[ltp] RE: Noisy T41p and T40p??

[Antoine Dechaume]

I have exactly the same symptoms as described by Wayne Piekarski, on my
T40AE.
Those weird interference noises seem to me to be permanent and related to
display and/or mouse activity, both on linux and XP, but they are clearly
amplified under linux when using xscreensaver.


Antoine.


----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Wayne Piekarski" <wayne@cs.unisa.edu.au>
To: <linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org>
Sent: Wednesday, December 03, 2003 12:29 PM
Subject: [ltp] RE: Noisy T41p and T40p??


> > Date: Tue, 2 Dec 2003 13:21:40 +0100 (MET)
> > From: Werner Becker <web@o22.xray.mpe.mpg.de>
> > To: <linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org>
> > Subject: [ltp] Noisy T41p and T40p??
> > Reply-To: linux-thinkpad@linux-thinkpad.org
> >
> >  Dear all,
> >
> >    I'm planing to buy a T41p though I read in a computer magazine a
> >  note that several T41p user have complained that the T41p is much more
> >  noisy (e.g. fan?) than previous T-models.  Are there users on this list
> >  who have a T41p and can comment on this?  What's about the T40p which
is
> >  not 'that brand new' and not much different in performance compared
with
> >  the T41p I suppose??
> >
> >  Thanks in advance for all comments,
>
> I just bought an IBM Thinkpad T40p a few weeks ago and it has this really
> annoying fan noise that a lot of people are talking about. On the
> thinkpad.org discussion site
> (http://zurich.csail.mit.edu/hypermail/thinkpad/2003-10/0090.html) we've
had
> a bit of discussion about it and we haven't really come up with any
> solutions yet. I've heard the T41p model has similar problems.
>
> The fan is reasonably quiet, but it has this annoying kind of tone and it
is
> not continuous. The fan runs for 5 seconds, cuts out briefly, and then
runs
> for 5 seconds, and so forth. So while you are using it there is this
> discontinuous noise which distracts you rather than a continuous hum that
> your brain can ignore after a while. Is this the noise you are referring
to?
>
> While we are on the fan noise topic, does anyone know if it is possible to
> use tpctl or any other tool to control the speed of the fan? I've seen the
> PC Doctor program spin the fan up so it must be possible, but I didn't see
> anything anywhere in the man pages for tpctl. Perhaps by controlling the
fan
> speed it can be fixed to a certain speed rather than doing this 5 second
> glitch thing.
>
> There is also this annoying clicking noise from the hard drive that seemed
> to run all the time. Both under WinXP and Linux, and it happened after you
> left the unit alone for a while. I used a tool called ide-smart to poll
the
> drive to see what its status is, and it has this auto scanning mode turned
> on. Basically when the drive is idle for extended periods it starts
running
> tests on the surface to check if it is still ok. So the unit seems to
always
> be busy. If you run ide-smart with the -0 option it turns off this feature
> and I haven't found the drive running as much as it used to, which is nice
> and should hopefully conserve more power as well. One problem is that
the -1
> switch doesn't seem to turn it back on again, so I'm not sure if it stuck
in
> this mode now, so please be careful when you do this. I'd be interested to
> know if others have played with this as well and if there are any
problems?
>
> Then there are also weird interference noises. When you run glxgears at
full
> speed while on batteries or AC power, you get these weird noises coming
out
> of the CPU or something. Not sure what the deal is with these either.
That's
> also part of the above linked discussion :(
>
> Btw, the ATI Radeon that comes with the T40p works great with Linux! I
> installed Knoppix 3.3 a few weeks back and the 3D DRI support worked
> straight off the CD with no tweaking or config file adjustments at all!
Not
> sure about the T41p model though, it has a much newer Radeon. The units
are
> pretty swish though, I'm very happy with it apart from the above mentioned
> stuff.
>
> Regards,
> Wayne
>
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------
--
> Wayne Piekarski - Researcher / Lecturer          pho:
+61-8-8302-3669
>                                                  fax:
+61-8-8302-3381
> Assistant Director - Wearable Computer Lab       mob:
+61-407-395-889
> School of Computer and Information Science       ema:
wayne@cs.unisa.edu.au
> University of South Australia                    www:
http://www.tinmith.net
>
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