Describe your Laptop here

1. The Laptop

Manufacturer: Lenovo
Model: ThinkPad R61i
Machine Type: 7650
CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo T5250 @ 1.50GHz
RAM: PC2-5300 DDR2 SDRAM 4GB Maximum
Hard drive capacity: 80GB SATA
CD/DVD: HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T20N
Display: 15.4 active-matrix/TFT/XGA 1280x800
LAN: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express
Wireless: Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
Modem: 56K V.92 designed modem
Sound Card: Intel 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller
PCMCIA/PC Slots: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II

2. Hardware

Output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile PM965/GM965/GL960 Memory Controller Hub (rev 0c)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile GM965/GL960 Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 0c)
00:1a.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Contoller #4 (rev 03)
00:1a.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #5 (rev 03)
00:1a.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) HD Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 03)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 03)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 03)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev f3)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801HEM (ICH8M) LPC Interface Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801HBM/HEM (ICH8M/ICH8M-E) SATA AHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801H (ICH8 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
03:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express (rev 02)
15:00.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b6)

CD/DVD read:
CD write: OK using both cdrecord command line and K3B
DVD write: Not tested
LAN: OK gigabit speed throughput
Wireless: OK, using package dkms-ipw3945-1.2.1-1.nodist.rf from rpmforge/Dag connecting to Linksys WRT54G with speed G using WPA2 security passphrase 54Mb/s
Sound: OK, using alsa drivers
Video: OK (with the exception of dual head display), resolution at 1280x800
USB: OK
Firewire: Not present
Media card reader: Not Present
Touchpad or other pointing device: OK, Trackpoint pointing device
Accelerator buttons (music, DVD, web, other): Not present
Adaptive CPU speed: Not tested
Sense battery level: OK
Suspend (manual): Not tested
Suspend (close lid): Not tested
PCMCIA/PC Slots: Not tested
Modem: Not tested

3. Additional information

Installation Media:

Installation was done from a single DVD ISO image with no problems.

Wireless:

Notice:

This section is deprecated with CentOS 5.3. Please follow the instructions at the wireless section of the wiki here: http://wiki.centos.org/HowTos/Laptops/Wireless

Wireless is working fine using dkms-ipw3945-1.2.1-1.nodist.rf from rpmforge/Dag's repo and NetworkManager. The following steps were followed to install and configure the wireless adapter.

yum install dkms-ipw3945 NetworkManagerDispatcher
chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManager on
chkconfig --level 345 NetworkManagerDispatcher on

After installation, reboot your laptop and your wireless adapter should now be seen by the NetworkManager application. You can click on it and then connect to it in the taskbar on the right-hand side. I was successful at connecting to a WRT54G at G speed using WPA2 Pre-Shared Key Only and AES encryption algorithms. This is all that was needed to install and connect to the wireless network. Also, the card is seeing 4 different neighbor's wireless connection points, so it's probing and searching appropriately.

Power Management:

Some issues with Gnome Power Applet made it necessary to turn it off. The screen when you logged in dimmed, and would not allow you to make it brighter. Once I disabled Gnome Power Applet, the screen stays bright when you log in. Not sure if this is ACPI or strictly Gnome Power Applet related.

Suspend:

Suspend to disk seems to actually suspend ok, but the display will not wake back up afterwards.

Hibernate:

Hibernation seems to work. I manually hibernated the system by right-clicking the battery applet and telling it to hibernate. The display goes black for a minute and then shows quite a bit of PCI information, as well as everything else it is apparently is doing. I let it sit for a few minutes and then hit the power button. The screen showed a bunch of activity and a moment later the desktop was back up and running.

4. Issues

Manually dimming the screen display doesn't seem to work appropriately when hitting FN+Home/End (Up/Down) key. When you hit FN+Home to turn up the screen brightness, the screen blacks out. To turn the screen back on hit FN+Home(up) two times to turn the screen back on. I'm not certain if this is an ACPI issue or something that needs configured. This needs investigated.

Dual head display doesn't work properly. You can configure the external display adapter to work only if you set the BIOS to boot both displays. What happens then is if you have a monitor attached to the external adapter at boot time, the external display will become the primary. You then have to turn the laptop off, unhook the external display, and turn the laptop back on to enable the primary again.

5. Comments