Re: 5.1-BETA2 FAILURE on IBM A30p Thinkpad

"Jesse D. Guardiani" <jesse_at_wingnet.net> wrote in message
news:ban2pn$2op$1_at_main.gmane.org...
>
> "Andre Guibert de Bruet" <andy_at_siliconlandmark.com> wrote in message
> news:20030523145802.U75651_at_alpha.siliconlandmark.com...
> > Jesse,
> >
> > IBM just released (As of 5/20/2003) a new version (1EET70WW (1.16)) of
> > your laptop's BIOS. Could you update it and see if it helps any?
>
> These kernel panics still occur with the 1.16 BIOS.
>
> As an update, I have successfully installed 5.0-RELEASE on this laptop
> without any kernel panics. However, neither ACPI or APM works. If I
disable
> ACPI then the kernel locks up right before it detects my keyboard
> controller.
>
> I'm beginning to get discouraged.

Well, after much tinkering and tweaking, the verdict is still the same. ACPI
is totally
unusable for my IBM A30p (1.16 BIOS) with FreeBSD 5.0-RELEASE.

Furthermore, if I shut off ACPI at boot time using:

unset load_acpi
set hints.acpi.0.disabled="1"

The kernel locks up (freezes. nothing happens. No DB> prompt.) right before
it detects
the keyboard controller. Thus, I cannot use APM either.

My 4.8 kernel wouldn't even detect APM at boot time (yes, it was compiled
in).

In addition, 5.1-BETA and 5.1-BETA2 both panic on boot of the generic
prepackaged
install CD kernel, so I can't very well test out the newer ACPI support and
see if it's
working better.

I really need some kind of power management support if I'm going to do any
amount
of usefull work on this laptop. Therefore, I think I'm going to have to give
Linux a try.

Perhaps linux's kernel won't detect APM and won't support ACPI either, but
I've read
three different websites that claim working APM support under linux for the
IBM A30p.
(Granted, I most certainly have a newer BIOS than they had when they wrote
those web
pages, but it appears that Linux is my last chance for working power
management under
a UNIX-like OS.)

Anyway, it appears to me that 5.x has a long way to go before it's of the
same stability
as 4.x. On my servers and even on this very IBM A30p laptop, 4.x hasn't
given me a
single panic, crash, or other failure. (But I don't want to run 4.x because
it doesn't
detect an APM device)

I sincerely hope the FreeBSD programmers can work all of this kernel
instability out
quickly. The new 5.0 feature list looks very appealing! But I for one won't
run 5.x until
it starts living up to the legendary BSD reliability. Good luck folks.
You've got your work
cut out for you.

If anyone wants any additional info about my box, or would like me to do any
specific
testing, then I'm all for it. Just let me know what you need from me. In the
mean time,
I'll be installing Linux, I think.