FreeNAS on T61 and Trouble Booting from Live CD

[Pete B]

I purchased a T61 on ebay, type 6459-CTO missing the hard drive but
otherwise complete with a 9 cell battery. It will enter the CMOS setup
and I occasionally get lines across the display on both the LCD and an
external monitor. It said this in the AD so I knew what I was getting
and one plan was to use it as a headless FreeNAS server if I could not
get the video to work. It does it very intermittently and not that often
so I will also try it with Vista or Win7.

I made a FreeNAS Live CD years ago and it boots fine on an old Dell
tower but it is not recognized when I try it in the T61. It says not
bootable or something like that in the CMOS setup, and it does spin
but no boot. The T61 does go through all the loading screens when
I put in an XP install disk so the CD does seem to work.

I would appreciate any thoughts on this, thanks!

Pete

By the way: One reason for wanting this as a server is to have it be very
low power, however I measured it at 80 to 90W while in CMOS setup with
the LCD on, and about 60W set for an external display. I have a nice
HP tower that is 40W idling in XP, lol! I was hoping to get into the
low 30s or 20s with the display off - we'll see. There are power saving
features in FreeNAS so perhaps it is possible and it will be hard wired
to the router so I can remove wifi and any other options that are not
needed.

[Pete B]

It seems that something was wrong with my first power measurement, or perhaps
the system had to be rebooted a few times after sitting so long. The power now
in CMOS setup is 45W with the LCD on and 36 with it set for an external display.
That is much better. The battery is in but does not seem to charge since the
power is zero when I turn the unit off, the battery light does blink an amber color.

[Neil]

It is better, in my opinion, to run a ThinkPad without a battery, than to have a dead battery installed. If you want to provide back-up power for your T61 server, get a new battery ASAP. BTW, what is the type number on this T61?

[Pete B]

Thanks for the tip.

type: 6459-CTO

This FreeNAS Live CD also boots in a very old Dell Laptop which by
the way draws 31W with occasional blips to 45W idle in XP display
on and about 24W set for external display. Not bad! I believe that
I can do better with the T61 and the power saving features in FreeNAS.

[farmall]

I would copy the FreeNAS but burn it at slowest speed possible.

Since Linux installs are "portable" you could install to the hard disk you wish to use after plugging it into another computer such as your Dell, then toss it back in the T61.

You can always plop the .iso on a USB drive using Unetbootin on Linux systems or various Windows utilities on Windows.

I'm not familiar with FreeNAS but figured I'd find something like this:

http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.ph ... d0b0055b49

[Pete B]

I made this FreeNAS Live disk some time ago and just read that it was
completely rewritten with the old version renamed to NAS4Free. The
old version is based on BSDFree Unix with very minimal requirements.
However, the boot drive cannot also be the data drive, I had planned
to boot from the Live CD but a small USB drive should word fine also.
I plan to continue with the old version since I like the minimal
system requirements. It runs well on P3 processors, with 256MB of
RAM!
I plan to use an external USB 3.5" drive as the data drive, then there
is no need for a 2.5" laptop drive when booting the system from CD or
USB. USB actually makes more sense now since with CD you also need
a floppy or some sort of writable device to keep configuration settings.

More on NAS4Free in case anyone is interested:
http://www.nas4free.org/general_information.html

[cadillacmike68]

It is better, in my opinion, to run a ThinkPad without a battery, than to have a dead battery installed. If you want to provide back-up power for your T61 server, get a new battery ASAP. BTW, what is the type number on this T61?

Neil, I think you are looking for the model. they type is 6459 as in the first post. he put model as CTO, but there should be a second sticker on the machine with the unique model # listed.

[Pete B]

The sticker also calls that same descriptor the Product ID.
The S/N is XXXXXXXXXXX if that means anything
The MB MFG is: 42X6803
and FRU: 42W7652

[Neil]

Well, it's just a matter of curiosity, but you can't really tell much about CTO ThinkPads from the type number. Usually, though, the first seven characters of the machine serial number (first page of the BIOS, not the sticker on the bottom) provides a usable type number that will give us the machine configuration.

[Pete B]

System unit serial number is: 6459CTOXXXXX
BIOS is 2.27 2010-04-08

It was actually kind of dirty when I got it but cleaned up very
nicely and looks quite clean now. No scratches or dents that
I've noticed. The bottom is even near perfect. I'd really prefer
to get it working, the NAS idea is just a backup purpose.

[Neil]

Hey Pete, it's not really a good idea to post your machines complete serial number on-line. It's just the first seven characters that I was asking about, but doesn't look like it's going to do us much good after all. Was hoping to find something that might explain why the FreeNAS disk wouldn't boot...

Looks like from your first post that this has one of the defective nVIDIA GPU chips...is that right?

[Pete B]

The video gets lines through (not very often) it both on the LCD and
external so it seems that there is some sort of problem. I thought I read
that they beep on power up if it is the chip, but it has been a while since
I did the research so I don't remember exactly. I'm willing to try a reflow
but perhaps it's not worth the effort. It is in such nice shape that it would
be nice to get it going again.

I really don't need powerful graphics and was looking for one with Intel
internal graphics but I could not figure out the model numbers. Perhaps
I should have looked for an R61, not sure.

Thanks for the tips!

I did a bit more research. The motherboard FRU is 42W7652 that I think is
the lower end Nvidea, since others mention the 42W7653 as the better
540 version and the 42W7651 as the Intel graphics version. I need to
confirm but I think 42W7651 is the part number that I need if it is actually
bad.
This thread seems to confirm what I concluded above, also this is an 07
unit and the only good motherboards were 08 so it does not look good:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.ph ... 52#p670141

Mainboard FRU table is at the bottom of this page:
http://thinkwiki.de/T61

[farmall]

The holidays are coming and more T61s will make their way to Ebay. I'd just look for a matching 15.4" Intel donor with a damaged LCD and make one out of two. People who bother to PULL motherboards tend to want something for their effort. People dumping an old computer tend to be more laid back.

Alternately, get a different T61, loot any parts you wish off your donor, then sell the rest! Use the best display of course.

Sometimes the best way to fix a thing is to fix something else with it!