# Lenovo T61 status

## tld

The Gentoo laptop I was using for my job died recently.  I can get a good deal on a Lenovo T61.  Can anyone tell me anything about the current state of Gentoo with those?  I was looking at the old wiki:

http://en.gentoo-wiki.com/wiki/Lenovo_Thinkpad_T61

...and have a feeling it may be pretty out of date.  Thanks in advance.

Tom

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## Hypnos

I was using a T61 as recently 12 months ago, and everything on it worked perfectly.

Generally speaking, if upstream supports it, Gentoo will support.  And, generally speaking, Linux upstream is very good about supporting old hardware, esp. hardware like Thinkpads that have a huge user base.

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## ppurka

Be careful about buying used T61 dated 2007-early 2008 with nvidia cards. They have those defective nvidia chipsets. My T61's nvidia card failed recently and it is now useless (unless I shell out many $ for a replacement motherboard). Everything was working in the thinkpad (gentoo-wise) before it failed.

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## DirtyHairy

I had a T60 (which is quite similar to the T61) for five years which worked flawlessly with gentoo. Funnily, the graphics also died three or four weeks ago (was an ATI radeon X1300). However, I was able to get a replacement board on ebay  for < 50€ which works fine (I upgraded to a T420 and my wife is now using the T60  :Very Happy:  ). The only complaint with the machine is the ATI chip which was somewhat glitchy --- first the slightly buggy proprietary driver, and afterwards the equally buggy opensource driver, so I'd try to go for an intel IGP if I had the choice.

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## tld

Thanks for all the replies!

ppurka: Thanks for the heads up on those nVidia chipsets.  I see that all the nVidia chipsets prior to 08/08 are bad.  I'll be getting this through a reputable dealer of used equipment that my company has a good relationship with, but I'm going to make sure what I'm getting.  Thanks again.

I'm a little confused on the make.conf settings.  From the install guide, I'm think (assuming I get a Core 2 Duo) that I'd use the amd64 minimal CD and would have these make.conf settings:

```
CFLAGS="-march=core2 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"

```

Is that correct?  I've seen a lot of old conflicting things on that.

Tom

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## Hypnos

Why not just use "--march=native" ?  gcc will then pick the optimal machine type.

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## tld

 *Hypnos wrote:*   

> Why not just use "--march=native" ?  gcc will then pick the optimal machine type.

 

Yes, I was just looking at that.  Wasn't familiar with that option.  Thanks!

Tom

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