IBM, Thinkpads, OSS and WiFi cards Policy.

Argh !

I am quite angry today after discovering that IBM Thinkpads are locked
by IBM to accept only some very limited brands of WiFi miniPCI cards.

For anyone who does not know yet: Thinkpads, at least from X30/T40 and
up have bioses which block so-called "Unauthorized network cards"
(Error 1802). The machines will not boot with any WiFi MiniPCI cards
other than those authorized and resold by IBM for those specific
models (Even cards shipped with T30s will not work in higher models).

Now, not only this limitation itself is absolutely not needed and
artificial, the only cards available for those machines are those
which have no open-source drivers, so anyone with Linux, *BSD or other
OSS software are scewed !

This is from so-called "Linux supporting company", once more a
reminder to anyone who fell in love with IBM because of their "Linux
Love" of what that company is really like....

So, if you plan to buy one of IBM Thinkpads, run OSS OS on it and use
internal WiFi Card, forget about it for now, until IBM disables BIOS
check or at least releases a card with OSS drivers.

Kirill
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In comp.sys.laptops Kirill Ponazdyr <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> For anyone who does not know yet: Thinkpads, at least from X30/T40 and
> up have bioses which block so-called "Unauthorized network cards"
> (Error 1802). The machines will not boot with any WiFi MiniPCI cards
> other than those authorized and resold by IBM for those specific
> models (Even cards shipped with T30s will not work in higher models).

> Now, not only this limitation itself is absolutely not needed and
> artificial, the only cards available for those machines are those
> which have no open-source drivers, so anyone with Linux, *BSD or other
> OSS software are scewed !

My thinkpad x24 is working fine under linux and wireless! The card is a
standard prism2-based card and works using the orinoco_pci driver.

I was using kernel 2.4.20 and am now using 2.6.0t2.


orinoco.c 0.13e (David Gibson <(E-Mail Removed)> and others)
orinoco_pci.c 0.13e (David Gibson <(E-Mail Removed)> & Jean Tourrilhes <(E-Mail Removed)>)
PCI: Found IRQ 6 for device 0000:02:05.0
PCI: Sharing IRQ 6 with 0000:00:1d.2
PCI: Sharing IRQ 6 with 0000:00:1f.1
Detected Orinoco/Prism2 PCI device at 0000:02:05.0, mem:0xF0000000 to 0xF0000FFF -> 0xd0802000, irq:6
...
eth0: Station identity 001f:XXXX:XXXX:XXXX
eth0: Looks like an Intersil firmware version 1.3.6
eth0: Ad-hoc demo mode supported
eth0: IEEE standard IBSS ad-hoc mode supported
eth0: WEP supported, 104-bit key
eth0: MAC address 00:20:XX:XX:XX:XX
eth0: Station name "Prism I"
eth0: ready
eth0: New link status: Connected (0001)



Peter

Kirill Ponazdyr wrote:

>If it only would be as easy, the problem is that no "Centrino" or
>"11g" chipset have their specifications released today, and AFAIK
>there are no plans to do so ether (Look up on google if you are
>interested, there where long discussions about that, in short: it is
>all about their "Flexibility" and FCC)
>
>
>Kirill
>
>
Well, although I do understand and share your concern, there is hope.
There are basically three miniPCI Wifi which are "authorised" by IBM:
Intel for which ATM no spec will be released
IBM which is 802.11a/b atheros based AFAIK and atheros has driver in
dev. see atheros.sourceforge.org
Cisco for which you have mpi350 kernel driver, or the cisco one

I don't know how far those driver are functional, but at least they are
here.

HTH

Ben

Peter T. Breuer wrote:

[snip]

>>it's good to see that it's not a general issue on Thinkpads. I do have
>>one question, since you're running kernel 2.6.0, how does it run on your
>
>
> It's about the same as 2.4.20 to my touch. Wireless and sound both
> work. Pcmcia works. Hibernation works. Same as before in other words.
> But more drivers are now kernel native instead of 3rd party (I'm
> thinking of wlan-ng, pcmcia and alsa).

That is good news, since I use all of the things you listed above.

> I heard a rumour that scheduling under 2.6.0 was resulting in slow
> startups for KDE, but I don't notice. KDE startup was never rocketlike,
> and so what?

Well, even on my AthlonXP desktop I'm running fluxbox, so kde or gnome
performance really won't affect me.

> Battery performance under 2.4 was very good, something like 3.5 hours in
> normal use. I haven't had occasion to test it yet under 2.6. My
> trainride every day is only 20mins!

That again is good news. It's roughly the battery life of my Armada when
I had Slack 8 installed on it.

> It needed new module-init-tools to replace modutils, and they're rather
> badly packaged at the moment and not yet at 1.0. That's the only
> downside. For the rest, the kernel seems pretty normal.

I'm used to compiling beta software, so I hope I'll manage. Unless
module-init-tools have some very strange dependencies, I'll be fine.
Thanks for the info. I really don't have the money to buy a newer
laptop, and running Linux on my M700 would let me run the latest
software for at least another 2 years.

