[ltp] Second handed T43 issues (already bought): advises for tons of doubts and questions, please

[Richard Neill]

Dear Miguel,

Ouch - that sounds like you had a bad time.

Look here for the specs that your machine probably should have:
  http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:T43


> video card with 256 MB,

That sounds highly improbable for onboard RAM. Could it possibly have 
been the AGP aperture that you saw, i.e. letting the graphics card 
access some system main memory?
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/ATI_Mobility_Radeon_X300

Anyway, don't panic. Excepting for certain games, you really only need a 
relatively small amount of video RAM: enough to hold 4 bytes per pixel, 
on the LCD and on the external monitor; all doubled for 3D acceleration.
i.e. 64MB is going to be more than enough.

 > a good large duration battery.

3 years just standing on a shelf will kill a LiPo battery! You should 
expect to replace it - not too expensive on eBay.

> -High screen resolution (not the standard 1024x768), this would imply a
> good graphics card. 

(not necessarily, btw)

> 
> 5th- The screen (14 inch.) is working at 1400x1050 but it has nothing to
> do with the screen (15 inches) showed in the T42. Nothing. Apart from
> the size (sustantially bigger, believe me..), my T42 had (has) a very
> good quality, it can be seen from many angles (above, sides, etc...) and
> always is O.K.; Nevertheless, I had problems to see the screen of the
> T43 correctly, even been placed just in front of it (because of its
> reflections), so when I placed the sight with angles, I was unable to
> see anything but a hard reflection. Finally, I managed (learned) to move
> back the screen sheet enough accordingly with the environment lighness.
> In summary, bad screen quality. Nothing, nothing to do with what I knew
> until then...
> 

Can you be more specific? Is this to do with brightness, contrast, or 
viewing angle? Have you cleaned it? New backlight?
[It it possible it's a 3rd party replacement screen?]

> 6th- Sound. There is no sound!. 

There are quite a lot of ways to accidentally mute the sound - that's 
probably all that's happened. The various volume controls (application, 
PCM, Master, Hardware buttons) are all in series - if any is zero, it's 
silent. Try also plugging in headphones, if you think it might be the 
speakers.  Install a full-featured mixer program (eg gnome-alsamixer),
and play with all the sliders. Also, the hardware volume buttons.

> 
> 7th- (This was noticed just when I was leaving the room, switching off
> TV, etc... and the environmental noise disappeared). What was that
> zzzzzzzzz ? It was like if a desktop station were placed there and
> running at its higher: it was the T43.

If the fan is that bad, you might want to try cleaning it out with a can 
of compressed air. If you're hearing a whine from the mains 
power-supply, spend $30 on a replacement. See also the thinkwiki page on 
how to make a T43 quieter by modifying the internals.

> 
> 9th- I forget to mention this before: the type of machine, its personal
> number. At the back, it was true that there isn't anything apart from
> the trace that it had been there someday. Though, in the plastic is the
> model kind, 2669. So, T43 2669. That was all I knew. 

IBM are unhelpful here. They market the machines by model number (T43 
etc), but refer to them by type number such as "2669 2345".

> The most strange thing was that in the BIOS, that info wasn't either; Oh! And the UUID
> neither was (set to zeros). BAD. Why?

The BIOS should have some useful info. But don't necessarily need to 
panic. You *might* benefit from re-flashing the BIOS with the latest 
version.

> 
> 10th- A live CD good for these situations: "System Rescue CD". It comes
> with a hardware recognition tool, called Aida.

Ubuntu's tools "lshw" and "lshal"  are as good as anything you'll get 
elsewhere. See the man pages.


> A) What explanation could be in order to someone erased the serial
> number of the laptop?, e.g. why? 

It is conceivable that you have received a stolen item. However, there 
may well be a more rational explanation.

> Maybe it belonged to a set of gadgets confiscated by the police over
> there, that then went out to the market or something similar, umm?
> Would be there any way to know still that info?

Try asking the seller about its history.

> 
> This is the info that comes in the BIOS ROM:
> 
> 2006-05-18 BIOS date
> system board serial number VF07384F1DY
> system-unit serial number  -----------
> CPU type   Intel Pentium M processor
> CPU speed  1.86 GHz
> Installed memory 1024 MB
> UUID: 000000000000000000000000000
> MAC address (internal LAN) 001E37CB56EF

Call up IBM and ask about the service history of the machine. The system 
board number, and MAC address should let them find out whether they know 
anything.


> B) The battery is dead for sure, isn't it?  The seller cheated me.
Yes, no.


> C) The screen: Anybody knows whether it could have anytime a better
> quality? Can be possible such a difference between screens (in quality
> terms) into Thinkpads from IBM?
Dying backlight?

> 
> D) The graphics card. I don't know really what I have there, regarding
> to RAM memory. The seller told me about 256 MB. He showed me photos he
> took, etc... but this is what tells the system, with lspci -vv:
Don't panic. I think it's the standard AGP aperture thing. (This is 
usually a BIOS option)


> E) Sound. Doing another CLI typing lspci -vv (no pipe to "grep audio",
> sorry..:-)
> According with all the above, here I don't understand why there is no
> sound :-(

It looks like the hardware is working fine. I bet you've just got it 
muted somehow.

> 
> F) The noisy fan. There are values about fan speed and some sensors of
> temperature:
> What to do, please?

First, clean it with compressed air. Make sure you have all the power 
saving stuff working. Then try:
http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/How_to_build_a_T43_southbridge_cooler

> 
> G) Another bad things: 
> * "System Rescue CD (Aida)" tells "modem not found" in the T43, while
> the same in the T42, yes. 
> * Similar thing for the Motherboard ID: 
> 	a) T43: Unknown
> 	b) T42: <DMI> / Motherboard name: IBM 2373JXG (the model of laptop).

You have a winmodem. Set aside for now - you can fix it, but do the 
other stuff first.

> * In the Aida's summary, the item belonging to the System Memory, where
> should be 1024 MB, it says 957 MB (in the T43), which is some kind
> strange. Why 67 MB lost?

Shared memory between the graphics card and the main RAM. I guess the 
BIOS has the AGP aperture set to 64 MB?  (Don't worry about the 
difference between 64 and 67).

> * I don't think this T43 have bluetooth, could I check it?

lspci, lshw, or lsusb

> * Does the fingerprint work in Linux. How I could just to check it?
> (I've never tried such a thing).

Yes it works - see thinkwiki. Personally, I prefer sticking to passwords.


> I'm sorry for the extension of this; if someone is annoyed, my sincere
> apologies. 

That's OK. You tried all sorts of things, and you provided all the 
information needed to diagnose the problems. Nobody minds reading a 
longish post if it's informative. I hope that's helpful.

Best wishes,

Richard