[9fans] laptops

[9fans] laptops

[Micah Stetson]

A year ago, this list recommended T-series ThinkPads as the best
laptops for Plan 9.  Is that still the recommendation?

I've had two ThinkPads so far (a 600 and a T22), and up to now, I've
been very happy with them.  A while back, though, I noticed that
anytime I did anything compute-intensive that took longer than a
couple of minutes, the T22 would turn itself off.  I figured it was a
heat issue, so I got one of those cooling fan units you can set your
laptop on.  That seemed to solve the problem for a while, but in the
last couple of days, I've started having shutdowns and lock-ups again,
even with the cooling fan running.  I'm afraid that when the laptop
overheated and shut down it may have been permanently damaged.

Anyway, my wife and I are both in the market for new laptops (she's
having problems with her old VAIO).  Is the ThinkPad T series still
the way to go?  Have things changed since Lenovo bought IBM's PC
division?  Have other people had cooling problems with ThinkPads? 
Does anybody have experience with the R series or the X series
ThinkPads?  Does anybody know of a cool, wide-screen notebook that
Plan 9 supports well (at least graphics and ethernet)?

Thanks for any advice,

Micah

Re: [9fans] laptops

[andrey mirtchovski]

general consensus here (amongst colleagues at ucalgary) is that the
ThinkPads remain the sturdiest laptops overall.  they are also one of
the very few laptops that provide you with three-button mouse.

it used to be that they were some of the few whose video card was
supported, but with the new vesa kernels that number has increased a
lot, so you should worry more about the network card.

andrey, who has, or still is running plan9 on:

600 (pre-thinkpad)
T21
T23
T30
T41

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Ronald G. Minnich]

T42 is last IBM-designed T laptop, I am told. T43 is a lenovo design. 

IBM thinkpads running Plan 9 run HOT, as least mine do. They also run hot 
running Xen. Seems like ACPI really matters. 

We fixed a T23 here by cracking it open and putting good heatsink paste on 
the CPU. 

Our T23 had same symptoms as yours; all went away with the re-application 
of heatsink paste. Generally, the CPUs turn themselves off before real 
damage is done (nowadays).

ron

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Richard Miller]

> IBM thinkpads running Plan 9 run HOT, as least mine do.

No such problem with my T21, perhaps because it's only 800Mhz.

Andrey, does T41 work with native video or only VESA?

-- Richard

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Eric Van Hensbergen]

On 6/2/05, Ronald G. Minnich <rminnich@lanl.gov> wrote:
> T42 is last IBM-designed T laptop, I am told. T43 is a lenovo design.
> 
> IBM thinkpads running Plan 9 run HOT, as least mine do. They also run hot
> running Xen. Seems like ACPI really matters.
> 
> We fixed a T23 here by cracking it open and putting good heatsink paste on
> the CPU.
> 
> Our T23 had same symptoms as yours; all went away with the re-application
> of heatsink paste. Generally, the CPUs turn themselves off before real
> damage is done (nowadays).
> 

It should be trivial to add the simple HLT idle logic, that should
keep things cool-enough without having to mess with ACPI crap.

            -eric

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Richard Miller]

> It should be trivial to add the simple HLT idle logic, that should
> keep things cool-enough without having to mess with ACPI crap.

You mean like in /sys/src/9/pc/l.s:647,650 ?

_nothingready:
	STI
	HLT
	RET

Re: [9fans] laptops

[andrey mirtchovski]

> Andrey, does T41 work with native video or only VESA?

mine comes with a radeon mobility 7500 graphics, which works with
philippe anel's radeon driver (though that one isn't available on his
web anymore, only at archive.org)

it's not being used for plan9 though -- i only tried to see whether it
worked :)

andrey

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Fri, 3 Jun 2005, Richard Miller wrote:

> > It should be trivial to add the simple HLT idle logic, that should
> > keep things cool-enough without having to mess with ACPI crap.
> 
> You mean like in /sys/src/9/pc/l.s:647,650 ?
> 
> _nothingready:
> 	STI
> 	HLT
> 	RET

yeah. That code is fine. But the machines still run how that I have 
running Plan 9 (well, some of them).

ron

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Fri, 3 Jun 2005, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:

> yeah. That code is fine. But the machines still run how that I have 
                                                      HOT
> running Plan 9 (well, some of them).

Even my t21. Got so hot yesterday that the hard drive decided to stop for 
a while. 

ron

Re: [9fans] laptops

[jmk]

hard drive? my t23 runs almost 4 hours on the battery without the
fan running. all the bios settings are set to maximise battery usage
(so it shows up as 700MHz instead of 1GHz), the disc is spun down
and the connection to the fileserver is via a wavelan card with
power-saving turned on.

those noisy spinning things should be in a back room or basement.

--jim

On Fri Jun  3 10:58:55 EDT 2005, rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
> 
> 
> On Fri, 3 Jun 2005, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
> 
> > yeah. That code is fine. But the machines still run how that I have 
>                                                       HOT
> > running Plan 9 (well, some of them).
> 
> Even my t21. Got so hot yesterday that the hard drive decided to stop for 
> a while. 
> 
> ron

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Richard Miller]

> wavelan card with
> power-saving turned on

How do you do that?

Re: [9fans] laptops

[jmk]

in the plan9.ini config line

	pm=on

i had to spin the disc up to find that out.

On Fri Jun  3 11:23:42 EDT 2005, 9fans@hamnavoe.com wrote:
> > wavelan card with
> > power-saving turned on
> 
> How do you do that?

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Richard Miller]

> i had to spin the disc up to find that out.

Sorry!

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On Fri, 3 Jun 2005 jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:

> those noisy spinning things should be in a back room or basement.

well, you're right. Although I'd rather put them under a train locomotive.

ron

Re: [9fans] laptops

[Micah Stetson]

> T42 is last IBM-designed T laptop, I am told. T43 is a lenovo design.

I ordered one of these, it will replace my current T22, which I'm
going to reconfigure for my wife.

> We fixed a T23 here by cracking it open and putting good heatsink paste on
> the CPU.

I did this yesterday, and it seems to have helped.  There wasn't much
heatsink paste on the CPU when I looked at it.  So I slathered the
stuff on.  I can now do things without the fan unit that I don't think
I could do before with it.  But I still get a forced poweroff if I
keep the CPU at 80-100% for 20 minutes solid. With the fan unit on,
though, I've been running with very high CPU usage for over an hour
with no adverse effects.

Thanks, everybody, for the advice,

Micah