Thinkpad R52 - Setting EPP in BIOS, SMI Setup

Hello,

I have been working with an older laptop, an IBM Thinkpad R52. Been trying to get the BIOS to accept the EPP mode selection.
I finally found the answer.

Set the port to 0378, then the EPP option will be selectable.

I also had to make the changes for SMI in Item #4 on this page. Fixing SMI Issues

When I first started looking at the latency, every 60 seconds or so the latency would go to over 500,000. After the change listed above the laptop has good latency numbers below 10000.

I have only been running this computer for a few hours. I will post back here if anything goes crunch.

Hope this helps someone trying to run the Thinkpad R52.

Regards

Hi

Thanks for the info

Set the port to 0378, then the EPP option will be selectable.

I presume you needed EPP to power a Gecko charge-pump or similar?

Let us know what the final full figures are from the latency test, plus the distro you are using and I will put it on the database

regards

ArcEye,

You're welcome. You guys work really hard on LinuxCNC, I appreciate that. Thanks!

The least I can do is report what I find out while I'm playing around.

Still watching for errors. I got a couple of warnings yesterday. I was running the laptop without a battery, could have been a power bump. I have installed a battery today.

Yes, I'm running a G540.

I also went to a LDXE from XCFE. I thought I would try it.

That was probably a mistake, now I'm not sure if that is the cause of the warnings or not.

The machine went all day Thursday without an issue. Then yesterday after the change I got the errors.

If I get through today without errors I will get the info to you.

Regards,

Matt

Arceye,

I'm still getting the occasional latency message. Maybe once every 2 hours or so. However, I let the latency test run for about 3 hours. Numbers for the base thread started at 6000, after 3 hours it was at 13,600 or so.

I didn't have anything running on the computer, I was hoping to catch a random glitch.

The latency errors have all come up while runinng LinuxCNC. As it only logs the first one, I'm not sure if there are more. I didn't want to lose locations on the machine so I didn't restart very often.

dmesg simply repeated the error that showed up.

I'll be happy to dig further, is there anything else I should try?

You asked the Distro. I used the latest .iso form the website,LinuxCNC 2.6.4, Debian Wheezy with a G540. Thinkpad R52, Type 1847, ATI Mobility Radeon X300 graphics, 2GHz processor, 1GB memory. Running the open video drivers that were loaded by the .iso. Used the SMI fix as noted on the "SMI Issues" page.

Not sure whether to call this a success since I'm seeing latency warnings.

Regards,

Matt

Hi

The graphical latency test is cumulative, so just shows the highest figure even if that only occurred once.

You can run the rtai latency test in a terminal as detailed in my FAQ on latency solutions, at the head of this section.

That will show a continuous jitter figure readout, so spotting when it goes up and what that is associated with can be easier.

13600 is not a bad figure, if that was running loaded, but as it isn't I would try loading with glxgears etc and see how that comes out.
(Don't load firefox, no one should be surfing whilst machining on a limited memory and processor power machine, just 3 instances of glxgears, force window redraws by moving them round with the mouse and move some big files say)

regards