Cosmin

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>, (E-Mail Removed)
says...
> Argh !
>
> I am quite angry today after discovering that IBM Thinkpads are locked
> by IBM to accept only some very limited brands of WiFi miniPCI cards.
>
> For anyone who does not know yet: Thinkpads, at least from X30/T40 and
> up have bioses which block so-called "Unauthorized network cards"
> (Error 1802). The machines will not boot with any WiFi MiniPCI cards
> other than those authorized and resold by IBM for those specific
> models (Even cards shipped with T30s will not work in higher models).
>
> Now, not only this limitation itself is absolutely not needed and
> artificial, the only cards available for those machines are those
> which have no open-source drivers, so anyone with Linux, *BSD or other
> OSS software are scewed !
>
> This is from so-called "Linux supporting company", once more a
> reminder to anyone who fell in love with IBM because of their "Linux
> Love" of what that company is really like....
>
> So, if you plan to buy one of IBM Thinkpads, run OSS OS on it and use
> internal WiFi Card, forget about it for now, until IBM disables BIOS
> check or at least releases a card with OSS drivers.
>
> Kirill
> ---------------------------------------------
> Please send you E-Mail replies to the address
> specified in "reply-to" field of this message
> ---------------------------------------------
>
FYI: ALL laptop manufacturers have specific MINI-PCI cards that they
allow (based on their BIOS).

They do this so that people don't fry the laptop by putting in non-
compliant parts. Just because it's MINI-PCI doesn't mean it's the same
as others.

On Mon, 4 Aug 2003 18:57:47 -0400, Stromm Sarnac
<(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:

> FYI: ALL laptop manufacturers have specific MINI-PCI cards that they
>allow (based on their BIOS).
>
> They do this so that people don't fry the laptop by putting in non-
>compliant parts. Just because it's MINI-PCI doesn't mean it's the same
>as others.

Well, I never had a problem using a several brands of generic Prism2.5
based cards in a dell laptops, nor did I ever had a problem installing
TM1400 in any laptop of the dell product line (IBM blocks T30 cards
from being reused in T40).

The IBMs limitation has nothing to do with technical reasons, it is a
purely marketing based block. The fact is that X30 will accept generic
minipci cards as long as those are not WiFi ones.


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| Battery performance under 2.4 was very good, something like 3.5 hours in
| normal use. I haven't had occasion to test it yet under 2.6. My
| trainride every day is only 20mins!
|
| > Armada M700 P3 750, and it's starting to show its age in WinXP. I'd love
| > to install Slack on it again, and when I do, I'd like to know if 2.6.0
| > would make a decent kernel.
|
|
| It needed new module-init-tools to replace modutils, and they're rather
| badly packaged at the moment and not yet at 1.0. That's the only
| downside. For the rest, the kernel seems pretty normal.
|
| Peter

Are you using the frequency scaling option for your kernel? I noticed that
in WinXP, my AMD laptop (HP ze4430) fan stays fairly quiet and the machine
cool. This is because SP1 built in support for PowerNow! When I boot up to
RedHat 9, I notice that the machine gets quite toasty and the fan stays
humming.

Any advice? I tried compiling the RH9 kernel with options, but it kept
failing. I'm about to give the "raw" kernel(.org) a spin instead, using the
RH9 .config file.

Thanks.

ken k

On Tue, 12 Aug 2003 20:20:09 -0400, Ken Kauffman wrote:

>
> | Battery performance under 2.4 was very good, something like 3.5 hours in
> | normal use. I haven't had occasion to test it yet under 2.6. My
> | trainride every day is only 20mins!
> |
> | > Armada M700 P3 750, and it's starting to show its age in WinXP. I'd love
> | > to install Slack on it again, and when I do, I'd like to know if 2.6.0
> | > would make a decent kernel.
> |
> |
> | It needed new module-init-tools to replace modutils, and they're rather
> | badly packaged at the moment and not yet at 1.0. That's the only
> | downside. For the rest, the kernel seems pretty normal.
> |
> | Peter
>
> Are you using the frequency scaling option for your kernel? I noticed that
> in WinXP, my AMD laptop (HP ze4430) fan stays fairly quiet and the machine
> cool. This is because SP1 built in support for PowerNow! When I boot up to
> RedHat 9, I notice that the machine gets quite toasty and the fan stays
> humming.

fvcool???

<http://www.nt.phys.kyushu-u.ac.jp/shimizu/download/download.html>
|As is well known AMD's Athlon/Duron is a "hot" CPU. It really produces
|a lot of heat. This is mainly because it consumes a lot of electric
|power. However, there is an another reason: Generally CPU goes into
|power-save mode when it is in the idle state, but in almost all the
|mother boards this is prohibited in the case of Athlon/Duron mother
|boards in their original BIOS settings. This software changes the PCI
|configuration data of the chipset (north bridge), and allow Athlon/Duron
|to go into power-save mode.

I use it... It works...

>
> Any advice? I tried compiling the RH9 kernel with options, but it kept
> failing. I'm about to give the "raw" kernel(.org) a spin instead, using the
> RH9 .config file.

it's a Bios issue... not your kernel...

>
> Thanks.
>
> ken k

--
Had to reboot your ms-windows computer yet today???
<http://makeashorterlink.com/?X27F52465>
>Mr. Gates acknowledged today that the company's error reporting service
>indicated that 5 percent of all Windows-based computers now crash more
>than twice each day.