laptop screen blanking wont stop!

[dep]

On Monday 17 November 2003 08:11 pm, Douglas J Hunley wrote:

| yes. in fact, the console does blank. but it comes back when you
| press enter
. . .
| looks like this is X related. off for more testing

i'm not so sure, if the console, too, is blanking. how soon does this 
happen? the console is supposed to blank in linux after a specified 
period of time; additionally, recent x does something funky in this 
regard -- sometimes on my desktop machine the screensaver is x, but 
sometimes it blanks and the monitor turns on the light that's on when 
the monitor is on but the computer isn't, so the frigging energy star 
compliance nonsense -- how much juice would a laptop use? -- seems 
too clever by half, and a little unpredictable as well.

my questions, then: how long after boot does the console blank?
are you certain that there is *nothing* in the bios that might bring 
this about? notebook bioses are notoriously flaky, and among them 
thinkpad bioses are especially so. and i say this as someone in love 
with and at this moment writing on a thinkpad (a 240, which i think 
is the coolest computer ever built), and only wish that ibm would 
learn that rechargeable batteries are supposed to have a longer 
service life than nonrechargeable ones would.

you might poke around, too, to see if there's a bios upgrade you 
need. often, these are released between the time a t-pad ships and 
the time anybody actually has one. the upgrade is simple but must be 
done *precisely,* else dead machine. a bootable dos floppy is often 
needed (though nowadays it could be that ibm makes the disk image 
bootable, which would make sense).

and of course ken harker's site, http://www.linux-laptop.net/, is 
well worth checking out to see if this is a known problem (and to d/l 
the right XF86Config, if that is where the trouble is. the thinkpad 
stuff is here: http://www.linux-on-laptops.com/ibm.html.

i'd also check to see if there's framebuffer stuff going on. on many 
systems, you may use the framebuffer, or you may use x, but you get 
into a world of hurt if you try to use both.
-- 
dep