Lenovo ThinkPad X61 Tablet

[outZider]

Hey, gambcl. I really love this machine, if only I could get the last few things working right. It'd be nice if the wiki had a useful, complete story of what works and what doesn't. Someone has to come up with a real HCL. I'd do it, but I doubt these guys would link it.

 

What optical drive did you use to install with?

I have the ThinkPad UltraBase dock, so it was pretty easy for me to get the system installed. Your only other option is to pull the drive out of the laptop and insert it into another machine to do the installation. The drive is SATA, however, so just about any machine will do.

 

How is the power management when running Leopard? I see you mention that sleep works

but does it run at full power with fans blasting all the time? i.e. How is the battery life?

Surprisingly well. I get 3-4 hours of life out of the laptop, and that's without the ability to adjust brightness. The battery meter works well, it calculates time-to-die and time-to-charge correctly.

 

Do the PC Card drivers still kill the sleep?

How usable and stable generally do you find the X61 under Leopard?

For the most part, it's great. It doesn't kernel panic, it doesn't seem to die. I can't adjust the brightness, which sucks. I need a USB dongle for sound, which sucks. Ethernet doesn't work, which kinda sucks but oddly hasn't been an issue. I want my friggin tablet to work, that sucks. The issue is always the details. Sometimes I boot to a corrupted screen, and I have to reboot to Vista, log in, shut down, and start in OS X again. I always have to remember to shut the wireless switch off before I sleep, but I only use bluetooth once in a while, so it's an easy action memory thing.

 

BTW, I'm curious how do you guys come up with the mods for supporting new hw in OS X?

I guess you're using the Darwin kernel source and add new kexts? I'm a developer myself

but haven't done much at the hw level, would love to help out if I decide to get one.

Pain, strife, and agony. You're correct, at least I use the sources available at Apple's Darwin open source site. Most of the code required is there, and Apple's developer documentation is generally pretty good. Unfortunately, I took the project that had the least amount of documentation, that is, the ACPI Platform. Apple's machines use ACPI as well, but since no one needs to screw with them except for Apple, no point in documenting it. *sigh* Life goes on.

 

Being able to code IOKit drivers that intercept ACPI events actually seems pretty easy. After I'm done here, I may work on converting either Linux' or FreeBSD's thinkpad-acpi driver to OS X, so we can have use of our other buttons and controls, and be able to use the Dock effectively. (The dock's functionality works if you boot into OS X with the dock installed. If you remove the dock and readd it, nothing happens -- you can't use any of the functionality. lame.)

[hardboiledwonderland]

I have the ThinkPad UltraBase dock, so it was pretty easy for me to get the system installed. Your only other option is to pull the drive out of the laptop and insert it into another machine to do the installation. The drive is SATA, however, so just about any machine will do.

 

Correction: Just about any USB DVD drive will do. I have several here (a 'generic' one in a generic housing, and a Samsung, some others I haven't used in a while) and they all boot fine. I did the actual install using the Samsung USB drive, and it worked great.

 

Apparently, the real ThinkPad dock/drive/whatever can still be useful. Generic USB drives don't work for updating the BIOS, so I had to do that through a USB flash drive (was kind of a pain to 'translate' the ISO to bootable flash). I had to update the BIOS to fix a Vista64 problem with sleep related to Active Protection and Turbo Memory.

 

But to recap: any USB DVD drive should serve you good!

[hardboiledwonderland]

Hrm, I'm not sure what I did 'right' or 'wrong', but I replaced my Intel 4965AGN card with the ThinkPad A/B/G card and it seems the wireless switch no longer affects my WiFi but it still affects Bluetooth. I also no longer have illumination of the WiFi bezel indicator. But the WiFi still works perfectly fine, even with the physical wireless switch set to 'off'.

 

The upside to this is: I can sleep the computer without disabling WiFi! All I need to disable is the Bluetooth via the physical switch, and I anticipate leaving it in that position most of the time anyways since I rarely use Bluetooth!

 

So, as far as I'm concerned, power management is working near-perfectly for me on my X61t =) The only next step I would hope for is getting the PC Card to work without killing sleep (I have a compactflash reader I'd like to use, but its not crucial). Also, has anyone managed to get the Turbo Memory chips to show up in OS X as standard flash drives? I seemed to have done that once in Ubuntu, but it doesn't seem to happen anymore.

 

EDIT: I forgot to add that I definitely am hoping for LCD brightness control. That would be a big boost. That works fine on my brother's Dell Inspiron E1705 with Leopard and my mom's ThinkPad T40 with Tiger. I guess newfangled ThinkPads are more complicated.

[Wenle Z.]

any one have the IntelTurbo memory ? will it affect the installtion?

