A Penguin in Purple Clothing

Wednesday August 25, 2004

IBM Thinkpad T21

I have for a long time espoused the virtues of IBM's line of laptops. So have all my friends. Thinkpads are the only laptops that can survive Burning Man. I got a used T21 a couple of years ago and have been nothing but happy with it. I run Gentoo Linux on it and compile everything from scratch. It is a work horse and I have never had a problem with it.

Until a week ago. Now, when it boots, it only lasts about 10 minutes before just shutting off. Then, it won't come back on for a half an hour or so. Sounds like a thermal problem, no? Well, that is what I figured, too. So, I opened it up, took off the heat sink and fan from the CPU. Lo and behold, all of the thermal grease had moved off of the chip. I applied some new stuff, put the thing back together, and thought I was golden. WRONG. The laptop still has the same issues. It shuts off after 10 minutes of use. So, I am at a loss. I don't have a working laptop to bring to Burning Man. :-(

UPDATE (8/27/04)I just won a parts laptop on Ebay (another T21 for $96; has a broken screen, but a working CPU/motherboard/fan). I will be getting this soon and hopefully, this will fix my issues. In the mean time, I am using a work laptop, a Fujitsu Lifebook S6110. I like that this has a middle mouse button like the T21, but I don't like the keyboard layout as much. I installed Fedora Core 2 on it the second I got it. Most everything worked out of the box: display, sound, etc. I think this is supposed to have a builtin wireless, but I cannot get Fedora to find it. I am using a PCMCIA card instead.

(2004-08-25 12:06:05.0) Permalink