[ltp] R50e ACPI/Resolution/CDROM

[Diego Escalante Urrelo]

Hello to anyone who can help me (and everybody out there :))

Im the "proud" owner of a IBM Thinkpad R50e (without wireless, i don't 
have the serial no and that stuff at hand right now), i have had lots 
of trouble trying to make debian <sid> working on it.
Here's a brief summary:

- After the installation of Debian, the CD rom drive started to work 
bad. In the Windows bundled with the laptop and in Debian. I can't burn 
or read large files (large is greater than 3kb :().

- ACPI works almost flawlessly, except for the fact that when i suspend 
and "unsuspend" the LCD remains black, i searched in google for a 
solution but only found a web site in chesch republic that i (of 
course) didn't understand. If anyone had any success with this, i would 
like to know please.

- XFree 4.3.xx (lastest in debian sid) doesnt seem to allow me to get a 
resolution higher than 1024 x 768, a friend of mine has an IBM with 
1280 x 1024 (in debian too). I don't know much about LCD, as far as i 
googled the LCD's can handle high resolutions and doesn't always need 
the Hsync and Vsync, this friend didn't specified them and as i said, 
he got a very high resolution (i saw it in person, it's not a joke or 
something).

- CDROM: as i said, i have issues with the CDROM drive (actually its a 
DVD ROM / CD RW drive), the problems started in some undeterminated 
point after a debian install of this steps:
1. mandrake 10.0 community resizes the disk to allow debian get in
2. debian installs itself
3. everything works
(Some time passes)
1. i can't burn files larger than some Kb's (like 10Kb or something 
like that), this is not an issue of the mkisofs or something like that, 
i tried to burn the .iso in another pc (with an LG CDRW) and it worked.
2. I can't boot from ANY live-cd, not even windows
3. I can't read large files from ANY cdrom, it stops at somepoint and 
says that there's some kind of trouble with missmatches of sums or 
something.
  
    Facts about this:
     - hdparm  throws some weird errors when doing hdparm -i (or -
I) /dev/hdc (sort of drivecmderror status: (some hex value)) and also 
(driveseekcomplete status: (Some hex value) Error)
     - live cd boot stops with one of this errors:
        linux 2.4: incomplete literal tree
        linux 2.6: unknown CRC error
        freeBSD *: BTX halted (hex dump)
        Windows XP: some weird error that i should tell my hardware 
seller about
     - I googled about the boot errors and found that some Compaq EVO 
can workaround this if the BIOS DMA TRANSFERS are deactivated, but in 
the thinkpad BIOS the only DMA option is in the Network section, 
changes in the BIOS doesn't seem to fix this problem
     - At this point, problems with the memories or partition table 
(like, again, some Compaqs) came to my mind, but the memories look OK 
(memtest crashes when i try to do a full scan including the BIOS 
memory, but it looks like its sort of normal). 
             (In theory Memories are not the problem)
       Then i tried to think about the HD, but if that would be the 
problem, then the debian that i have installed wouldn't boot, but it 
boots.
             (In theory HD is not the problem)
       After all this, i realized that i couldn't copy big files from 
CDROMs, that i had gaps while playing movies from a cdrom(vcds, 
standard files, etc) and i couldn't burn big files...
        *note on burning: cdrecord -scanbus advices me to use a 2.4 
kernel when running the command over a 2.6 one, i reboot, use the 2.4 
and it "seems" like it should work, my drive is listed in the -scanbus.
BUT, it doesnt work neither
             *(in theory CDROM IS the problem)*

As you can read, i'm really pissed off with my laptop... if anyone can 
help me sharing his experience with a similar model or something, i 
would appreciate it.

Thanks in advance!

Diego Escalante Urrelo

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"Perfection is achieved
not when there's nothing more to add,
but when there's nothing more to rest"
                     -Antoine de Saint-Exupery