FreeBSD on IBM Thinkpad T42 (2373-5TU)

It was lost due to water bottle leakage. :-..(

6-STABLE (2007.04.08.19.20.49 UTC) was the last FreeBSD version on this laptop. It was a dual boot system, other OS being MS Windows XP. Everything worked except ...

• Again, VESA support was lacking.
• DRI and suspend/resume did not mix (when last tested).
• Hardware sound volume changes did not reflect in software.
• IrDA - not tried.
• Internal modem - who knows?

Hardware

Below were some of the interesting components of my T42 ...

• CPU: Intel Pentium M, 1.6 GHz
• RAM: 512 MB
• Hard drive: 40 GB Fujitsu MHT2040AH/846C
• CD/DVD: HL-DT-STCD-RW/DVD, GCC-4242N/0201 (CD-RW, 12x RW; DVD playback)
• Networking: Integrated Intel PRO/2200bg ethernet and wireless card;
• Screen: 14 in, 1024x768 pixels (XGA)
• Graphic card: 64 MB ATI Radeon Lf R250 Mobility 9000 M9
• Sound: Intel ICH4 (82801DB)

... extrinsic hardware ...

• Networking: Belkin My Essentials Wireless G (cardbus card)
• Keyboard: Sun Type-7 PC USB, US
• Mouse: Sun optical USB mouse (came with keyboard), Logitech 3 button optical USB mouse

... some output ....

• dmesg,
• kldstat -v,
• sysctl -a,
• pciconf -l -v,
• camcontrol devlist -v, and
• usbdevs -v.

• kernel (debug kernel),
• /boot/loader.conf,
• /boot/device.hints
• /etc/rc.conf, and
• /etc/sysctl.conf.

Problems Unsolvable

DRI and Suspend/Resume

While dri module had been loaded in X, on resume (after a suspend operation in X) screen did not properly restored. Lacking dri implies no 3-D acceleration and X not loading the glx module.

There was discussion around Jun-Jul 2005 about it on one of the FreeBSD mailings lists. IIRC, one can have dri loaded AND be able to have X screen properly restored IF suspend operation is done on the console. (I think that had already been discovered quite earlier in the life of FreeBSD 5.x.)

Sound Volume: Hardware vs. Software

For some reason, changes to sound volume via sound buttons provided on the laptop did not reflect in mixer(8) output. This issue was also discussed on the mailing list(s). There may be a patch or some workaround in newer versions of FreeBSD or other operating systems.

Things That Worked

ACPI

Closing the lid, laptop went into a sleep. I had not tried if a press of power button would also put the computer into sleep.

Suspend/Resume operations worked great either on console or in X (given lack of dri). The computer actually went into more of a nap than a deep sleep as in hibernation. That resulted in some energy loss; if AC was not connected, there would be noticeable loss of battery power.

I had read that hibernation is quite doable, but i had not tackled it due to lack of motivation. If I would have embarked on the project, I might have to arrange for restore/backup of the FAT32 slice after the FreeBSD slice.

Belkin My Essentials Wireless G >> Intel 2200BG

Intel 2200BG worked. rather the last time I tried, with iwi driver as long as a static IP address was assigned to the network interface. DHCP did not work (could not get an address) when I tried with Linksys WRT54G v4 wireless unit. That was just plain a pain. I was quite happily using above mentioned Belkin cardbus card which was successful in connecting both via DHCP and WPA with help of ath driver.

X

X (Xorg 6.8.2 w/ ati driver) worked just fine in 16 bit depth and 1024x768 pixels of resolution; /etc/X11/xorg.conf and gzipped Xorg log are available.

Multiple Video Output

I had successfully tested that this computer was perfectly capable of providing simultaneous video output both to a (analog) projector and the LCD.

• FreeBSD handbook: Kernel configuration
• FreeBSD laptop compatibility list, (Zapatec/Grot)
• FreeBSD laptop compatibility list (BSDGroup.de, successor of Gerda one)
• BSD and mobile computers ... (TuxMobil)
• Linux on laptops