 MB
Screen size 15"
Native resolution 1600x1200
Wireless 802.11a/b/g
Bluetooth Yes
LAN 10/1000
USB ports 3
Firewire No
CD/DVD drive DVD-RW
Modem 56K
Operating system WinXP Pro
Weight 2.834 kg
Category Laptop
PROC: Intel Core proc Duo T2600 2.16GHz with 667MHz
MEM: 1GB DDR2 SDRAM with 667MHz upg to 4GB; 1 SODIMM slot available
STORAGE: 100 GB SATA HDD; DVD Recordable with 24X Max
DISPLAY: 15inch TFT FlexView display with wide viewing angle & high Density with max 1600 x 1200res
POWER: 9 Cell Lithium-Ion
DIMENSIONS (H x W x D): 31 X 329 x 268mm
WEIGHT: 2.834Kgs
OS: Genuine Win XP Prof
COMMS: 56K V.92 designed modem; Intg Intel PRO/1000 GB Enet; BT 2.4GHz Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG;
Sierra Wireless MC8755 PCI Express MiniCard; Integrated Vodafone WWAN
GRAPHICS: ATI M56GL-256 UXGA IPS GDDR3 with 256MB VRAM
AUDIO: Intel High Definition Audio with 2 Int Speakers
KEYBOARD: Full size
MOUSE: ThinkPad UltraNav
SLOTS TOTAL (FREE) & TYPE: 1 x (0) Commn Daughter Card 1, 1 x(1) Mini- PCIe,1 x (1) PCI Express Full, 1 x(1) PCMCIA
SECURITY FEATURES: Client Security Soln, HDD password, Intg fingerprint reader, Power-on password, Security lock slot,
Supervisor password.
lspci output:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express PCI Express Root Port (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02) 00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 02) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 02) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 02) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 02) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) 00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) IDE Controller (rev 02) 00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller AHCI (rev 02) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M56GL [ATI Mobility FireGL V5200] 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82573L Gigabit Ethernet Controller 03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02) 15:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1510 PC card Cardbus Controller
System:
Debian Sid.
Initial thoughts:
My first thoughts were a mixed bag. It is a lot sturdier than my old R40, thinner, more solid and generally better built. The keyboard is a lot nicer, though the trackpoint mouse buttons took a little while to get accustomed to. I still prefer the old colouring of the trackpoint buttons and the thinkvantage keys, etc. Though after using that particular laptop for three years, its no wonder I have grown to like it. The screen is really quite nice. I didn't really notice how good it was until I was copying a few files off of my R40 and i was looking from one to the other. It is a lot brighter and the resolution is excellent. I always had apps expanded out to max screen width with the R40 and now i still have a bit of screen real estate left over with them set at the same dimensions. One thing i don't particularly like is the battery sticking out of the back of the machine. Not only is it a bit of a pain, but it also doesn't actually seem to hold in there very well. There is only one locking mechanism on the battery, with the other end held in via the terminals. Time will tell whether this is a good thing i guess. The battery is a little sloppy from new, so I don't like to think how it will be after a couple of years. After 18 months of owning this laptop, I really like it.
Installation:
Initially I dual booted but seeing as I virtually never boot into windows, and IBM have released bios updates as iso images that can be booted with out the need for any os, I decided to wipe windows. I ran the tool that makes the backup windows installer cd's, and proceeded to format the drive and being the impatient person that I am, didn't verify that the cd's actually worked. Of course, when I tried them at a later date, they didn't work. Oh well, I might try and get some from IBM before the warranty runs out, but I am honestly not that concerned about it.
The sarge installer cd wont work with this box due to the hard drive not being recognised (though I probably could have got it to work if I put the drive controller in compatability mode in the bios), so I tried out the new debian etch installer. Everything went well with the drive in ahci mode and nothing to really report as far as installing goes, except the fact that the wireless card needs drivers installed after installation.
Ethernet:
The card in the T60p is an intel e1000 gigabit ethernet. Worked fine during install, but after compiling vanilla kernels, I have found that it mostly fails on boot with an eeprom checksum error.
e1000: 0000:02:00.0: e1000_probe: The EEPROM Checksum Is Not Valid e1000: probe of 0000:02:00.0 failed with error -5
This is a known problem, that doesnt appear to be fixed as yet. Some success has been had with upgrading the bios and there is also patches that seem to fix it. I haven't delved into it yet, as my main connection is the wireless, though you can read about it on the thinkwiwki here.
