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Date:      Tue, 24 Dec 2002 12:40:44 -0800
From:      "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net>
To:        kit <kit@hypostasis.com>
Cc:        mobile@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Thinkpad BIOS status 
Message-ID:  <20021224204044.BE4C35D04@ptavv.es.net>
In-Reply-To: Your message of "Sun, 22 Dec 2002 03:55:41 %2B1300." <20021221145541.GA38624@amethyst.hypostasis.com> 

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> Date: Sun, 22 Dec 2002 03:55:41 +1300
> From: kit <kit@hypostasis.com>
> Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG
> 
> Hi people
> 
> For a while there was a problem with thinkpad bioses recognising Freebsd Slices 
> but then it was fixed and I had an idea that it may have come back in a later
> revision..  I've not been able to find anything recent but 
> does anypone know what the current state of the play is and whether the 
> latest bios for the A20m (1.12 i think) is able to be used?

All recent BIOS releases have been fine. There was a bug in early BIOS
releases for several A, X, and T ThinkPads that would cause a system
lock-up when any partition with the final nibble of 0x5 was
detected. FreeBSD uses 0xA5, and was caught by this.

IBM put out a fixed BIOS that worked, but the next update, just a few
days later, re-introduced the bug. It was removed again, as I recall,
about 2 weeks later and has not re-appeared.

If you have a remotely current version of BIOS on an A, R, T, or X
series ThinkPad, you should be fine. (I am sending this from my T30
with bios updated about a month ago from the delivered BIOS which also
worked fine.)

R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer
Energy Sciences Network (ESnet)
Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab)
E-mail: oberman@es.net			Phone: +1 510 486-8634

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