[ltp] T61 locking up

[John Jason Jordan]

On Sun, 14 Sep 2008 17:49:04 +0100
Richard Neill <rn214@hermes.cam.ac.uk> dijo:

> > The computer is a T61 with Hardy x86_64 completely up to date. 
> 
> Including the latest BIOS? Worth doing that too, if necessary. See 
> thinkwiki - basically you download a bootable CD from lenovo.
>
> One possibility is that some of the screensaver programs have bugs. On 
> my A22p, Euphoria used to trigger a bug in the radeon driver.  In 
> current versions of xscreensaver, some demos don't release the mouse.

It has never locked up when the screensaver is running. It only locks
up when the screensaver has stopped. I come back to the computer, the
screen is black, and it is locked up - no keyboard, no mouse. Having
said that, I think Linux is still running because I use a bluetooth
mouse and when I move it the bluetooth LED flickers. It just doesn't
get the screen back.

Today I did an experiment. I never use suspend or hibernate, so I tried
suspend by closing the lid. When I reopened it the screen was still
there, that is, closing the lid did not send it into suspend. I even
left it closed for half an hour and it did not go into suspend mode. So
then I clicked on the Hardy Gnome panel icon for shutdown and selected
"suspend." That did it, it went into suspend. But when I tried to get
back from suspend I got the same problem - keyboard and mouse do
nothing, although the bluetooth light still flickers. Hitting Fn-F4
makes the moon crescent icon flicker, but repeatedly hitting Fn-F4 does
not get it out of suspend.

So now I think my "lockups" are really related to a problem with
suspend.

Searching Ubuntu forums and googling reveals that evidently a BIOS
upgrade helps the suspend issues. I did flash the BIOS once, but it was
a long time ago. Dmidecode tells me that I have BIOS 7LET56WW (1.26).

I have searched Lenovo's web site and the thinkwiki but nowhere can I
find what the latest BIOS is or where to download the ISO. I can find
lots of references to upgrading the BIOS but no one mentions a link,
and Lenovo's site is hopelessly confusing.

Admittedly I am a klutz when it comes to searching the web, but can
someone kindly point me to the latest BIOS file for a T61 (6460)?