Dusted off my T41

[ak_scout]

In a fit of cabin fever, I brought out my T41 (it was in a case, so it was actually very clean) and decided I should do something with it: either get it running and sell it, or start using it.

It needs a new main battery as I can only get about 1/2 hour out of the old one, but I decided to wait on that for a bit. No sense going though the hassle of getting a new one to Alaska if I'm not going to keep it. Same with the cmos battery, though I was able to get a used one with some power left in it.

I had Fedora 16 on it, but I couldn't install an up-to-date version because Fedora is only available in 64-bit, so I installed the i386 version of Debian 11 with LXDE for the desktop. This worked pretty well with the 768 mb of ram on the system, but the ipw2100 wouldn't work with the firmware for that wifi card.

Since I liked how Debian/LXDE worked on the T41, I decided to upgrade the wifi card and the memory: $9 for the ipw2200, and $20 for 2 gb of memory! Pretty cheap upgrade if you ask me!

Having the extra memory makes Debian run more smoothly.

The IPW2200 worked better, but was still dropping connections at times. I finally looked at the connection settings more closely. The mode was set to Auto. I changed that to a,b (2.4 ghz), and that helped, though it still dropped connections at times. The channel was set to default, and my router channel was set to auto. I used the Nighthawk app to check the channel interference and found that there are quite a few routers in the neighborhood, and lot of them are on the same channels at times, and the load on the channels jumps around a bit. The app makes suggestions on the best channels to use, so I select one will low usage, which was 6, and now I'm sitting with 4-bars most of the time with no dropped connections!

I'm on my T41 now more than I'm on my desktop with Fedora 35. I guess I'm keeping it!

[ak_scout]

Update:
Turns out, one of the 1 gb dimms was bad. Ran memtest86, which came up with thousands of errors. Luckily, it was the dimm on the underside, so I could quickly swap it out with a 512 mb dimm.

[sniperz47]

Nice to see that you've got it working again, I have a t41 myself but these days they are super fragile and it was a PITA to make mine stable again. I strongly, STRONGLY recommend that you open it up (carefully) and clean out dust + replace the thermal paste on the CPU to reduce temps. And if possible, undervolt the CPU as Pentium M's get very hot during any kind of modern workload - not sure how to do this on Linux but if you want a Windows 98/XP tutorial on that I can help. This made more difference for me than changing thermal paste. The heat from the CPU largely affects GPU temperatures too as the heatsink is shared, I was able to get both my CPU and GPU running at less than 48 Celsius together while retro gaming (ambient temps 23-24 celcius).

Also, always lift it with 2 hands from the sides and never from the palmrest with 1 hand as you'll accelerate the death of your GPU/southbridge from motherboard flexing. If you somehow start to experience the "screen melting" issue then definitely check this thread out

viewtopic.php?t=74366

The method in that thread was too extreme as I couldn't even screw the keyboard down anymore (spacer was too high) so I measured the GPU heatsink surface area, cut out a few pieces from old credit cards and sandwiched them on top of each other then screwed the keyboard down extra tight which looked much more pleasant. The spacebar feels a little "off" after doing this but its the only affordable way to keep these old girls running.

[ak_scout]

Thanks for the info. I'll prob do the thermal paste work. It's pretty clean already.
I'll only be doing some word processing and web browsing, so it shouldn't get too hot.

[ak_scout]

I pulled the fan assy and found that the thermal grease was in great shape. IBM/Lenovo must use some good stuff. I cleaned everything thing up, placed some new grease and re-assembled, but it wouldn't boot up. It got to the splash screen, but I couldn't get into the bios.

Did a partial take-down, and checked the connections, and all looked good. Tried to boot, but still nothing. I let it sit on the splash screen for a while as I scratched my head for ideas, when it finally came up with the wifi 1802 message. I pulled the wifi card and tried f12 so I could boot from the DVD drive to load. Nope!

Tore it all the way down again, and carefully re-assembled. This time, I got into the bios setup, and then was able to run no-1802, and then re-install the wifi card. Whew. What a chore. Now it boots up just fine. I must have had a plug that wasn't fully seated.

The only thing left to do is find a new cmos battery. Can't find a new one locally, and I can't find any computer store online that will send me one, at least so far.

Almost forgot: The tutorial I used missed a few steps. First, there is a part along the front under the touchpad and extends from the expansion slot to the optical bay/hdd cover. Unplug from the connector next to the cmos battery plug and remove. This makes it easier to remove the exp slot and drives cover. Second, remove both the optical drive and hdd to access two of the six screws holding the cover in place.

[RealBlackStuff]

Check pharmacies etc., I'm sure one of them sells CMOS batteries.
Make one yourself, see viewtopic.php?p=863677#p863677

[ak_scout]

Thanks for the link. I'll keep it handy if the new battery (yup, found someone who will mail it) doesn't show up. The plug for the original broke when I removed it from the pins. The battery I have installed is used and may fail at any time. I'll use the wires from that one if I don't have a new one in reserve.