Several questions regarding X31

[virtualsim]

I should receive my new (for me) X31 sometime next week. It will be my first Thinkpad in years (previously had 380ED, 390X, A22m and IBM issued T41), and my first X series.

My unit is type 2673-Y13 which appears to be common on eBay, although I could not find it in tawbook or ltwbook.

It will include an X3 ultrabase with combo drive. I have ordered a new battery separately from battdepot.ca .

First question : Will the X3 ultrabase charge a battery when the computer is not docked? Will both batteries charge when the X31 IS docked?

Second question : I still have an old Thinkpad AC adapter from my 390X (I think) that is rated at 16v 3,36A (~53w). Will this adapter work with the X31? I might leave this one in my school locker and keep the new one home. (trying to reduce backpack weight).

Third question : Does the X31 generally respond well to undervolting? What kind of battery life gains can be made this way?

Fourth question : Will a 160Gb Seagate momentus 5400.3 work in the X31 out of the box or do I need an IBM/Lenovo approved drive and/or firmware hack?

Fifth question : Is the X31 picky about its RAM or will any cheapish PC2700 CL2.5 DDR stick generally work? Was thinking of ordering 2x1GB sticks of either Patriot or Buffalo memory from ncix.com anybody tried those brands?

Sixth question : I was hoping to use either openSUSE 11 or Ubuntu 8,04 as my primary OS, with Win2K in a vmware sandbox for some EE software I need for school. Anybody is using those particular distributions on this hardware? Will Suspend/hibernate work? Will the ultrabase cause problems? Cisco wifi and intel GBit ethernet should work out of the box (from what I gather from thinkwiki), do they?


Thanks to all who take the time to read through this. Any and all answers will be much appreciated.

[rkawakami]

Not all of the systems are listed in the "books". Best bet would be to go to the main support and downloads site and get this:

http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site. ... y=2673-Y13

A1: I believe you need the X31 docked in order to charge the one in the "slice". I would also assume that both batteries will be charged when the system is docked; I only have one X3 battery so I can't test this out.

A2: The X31 is spec'ed to use the 56W adapter. Yes, 3.36A x 16V is 53.76W so I don't know why everybody calls it 56W .

A3: Not sure; haven't tried. You might find some info about this in the archives.

A4: Again don't know for sure, but I highly doubt it. (Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong ).

A5: Can't recall what's in mine but if you're going to be using second or third tier memory modules, then for sure buy them if there's some sort of guarantee on them and check them you using memtest86+ as soon as you get them.

A6: What??? Sorry, I'm a Windoze user .

BTW, Welcome to thinkpads.com!

[aaa]

Third question : Does the X31 generally respond well to undervolting? What kind of battery life gains can be made this way?

Yes, the Pentium Ms are the best undervolters of all. Gains of around an hour, iirc.

Fourth question : Will a 160Gb Seagate momentus 5400.3 work in the X31 out of the box or do I need an IBM/Lenovo approved drive and/or firmware hack?

No hacks needed, just any 2.5" PATA drive. Only the T43/R52 had problems with this.

Fifth question : Is the X31 picky about its RAM or will any cheapish PC2700 CL2.5 DDR stick generally work? Was thinking of ordering 2x1GB sticks of either Patriot or Buffalo memory from ncix.com anybody tried those brands?

I haven't worried about the ram, and I haven't had problems putting random sticks in. However, I still would not be absolutely sure.

Sixth question : I was hoping to use either openSUSE 11 or Ubuntu 8,04 as my primary OS, with Win2K in a vmware sandbox for some EE software I need for school. Anybody is using those particular distributions on this hardware? Will Suspend/hibernate work? Will the ultrabase cause problems? Cisco wifi and intel GBit ethernet should work out of the box (from what I gather from thinkwiki), do they?

I have not tried the ultrabase, but everything else should work great. If you plan to use dual monitors you'll get the usual annoyances setting it up, but it's still doable.

[virtualsim]

Thanks for the answers (and for the welcome!).

Anybody using a 160Gb Seagate 5400.3 can comment on performance?

Still looking for info on using the Ultrabase in Linux.

Fedora 9 also seem to be a good match for the X31, anybody tried it?

And new question (number seven) : what is the fastest most power-efficient and most linux-friendly wireless card I can install on the X31? And where can I get it? I understand the BIOS will only allow specific models am I right?