Wireless:
The ipw3945 driver is now found in most distro's. Debian has an ipw3945-source package in the contrib section, also modules packages for the debian kernel images. Works quite well except for the silly regulatory daemon
Update:
Have been having a bit of a play with iwl3945 (previously iwlwifi). Details of the project can be found here. Seems to work quite well on this box, although there seems to be plenty of people with bugs. Due to my ethernet card sometimes failing to initialise at boot, i have added this udev rule to make the wireless card always named eth1, otherwise it plays havoc with the networking scripts. Add this to your /etc/udev/udev.d/z25_persistent_net_rules.
SUBSYSTEM=="net", DRIVERS=="?*", ATTRS{address}=="00:13:02:71:59:a8", NAME="eth0"
Change the ATTRS{address}==foo part to the mac address of your wifi card. (apparently udev doesnt like uppercase hex, so keep it lowercase) save and reboot.
Depending on how up to date your system is, your udev rule may need to be different, for example, my ATTRS{address} used to be DEVFS{address} so check your udev documentation. Theres actually quite a nice howto included in the debian documentation for udev.
The 2.6.22 kernel has now made it to sid and soon will be in lenny. This kernel has the mac80211 wireless stack, which makes installing iwlwifi much easier, ie, no need to patch and compile a kernel. Howto for it here
The iwl3945 driver has made it to mainstraim. Is now in the 2.6.25 kernel.
USB:
Works no problem with standard kernel modules.
Sata:
As previously mentioned, the etch kernel (2.6.15) supports the sata controller. Not sure how low kernel versions go that support it, but it shouldnt be too hard to find out. Havent played with hdaps yet, thats on the agenda for the next week or so.
Graphics:
Works ok with vesa driver, even at the screens native 1600x1200 resolution. The card is also supported by the ati fglrx package. Its hit and miss a lot of the time, and AMD have just released specs for the card so hopefully the Xorg guys can come up with a decent driver. I have pretty much lost faith in the ability of ATI in making a decent one. Apparently the next fglrx driver will support AIGLX, but i'll believe that when I have it working. I tried Xgl on this box when I first got it, and it worked quite nicely, but seeing as it isnt the debian repo's and recompiling it when xorg or mesa got updated became a bit tireing I gave up on it quite a while ago.
If you are having problems getting fglrx to use the ati libs (ati in glxinfo instead of mesa) and getting direct rendering to work, take a look here. In debian it needed a bit of messing around with links to get it all to play nice. I initially had problems with building the debian packages from the installer (getting the fglrx libGL libs to load), but that seems to be fixed in recent versions. Another good source of information for fglrx install and general state can be found here.
Fingerprint Reader:
I thought this would be more of an annoyance than a good thing, but once I tried it, I kind of like it. Not to much of a big deal, and works well in both the console and X. I got it working with a mixture of the thinkwiki howto and thisone. The reader seems to work fine when the machine has been running, but interestingly, when the machine is booted from cold, the reader always seems to fail reading the print. Theres also an open source driver out now, you can get it here, haven't tried it myself yet though. [1]
Sound:
Works fine with the snd_hda_intel kernel modules.
Suspend/Hibernate:
fglrx is a killer for suspending, also the wireless drivers arent quite up to the job yet either. I must admit though that I haven't played with it since I got the box. Will get around to it one day.
Battery:
Fairly woefull battery performance, around 2.5-3 hours. Hopefully after messing a little more with acpi settings and such I can get this to last a while longer.
Bluetooth:
Works without any problem.
WWAN:
Works. See here for details.
Modem:
Works with hsfmodem package from linuxant. I was very reluctant to pay for the driver, but I gave in in the end. I initially tried the driver from IBM thats packaged for Suse, and used alien to repackage it, but it was useless. (I actually can't remember exactly why it failed). I am quite often in places where I don't have adsl, so having a modem working as fast as it can was really needed. If you only use the modem very rarely and don't mind it working even slower than modems normally work, I would get the free driver.