[hardboiledwonderland]

any one have the IntelTurbo memory ? will it affect the installtion?

 

I do. Its as if its not even there

[outZider]

I do. Its as if its not even there

It'd be cool if we could eventually at least access that as flash memory, maybe stick commonly used libraries there for quick loading.

[hardboiledwonderland]

It'd be cool if we could eventually at least access that as flash memory, maybe stick commonly used libraries there for quick loading.

 

Yea, that's what I was hoping for. I'm pretty sure there's a way to do that in Linux, but I tried searching for it today and didn't come up with anything. I suspect that the more recent drivers for Turbo Memory may have locked it out from showing up as a standard drive.

 

I was thinking of sticking frequently-used apps in there.

[moomin_32]

outZider--thank you for getting all this info together! I have a plain x61, there were only a few things I have a few additional notes for:

 

Kalyway's 10.5.1 image

Kalyway's 10.5.2 Combo Updater

Kalyway's 10.5.2 Kernel Pack

Leopard Graphics Update package

All the same here. (I have 4 real Mac systems so I did not bother with an extra copy of Leopard.)

 

Before installing, I went to BIOS and disabled AMT and switched SATA to Compatibility mode. I also had all power management features turned off in BIOS although I suspect this would not have caused a problem.

 

To install, burn a DVD image, and reboot into the installer. No options are required on first boot. When configuring your installation, install the vanilla kernel and ACPI PS2 fix, as well as the correct boot loader for your machine. May I recommend at this time that you attempt to format your drive to GUID -- it helps in the long run. If you're preserving your Rescue and Repair partition and your Vista install, you're SOL -- go MBR. Once the installer has finished, the system will reboot, and give you 5 seconds to hit a key. Do so, and type "-x" without the quotes. This will boot your machine in safe mode, preventing issues with the X3100 card. Do the post installation process, and you'll be at your desktop!

Just plain

-x

did not work on my system, the post install went into a loop at the "do you already own a mac" section, bumping me back to the start. However, booting with

"Graphics Mode"="640x480x32" -x

worked fine. Make sure both sides of the equals mark are quoted and to append the -x without quotes. It is butt-ugly and it does skip performing post-install but it works. You need to do the setup directly once logged in--I suggest waiting until fully done with the installation. You do not "lose" anything by skipping the post-install.

 

A note about the initial installer to newbs like me: select both the vanilla kernel and ACPI PS2 fix and do NOT select SSE2. x61 is an SSE3 machine (I thought it just meant having SSE2 support the first go-round.) I left the drivers unselected.

 

Pop in a USB key or burned CD containing your Combo Updater and Kernel Pack. Copy them to your drive. Run the 10.5.2 Combo Updater installation. Reboot again, with the -x option once more, and then install the Kernel Pack, using the vanilla kernel. Reboot again with -x, and install the Leopard Graphics Update. If you don't have it, you can use Apple Software Update and download the package manually, as long as you have a working wireless card (see below). When the installer completes, go to /System/Library/Extensions, remove AppleIntelGMA950* and AppleIntelIntegratedFramebuffer.kext by moving them to a backup folder or removing entirely. Reboot once more, without the -x, and you should have a fully functional desktop.

Here again, use "Graphics Mode"="640x480x32" -x instead of just -x. I did NOT remove the drivers referenced at the bottom. When you boot up that last time, you should be able to run everything normally and do the rest of your set-up.

 

Battery Meter

The battery meter and power profiles work perfectly, as long as you add keithpk/jaro12345's Power Management bundle for Leopard. Go to the thread to download the bundle, and copy it to /System/Library/SystemConfiguration. chmod -R 755 it, and chown -R 0:0 it, and reboot, and you should be set. One note is that if you did use the Kalyway installer as above, you may have to make a small change in your ACPI kext. Check the thread linked above, it has this little tidbit:

Again, for newbs like me: the simplest way to make the edit is to go to Finder -> Go -> Go to Folder. This allows you to get "inside" the .kext the easiest. The Info.plist file can be edited just in TextEdit, but you have to first make both the Contents directory and Info.plist writable. The simplest way is to highlight the file, go to Finder->File->Get Info and change the setting at the bottom. You must change these back (and make sure the file ownership is correctly set to root, group is wheel.)

 

I had a similar issue with graphics corruption as reported somewhere in the thread: the following morning from the initial install when I started up normally, I got the grey Apple logo with the spinner but just after it had passed to the sky blue of the login screen, the graphics broke. The display was essentially blue and black boxes in shifting columns. The external monitor trick did not work for me but I was able to just boot up once in safe mode (-x) and then reboot normally. I think this may have been caused by setting the display refresh rate to 60Hz instead of the default 50Hz. I will tinker a bit more and report if I can confirm this.

