TP 380Z serial

[Stein Vrale]

"J.d.thomas Hood" wrote:
> 
> >Stein, Mark,
> >
> >> > Maybe someone would like to point out this on their pages, I got a few
> >> > answer from people having the same problem (on TP600). Im probably not
> >> > the only one stupid enough to trust  Win98 tools only ;-)
> 
> I'll add this to my page, but I am not sure I understand the exact
> problem that was solved.  Could you please send an explanation to me
> (via the list or directly to thood@jhu.edu)?

Thomas, 

it looks like the Windows98 version of ThinkPad configuration is working
differently than the versions for NT/Win95/Dos.

The problem is that it will not update the part of the BIOS that is read
by linux/dos (for serial/ir setup). Maybe it update it directly in the
Windows98 system only.

It is very easy to test if your system is affected, if you have
Windows98 and PS2.EXE available. You don't have to reboot to check the
effect either, just run PS2.EXE commands in a DOS window:

0. I assume serialport is already enabled in Windows98 (enabled in TP
configurator).
1. Run PS2 ? SERA, if it shows disabled, it will not work in Linux.
1a. Enable it with PS2 SERA ENABLE. PS2 ? SERA should now say enabled.
2. Turn off Serial port in Windows98 TP config.
3. PS2 ? SERA should now show disabled also.
4. Turn on the serial port in Windows98 TP config.
5. PS2 ? SERA will STILL show disabled, and is impossibel to enable
again without PS2.

It works correctly the other way, if you enable with PS2 it will be
enable in Windows also.

I checked some of the other options also, to see if this was a generic
problem, but so far I have only found this "bug" with serial and ir
setup, PM setup seems to be updated correctly.

So I guess this problem will only affect Linux users with Windows98
machines, when they don't use the PS2 utility, and when the ThinkPad is
delivered with the serial and IR disabled by default.

It would be interesting to know if this is a problem with Windows98 on
all ThinkPads, so far I know it is a problem on TP380Z, TP600 and Mark's
machine (TP770?).

This is the kind of bug which could generate "mysterious" problems, for
instance if the ports was enabled when you got the machine and you one
day temporarly disable/enable the port in Windows, you will be very
surprised when the serial port suddenly disappered from Linux...

Maybe this is a known bug, fixed with upgraded software/bios from IBM, I
have not checked much for this. But probably no one has noticed it,
except some unlucky linux users.

The best fix would of course be to report the bug to IBM, and demand the
spec for the bios serial stuff in return, so tpctl could handle this in
the future :-)



Stein Vråle