Thinkpad R32 Problems

[Peter Ortner]

Hello,

All this talk of sad hardware has refocused my thoughts on the problems
that I am having with my laptop. I have a Thinkpad R32 (as the subject
suggests), the configuration of which has been nothing if not
interesting. I have managed to get most things going OK, and I have
written a little document (partly for my benefit in future, if disaster
strikes), http://home.connexus.net.au/~port/tpr32linux.html which goes
through the basics. However, I still have a number of minor, but very
annoying issues with the setup:

1. The machine can't keep time for nuts! It loses time at the rate of
approximately 10 minutes per 24 hours.

2. The X support is generally quite average.

3. Sticky keys! If I type too fast, keys stay "depressed". It sounds
awfully like lost interrupts.

I've been corresponding with another user (who appears to be more
skilful, or at the very least has more spare time on their hands) in the
same situation, and we both have these issues. At the moment I am using
2.4.20, patched up with acpi-20021212-2.4.20.diff.gz and Win4Lin
patches (I think that's all). I can't really use the RedHat kernel, as
it doesn't properly support a number of USB devices that I own.

For the moment I have enabled ntp to get around the timekeeping issue.
This is not ideal, and I would ideally like to fix the problem
permanently. I vaguely remember something about this topic (linux time
getting out of whack with reality), but I cannot find any useful
information on this matter. I would appreciate some pointers on such
matters.

The ATI Radeon support with X in RedHat 7.3 is rather poor. The (lack
of) performance with DRI is astoundingly poor - it makes almost no
difference having it enabled. Has anyone had experience with optimizing
an ATI Radeon Mobility in RedHat 7.3? I was considering spending a
weekend hacking X RPM's and stuffing around with various versions of DRI
and Mesa, but I am not keen on that - for one thing, the laptop is my
primary work machine. As a performance comparison, Q3A runs find in W2k,
whereas I can load the menu in RH7.3. This is most infuriating!

The sticky keys issue is a little hard to explain, but I suspect that
the above explanation is about the best I will come up with. Doesn't
happen in W2k.

I would appreciate any suggestions, useful or otherwise (except for "buy
an iBook " - I've heard that too often now :])

Cheers,

P.