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#1 2009-04-04 18:43:57

chozar
Member
Registered: 2009-04-04
Posts: 8

IBM Thinkpad S30 Laptop - Video problems with Silicon Motion Lynx3DM

Second post here.  Started using Arch a few days ago.  Instant fan.  Still use Debian & BSDs on other systems - but my days with Slackware are probably over.  Okay then.

Problems.  Video & X.  Not specific to Arch, I'm pretty sure.  I wanted to post to the forum to get any feedback before posting a bug report.

This laptop is awesome, it is like a netbook from a different era.  2001 this thing game out, the smallest thinkpad (except an ancient one with a 486 from 15 years ago).

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Category:S30

It uses a Silicon Motion Lynx3DM.  The "siliconmotion" driver.

This used to work in Linux, it doesn't work in any modern distribution that I've tried.  Being Slackware and Arch so far.  I think it is a bug in xorg that appeared in the past two years.  I wish I had more granularity, but it worked in Slackware 11.  I didn't use the laptop often, so I can't pin a specific update where this broke.  Sadly this laptop is so rare, and was only available in Hong Kong or Japan, so I see no pages that discuss this (at least in English).

There are other old IBM laptops with this same problem, they seem to be fixed with recent patches.  The iSeries Thinkpads use the same video chip.  This is the most relevant arch bug report I can see.  It discusses this problem with an iSeries and Arch.
http://bugs.archlinux.org/task/12332

Using the siliconmotion driver, xorg.conf generated with X -configure, X loads up and within an instant the screen blacks out.  Backlight off, screen off.  The LCD looks as it does when the unit is off.  ctrl - alt f1 VT console switching is not possible.  The HD light still blinks, the caps lock still toggles the LED.  System is on, just no screen.  I did not try magic sysrq button, but my guess is it would work.  I'm using the latest packages from pacman, whatever they are.  The latest kernel and xorg and siliconmotion 1.7.0-1 driver.
There are suggestions to use the UseBIOS = "off", this does not help.  My X.org.log shows no EE.  It does list a (WW) that the video had to switch to an older method to probe the video chip.  I'm not on the system now, I would post the log if it could help someone (or if I post this as a bug).  Setting DefaultDepth down to 16 or 8 don't help.

The VESA driver has the same problem, with different error.  But I'm pretty sure it loads X, just with the screen turned off.
The VGA driver works, although only in a very horrible visual quality.

The better news is that passing vga=0x318 gives me a nice framebuffer console, and using fbdev driver for X works.  This is what I use, and for my uses on the system (tiling wm and lots of terminals) it may be fine.  But anything more demanding is too slow.

If anyone has any suggestions, please help.  Should I post this as a bug?  What information should I attach to a bug report so this can be addressed properly?  I wouldn't mind working a bit to help out a developer.

-jst

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#2 2009-05-06 17:18:14

Farstar
Member
Registered: 2009-04-22
Posts: 7

Re: IBM Thinkpad S30 Laptop - Video problems with Silicon Motion Lynx3DM

Same problem on my old IBM ThinkPad iSeries 1200 (2000 year). Old distros works fine.
New xorg's have the same problem with blank screen.
But I've installed Arch 2009.2 and it works great. I don't remember the xorg's version... I'll find and say you.

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#3 2009-07-17 12:17:47

zhblue
Member
Registered: 2009-07-17
Posts: 1

Re: IBM Thinkpad S30 Laptop - Video problems with Silicon Motion Lynx3DM

i've the same problem here, with ibm 240x lynx em+

i used to go with Federa 7 and trying to ubuntu 9.04 ferdera 11 ,both dark.

now i'm downloading the DVD iso of FC7 to reinstall my note.

it seems the bug has been reported, but xorg is not going to fix it anyway.

i tried to install fluxbuntu 7.10's Xorg with ubuntu 9.04 , it works slowly ,and a little funny mouse effect as FC7 did.

i've been with FC7 for half a year , i thought the mouse icon is broken because my DvD media has a visiable "hold" in the middle

it turns out to be bugs with Xorg, and that seems only happen on ibm and silicon motion cards.

if anyone has a better solution ,please ,info me  newsclanATgmail.com

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#4 2009-09-13 01:32:36

chozar
Member
Registered: 2009-04-04
Posts: 8

Re: IBM Thinkpad S30 Laptop - Video problems with Silicon Motion Lynx3DM

Just wanted to follow up on this.

Using the VESA framebuffer console, and the fbdev driver, this laptop works in X.  However things are unaccelerated, and the lowly cpu is burdened more than it should.  Firefox crawls through rendering, and it is the only thing running in Awesome.

My trivial error at the time was forgetting to start HAL before X.  With HAL running, the fbdev driver works, but this is not an ideal situation.  The siliconmotion driver, and VESA driver, still black out.  I am just assuming that this is a bug that has no plans to be fixed, which is a shame.  But there are probably very few people using a lynx em+ laptop still, that want full X acceleration.  Linux has great hardware support for legacy devices, but this is a serious edge case.  I would guess that people needing this to work number in the dozens at most.

This may have been an issue 3 years ago, when the laptop was just 5 years old.  But it is 8 years old now, a lowly 300MHz cpu when on battery, and I could never get it to suspend either.  While it was the only reasonable 10" touch-typeable laptop of its time, netbooks finally hit it big.  My solution was to go out and get a 10" eeepc 1005HA.  It beats the Thinkpad S30 in almost every area, and cost $299 new.

