Planet Geek

Size Does Matter

Geekitude , Life. Don't talk to me about life.

So I finally received the replacement keyboard for my IBM t40 keyboard. After taking everything apart, the new keyboard wouldn't fit. Things were slightly off. I looked back on the original eBay posting, "Yup, T40", and fired off a piece of mail to the seller.

He wrote back "Are you sure you have a 15" model? The auction clearly states '15"'.

One tape-measure later, nope. 14".

Back to the drawing board.

Other problems continue to plague my aging laptop as well. The wireless interface will go dark with 'Fatal interrupt. Scheduling firmware restart' - which sometimes will in fact restart, but regularly just shuts down the interface entirely. Reboot time! This, coupled with the oddity of the IBM video regarding the external video port (which took me AGES to figure out, but at least is consistent. You can use the external VGA port on the laptop -completely- (as in, change resolutions and the like) ONLY if there is nothing attached to it upon boot AND you are not in the IBM dock. Once booted, dock the laptop, and restart the X-server WITH the video attached (/etc/init.d/gdm restart). It'll come up in maxi-high resolution ( the internal screen will pan ), THEN you can use desktop settings to resize to any resolution you want (my flat screen uses 1280x1024). So, reboots are tedious.

I'm ready for my new machine.

Posted by dbs at October 13, 2005 9:34 AM