laptop screen blanking wont stop!

[dep]

more:

i just went to the t-pad 240 sites on ken harker's site (hey, i 
really do *love* this thing, and it's fun to read of other people's 
experiences. besides, i write for a living and though i have it 
running a really tuned suse 7.2 that i have no plans to upgrade -- 
particularly in that i have the lucent winmodem working -- textmaker 
is really fast even on its dinky celeron 366 and 192 megs of memory), 
and i found something that might be pertinent.

on http://truffula.net/~forrest/tp240.shtml i found this:

APM: 
apm works great on this laptop. i've left the thinkpad bios in it's 
default settings, and i just compiled my kernel with the following 
settings.

ignore user suspend = no
enable pm at boot time = yes
make cpu idle calls when idle = yes
enable console blanking = no <<<<<<<<<<NOTE THIS!
rtc stores time in GMT = no
allow interupts during apm bios calls = yes
use real mode apm bios call to power off = yes 

now, this is an entirely different machine from a different era -- 
three or four years old -- but ibm is circumspect about changes (i 
wonder if, were i to yank the hard drive entirely, it would boot to 
basica in rom?). and of course the gmt thing is taste, not function.

no idea if this is of any use or, if it is, whether there is a boot 
param that can be passed so as to avoid a kernel recompile. the fact 
that linux tends to tell the bios to go pound sand early in the boot 
is to be remembered, too, though i suppose there is the possibility 
of dueling switches.
-- 
dep