Last edited by chozar (2009-09-13 01:33:16)

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#5 2009-11-09 07:29:33

artwood
Member
Registered: 2009-11-09
Posts: 2

Re: IBM Thinkpad S30 Laptop - Video problems with Silicon Motion Lynx3DM

Farstar wrote:

Same problem on my old IBM ThinkPad iSeries 1200 (2000 year). Old distros works fine.
New xorg's have the same problem with blank screen.
But I've installed Arch 2009.2 and it works great. I don't remember the xorg's version... I'll find and say you.

Farstar can you be more precise?I have the same notebook..and unfortunately X doesn't work with this old notebook!

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#6 2009-11-26 08:42:06

Hiz
Member
Registered: 2008-11-04
Posts: 40

Re: IBM Thinkpad S30 Laptop - Video problems with Silicon Motion Lynx3DM

#/etc/X11/ uname -a       
Linux Luna 2.6.31-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Nov 10 19:48:17 CET 2009 i686 Pentium III (Coppermine) GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

#/etc/X11/ lspci | grep VGA
8:00:09.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Motion, Inc. SM720 Lynx3DM (rev b1)

#/etc/X11/ yaourt -S xf86-video-siliconmotion xorg libgl

Targets (13): xf86-video-siliconmotion-1.7.3-2  libgl-7.6-2  xf86-video-vesa-2.2.1-1 
              xorg-docs-1.5-1  xorg-fonts-100dpi-1.0.1-2  xorg-fonts-75dpi-1.0.1-2 
              xorg-res-utils-1.0.3-3  xorg-server-utils-7.5-3  xorg-server-1.7.1.902-1 
              xorg-twm-1.0.4-3  xorg-utils-7.5-1  xorg-xinit-1.2.0-1  xterm-250-1 

Total Download Size:    0.00 MB
Total Installed Size:   47.73 MB


#/etc/X11/ startx
This is a pre-release version of the X server from The X.Org Foundation.
It is not supported in any way.
Bugs may be filed in the bugzilla at http://bugs.freedesktop.org/.
Select the "xorg" product for bugs you find in this release.
Before reporting bugs in pre-release versions please check the
latest version in the X.Org Foundation git repository.
See http://wiki.x.org/wiki/GitPage for git access instructions.

X.Org X Server 1.7.1.902 (1.7.2 RC 2)
Release Date: 2009-11-20
X Protocol Version 11, Revision 0
Build Operating System: Linux 2.6.31-ARCH i686
Current Operating System: Linux Luna 2.6.31-ARCH #1 SMP PREEMPT Tue Nov 10 19:48:17 CET 2009 i686
Kernel command line: root=/dev/disk/by-uuid/ea5d9c4e-9c99-4a30-bc17-510b91dbc89c ro
Build Date: 21 November 2009  10:31:54AM

Current version of pixman: 0.16.2
    Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.x.org
    to make sure that you have the latest version.
Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
    (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
    (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
(==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Thu Nov 26 16:40:04 2009
(==) Using config file: "/etc/X11/xorg.conf"
record: RECORD extension enabled at configure time.
record: This extension is known to be broken, disabling extension now..
record: http://bugs.freedesktop.org/show_bug.cgi?id=20500

~~~~~~~~~~~

chozar: its working smile and I believe it was OK when you posted too..(yes it was a bit buggy...)
i am sure because i have also IBM Thinkpad S30 and Archlinux - X window more than year now.
well, i didnt need any specific xorg.conf setting to use X untill last xorg update.(about 2 month ago? i don't remember exact version.)
my Thinkpad s30 is model 2639-43j (memory 128M)

try xorg.conf setting form here
http://aglet.net/s30/   (XFree86 4  config file). OMG this site exist more than 7 years as i know. and i need this setting again!!  lol

and comment out these lines(number is line)
8   #   FontPath    "unix/:7100"            # local font server
30 #   Load    "pex5"                                                                               
32 #   Load    "xie"
34 #   Load    "freetype"
36 #   Load    "type1"

good luck old thinkpad fellows! big_smile

Last edited by Hiz (2009-11-26 09:45:58)

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#7 2009-12-23 19:59:24

jzagaja
Member
Registered: 2009-12-23
Posts: 1

Re: IBM Thinkpad S30 Laptop - Video problems with Silicon Motion Lynx3DM

How to get Thinkpad S30 VGA cable - anyone know?

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#8 2010-05-17 12:06:05

Farstar
Member
Registered: 2009-04-22
Posts: 7

Re: IBM Thinkpad S30 Laptop - Video problems with Silicon Motion Lynx3DM

IBM ThinkPad iSeries 1200 1161-41G.
SMI LynxEM+ with 4 Mb. Panelsize - 800x600.

xorg 1.7.6-3, xf86-video-siliconmotion 1.7.3-2

Part of my xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
    Identifier  "Card0"
    Driver      "siliconmotion"
    VendorName  "All"
    BoardName   "All"
    Option      "mclk"  "120.000Mhz"
    Option      "UseBIOS"    "off"
EndSection

2 last option made me forget about blank screen when X starts.

Last edited by Farstar (2010-05-17 12:06:36)

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