[KristianJ]

Hit up www.thinkwiki.org for many of your Linux/ThinkPad issues. In particular, this is their page regarding the Ultrabase X3:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/UltraBase_X3

To help with your question re. wireless cards, check out:

http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Wireless_Network_Adapters

I'm not sure which would be the most Linux friendly, but in terms of accessibility, a fair few of them change hands in the Marketplace, and they'll most likely be guaranteed to not bring up the 1802 error that is indicative of unsupported cards.

[aaa]

Thanks for the answers (and for the welcome!).

Anybody using a 160Gb Seagate 5400.3 can comment on performance?

Still looking for info on using the Ultrabase in Linux.

Fedora 9 also seem to be a good match for the X31, anybody tried it?

And new question (number seven) : what is the fastest most power-efficient and most linux-friendly wireless card I can install on the X31? And where can I get it? I understand the BIOS will only allow specific models am I right?

If you don't have it yet, I would rather go for a higher density drive, as those are faster. The 5400.3 has two 80gb platters, which isn't the highest density around. I use the Samsung HM160HC, which has one big 160gb platter, making it pretty fast. It has some annoying issues of it's own that I had to straighten out though. There is also the WD 250gb, which is 2x125.

All the original IBM-issued wireless cards work great in Linux. I use the Cisco because it uses less power than the Atheros cards and gets better reception than the Intel cards. The Atheros cards are faster (G, maybe 108 too?) but also use alot more battery power.

[virtualsim]

I was attracted to the 5400.3 after seeing this seek time graph, indicating seek times competitive with the 7K drives.

http://www.storagereview.com/160notebook.sr?page=0%2C1

I understand that some of the newer drives have better sustained transfer rates.

What is the speed of the original 4200RPM 30Gb drive? about 20MB/s ?

The 250Gb western digital you mention has excellent sequential transfer rates, but very poor access times (over 30% slower than the 5400.3).
http://www.storagereview.com/WD2500BEVS.sr?page=0%2C1

The 250 is also almost double the price in my area.

Price-wise, the Hitachi 5K160 is also very interesting at around $60 CDN. It appears to be very power efficient as well. Anybody using this in the X31 ?

I will investigate the Samsung, I haven't seen it locally yet. Single platter is very attractive from a reliability and power usage point of view.

If the atheros is noticeably more power-hungry than the cisco, I might keep the b card. I will use gigE on the ultrabase for installations and large transfers.

[virtualsim]

Just found this review of the Samsung drive aaa mentioned.

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=264209

Impressive! to say the least!

Also found a dealer in Ontario which can get me the drive for $81 taxes and shipping included which is cheaper than the seagate and about the same as the much older 5K160.

Being a bit put-off by the clicking problems you linked ATM.

[aaa]

Being a bit put-off by the clicking problems you linked ATM.

Mine does not click anymore. I am not sure what I did exactly, something to do with APM 254 vs 255 (255 did not work). It's a firmware issue, and I had hoped that it would be solvable with a firmware update but I'd never gotten around to it, especially since it is not a problem for me anymore.

[virtualsim]

Once you disable power management for the drive (with APM 254) how is the power consumption?

Does the drive still spin down after several minutes?

Is it only the periodic (too aggressive?) parking of the heads that is disabled?

[aaa]

Once you disable power management for the drive (with APM 254) how is the power consumption?

Does the drive still spin down after several minutes?

Is it only the periodic (too aggressive?) parking of the heads that is disabled?

I am using laptop_mode, on AC it's set to 254 (which is on all the time), on battery I have it set to some extremely aggressive setting (5 seconds to spindown I think).

The default laptop_mode configuration spins up the drive every 10 mins, so spindown after several minutes is not going to work. I also needed to find and stop various apps that were accessing the HD, otherwise it'll just spin up and down every few seconds in a damaging sort of way.

[icebag]

Fedora 9 also seem to be a good match for the X31, anybody tried it?

-- no, but I have used PCLinuxOS on an X31 and it works a treat.

[bobbarker]

Fedora 9 works okay. Ubuntu (up until 7.10) seemed to work better, IMO (a little better ACPI support). Although Fedora should get everything up and running out of the box without any real tweaking.