ThinkPad - UltraBay battery magic

[Marko Zec]

On Monday 19 June 2006 12:44, Dan Langille wrote:
> On 17 Jun 2006 at 20:39, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > > From: "Dan Langille" <dan at langille.org>
> > > Date: Sat, 17 Jun 2006 21:08:54 -0400
> > >
> > > On 17 Jun 2006 at 16:54, Kevin Oberman wrote:
> > > > > When installing a 2nd battery (i.e in the UltraBay after removing
> > > > > the CD drive) in a ThinkPad, I think there's some magic you must
> > > > > invoke to get the system to notice the additional power resource.
> > > > >
> > > > > Any ideas?
> > > >
> > > > The code to allow ACPI to add batteries has yet to be written (or
> > > > committed, at least). If the system is booted with 2 two batteries,
> > > > both will be seen. Even it one is removed and then returned, it will
> > > > be seen. But if a system is booted with a single battery, ACPI will
> > > > not ever see the second battery.
> > > >
> > > > Please note that the second battery WILL be seen by the hardware and
> > > > both charged and used.
> > >
> > > I rebooted.  It froze after probing ad0.  I powered off.  I removed
> > > the spare battery. I rebooted.  Froze again, same place.  I put in
> > > the CD drive, it booted fine.  I swapped out the CD drive and put the
> > > battery back in.  This time I did a verbose boot.
> > >
> > > In short:
> > > both batteries are seen in the probing.
> > > ad0 is probed
> > > pcm0 is measured
> > > fdc0: output ready timeout
> > > [repeat above line 7 times]
> > > GEOM: new disk ad0
> > >
> > > Screen shot here:
> > >
> > >   http://www.langille.org/tmp/100_2831.jpg
> > >
> > > Ideas? Suggestions?
> >
> > This is sounding just a bit familiar. Do you actually have a floppy
> > drive? If so, try putting a disk into it. If not, try building a kernel
> > without the floppy and see if that behaves.
>
> There is no floppy in this laptop (IBM ThinkPad T41); I have one, but
> it is external, connected via USD, and has not been attached during
> these tests.
>
> I created a kernel without fd, based on GENERIC:
>
> $ diff GENERIC LAPTOPGENNOFD1
> 25c25
> < ident         GENERIC
> ---
>
> > ident         LAPTOPGEN
>
> 159c159
> < #device               apm
> ---
>
> > device                apm
>
> In short, I changed the ident, and added apm.
>
> This kernel boots if the CDRW is installed.  Without it, the systems
> boots and then freezes at the login prompt.  I have no idea why.  The
> freeze occurs with or without the second battery.  With the CDRW
> installed, all is well.
>
> > There have been several similar reports. You might want to look at the
> > archives.
>
> I didn't find anything that gave me a lead to follow.

Try booting in windows and using the "ps2" command-line configuration utility 
to disable the secondary IDE channel in BIOS.  This recently saved my 
ThinkPad X32 from becoming a wrack after I went completely nuts with exactly 
the same symptoms as you observed: the machine would lock hard if booted with 
APM and without the CDRW installed.  I observed this issue only in 6.1;  4.11 
works flawlessly out of the box with APM / without CDROM.

Hope this helps,

Marko