# Need help with a thinkpad t40p

## hadees

Well I finally had enough of having a only so so linux laptop.  I want the cream of the crop.  I want everything to work.  So I am asking the gentoo thinkpad users to help me.  Not just the users of the t40p but any thinkpad laptop or any laptop for that matter that could possibly help me attain this goal of the perfect laptop.

Here is a check list of things I need help with and hopefully these are issues that will help other people with similar problems

1.  I want the best powersaving mode possible, since i know i can't load the acpi processor module with out having a problem I am guessing I need to go with apm.  But there is the problem what is the best way to do apm?  If you don't want to explain or post the steps you took to get there can you point me in the direction of a good guide or forum post that would cover the topics.

2.  Keeping on topic of the apm guide i want susped to hard disk to work.  Either with software suspend or bios but it just needs to work.  From my searching around I know I found a site on Software Suspend.  My question is the patch here included in gentoo-dev-sources?  how about mm sources? or love sources?

I also remember reading somewhere about having the bios handle this if you had the correct program and a fat partion.  How can I do this?  Frankley which one is better and/or will run more stable?  Also what about suspend to ram? how do I do that?

3.Keeping on topic everytime i shutdown my computer it doesn't really turn off.  Everything shutsdown but i still have to hold down the powerbutton to make it really shut off.  Is there anyway to fix this?

4.How do I get TV out to work? 	(the card is a ATI MOBILITY FireGL 9000)  Whats the best driver for this?  ATI? Open source?

5. How do I get 3D acceleration to work? ATI? Open Source?

6.  What are the best settings for hdparm to get a good mix between powersaving and speed?  What is the best setting for powersaving? what is the best setting for speed? what is the pro or cons of each?

7.  How do the get all the thinkpad keys to do what they are supposed to do? Like i know to use tpb but how do i get the keys to work like they do under windows? For example fn-f3 turns off the display, well i know Radeontools can do it but how do i tie that into the button for tpb?  How about the others like fn-f4 which is i think just suspend to ram (it is a moon and a screen)  How about fn-f7 it is external monitor I think.  And fn-f12 which is supspend to disk.  What do you do with fn-spacebar.  I belive it is zoom but does anyone actully use this for anything?

8.  How do you get both mouses working correctly the touchpad and the trackpoint with all the buttons?  How can I atleast get the trackpoint to work correctly? like the middle button doing scrolling?

9.  What does tpctl really do?  I understand it replaces somthing that is used on windows but what good is it?  What should I use it for?

Anything else you can think of that has anything to do with a laptop or thinkpad specific laptop.  I know the t41 and t42 are pretty similar.  So feel free to post stuff on bluez and what not but that smaller stuff i think i can figure out.  The major issue is the thinkpad related stuff and the fact i don't feel like I have a good grasp of how to weed out the good ideas from the bad.  I mean i went to tuxmobile and there are so many docs that I can't tell who to lisen to.  Some say one thing and others say somthing diffrent.

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## Earthwings

I can give answers for most of the questions, but don't have time right now. Just answering here to find it again when I'm back.

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## Earthwings

Ok, here you are.

 *hadees wrote:*   

> 
> 
> 1.  I want the best powersaving mode possible
> 
> 

 

You'll find many tips on what can be done with acpi at [1]

 *hadees wrote:*   

> 
> 
> 2.  Keeping on topic of the apm guide i want susped to hard disk to work.  Either with software suspend or bios but it just needs to work.  From my searching around I know I found a site on Software Suspend.  My question is the patch here included in gentoo-dev-sources?  how about mm sources? or love sources?
> 
> 

 

The patch won't be included in any kernel source (except love maybe) until it's more or less rewritten. While it's quite stable, it touches many files and contains questionable pieces of code the kernel people dislike. Here [2] is a howto on how to get it working.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> I also remember reading somewhere about having the bios handle this if you had the correct program and a fat partion.  How can I do this?  Frankley which one is better and/or will run more stable?  Also what about suspend to ram? how do I do that?
> 
> 

 

The bios thing is one of the next things I'll try out. Suspend to RAM works here, but from time to time crashes my laptop so I'm currently not using it.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> 3.Keeping on topic everytime i shutdown my computer it doesn't really turn off.  Everything shutsdown but i still have to hold down the powerbutton to make it really shut off.  Is there anyway to fix this?
> 
> 

 

Disable local APIC (!=ACPI) support in the kernel configuration.

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> 6.  What are the best settings for hdparm to get a good mix between powersaving and speed?  What is the best setting for powersaving? what is the best setting for speed? what is the pro or cons of each?
> 
> 

 

There's something about it at [1]. To summarize it, a suspend timeout of 10 to 20 seconds is ideal from a powersaving point of view. This however might wear out your harddrive if has to spin up too often, furthermore you might lose your warranty this way. The best thing to do is to activate laptop-mode (see [1] for details) and prevent unnecessary disk accesses.

Additionally, you can increase the read ahead cache in case you want to listen to mp3's (or similar scenarios where periodically files of some MB are needed).

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> 7.  How do the get all the thinkpad keys to do what they are supposed to do? Like i know to use tpb but how do i get the keys to work like they do under windows? For example fn-f3 turns off the display, well i know Radeontools can do it but how do i tie that into the button for tpb?  How about the others like fn-f4 which is i think just suspend to ram (it is a moon and a screen)  How about fn-f7 it is external monitor I think.  And fn-f12 which is supspend to disk.  What do you do with fn-spacebar.  I belive it is zoom but does anyone actully use this for anything?
> 
> 

 

I'm combining tpb with the support for these buttons that comes with kde 3.3. The kde support is still rather rusty, but it'll be improved and hopefully is able to replace tpb (the interface is nicer, but yet the forward and back button are not recognized). 

To have windows-like support, you'll have to modify tpb.conf. I'm not doing any special with zoom or external monitor (the latter works out of the box).

 *Quote:*   

> 
> 
> 8.  How do you get both mouses working correctly the touchpad and the trackpoint with all the buttons?  How can I atleast get the trackpoint to work correctly? like the middle button doing scrolling?
> 
> 

 

Search for "synaptics touchpad" and you'll get many threads about it. Don't know how to activate the scrolling.

[1] http://www.stud.uni-karlsruhe.de/~uxhz/gentoo/power-management/

[2] https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=170548&highlight=

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## objectswitch

Are you able to switch back and forth between internal and external

monitor?  This has never worked for me, pressing Fn-F7 blanks the

LCD (or monitor) and I have to restart.

I can start X with either the monitor or LCD, but once up I cannot switch.

This is highly annoying as it means my system, when used in the doc,

cannot simply be grabbed and used as a laptop unless I shut down.

This is a T40 with Radon 9000 running Xorg 6.8r1 and using the radeon

kernel driver.

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