 

The only other thing I am still working on is Ethernet. I actually have one of the Apple USB Ethernet connectors but it does not seem to work. I can see the device correctly recognised in System Profiler but I cannot get it picked up through Network. I will play around with ifconfig and see if I can get it to run that way. I tried the third-party driver (sensible solutions or something?) which allowed the device to be recognised but it kept complaining about the cable not being connected (and it was causing all sorts of collisions) so I reverted that.

[hardboiledwonderland]

Has anyone figured out a good way to remap the tablet bezel buttons? I know we can't get the pen working yet, but I still like to use the machine in portrait mode for reading PDF's. Currently it seems the buttons are hard-wired for the 'missing' mac buttons (like 'end', 'home') and F buttons higher than 12. For a modicum of usability perhaps the arrows could be set to control the mouse cursor with the center button as 'left click'.

 

For now I find that one of the arrow buttons is preset to PgDn, so I mostly just use that when reading PDF's. Text rendering is so much better in OS X!

[outZider]

Has anyone figured out a good way to remap the tablet bezel buttons?

 

They don't really make this easy.

 

The enclosed kext will map the arrows to the up/down/left/right arrow keys, escape to escape, the center button to enter, and the toolbox button to F14. 'Rotate' is handled by an ACPI event, so I can't map that with the keyboard driver, and our graphics driver doesn't support rotate yet anyhow.

 

To install this, unzip the kext into your downloads directory, head to the terminal and do these steps exactly. Note that anything wrong, and you won't be able to type until you restore your backup using SSH or a USB keyboard.

sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePS2Keyboard.kext
sudo cp -Rp ApplePS2Keyboard.kext /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions.mkext
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Extensions/Caches
sudo rm -rf /System/Library/Caches/com.apple.kernelcaches
sudo chmod -R 755 /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePS2Keyboard.kext
sudo chown -R 0:0 /System/Library/Extensions/ApplePS2Controller.kext/Contents/PlugIns/ApplePS2Keyboard.kext

 

(Edit to add updated archive, to fix ins/del/pgup/pgdown keys)

ApplePS2Keyboard.kext.zip

[hardboiledwonderland]

outZider, you the man! I'll try this out soon and let you know how it goes!

[hardboiledwonderland]

Quick question before I install the kext... could I just simply use Kext Helper instead?

[outZider]

Quick question before I install the kext... could I just simply use Kext Helper instead?

Nope, will conflict with the existing driver. I'll have an installer up this afternoon, if you'd like to wait for that instead.

[popophobia]

Hmm, I've bump into the problem with unable to turn the card on (Turn Airport On button didn't work).

 

I accidentally turn it on by going to Safari, and click on diagnose network. Then, keep pushing forward until the wizard asks you to turn on the Airport, check the box and wallah, it's on. Though, the status of the card is still red (failed), but it connects to network and I am posting as we speak. The LED for wifi does not turn on either. Quite strange.

 

Here a screenshot attached to this problem. If you pay attention, you see that the network is working ok, but the airport icon in the menu top bar is still "Unconnected", as well as the Network setting in Preferences. Any idea how should I fix this?

 

I have Atheros card (5424 I think) with the ID 168c,1014. I did apply the IO80211Family.kext as suggested from the intel airport update from apple (download it somewhere off the net)

 

PM me or reply to my post, since everything seems to be lost after a few days in this thread.

[popophobia]

Ok, after the 10th times installing Mac, I think I figure out a few place that need to focus more on to get a *perfect* install:

 

1. On your first boot, you HAVE to let it boot in normal mode and freeze. Or you'll get a infinite "Do you already own a Mac?" loop. Boot in safe mode later.

 

2. Restart after every install. Including the kernel update, which does not require restart.

 

3. The wireless card is just shear luck. I've got it working fully. Which is awesome. I think I'll make a huge back up just in case. Fix your Wireless network after you're done with the Graphic fix.

 

4. Powermanagement fix comes after this.

 

There, after about the 5th trial, I finally get it right.

[hardboiledwonderland]

I want to give a heads-up: thermal management isn't quite there yet. I was playing Age of Empires III with a friend (over WiFi with her real MacBook and my X61T Hac) and it got hot to the point where my computer's BIOS kicked in and powered off my computer.

 

Once I put a fanned cooling pad under my computer we were able to start a new game and play through just fine. I should note that while it did run very well in OS X, I never had it get this hot playing the game under Vista.

 

For audio I used a USB adapter with optical output. Edirol something-or-another.

 

So... if you're planning on gaming make sure you have a way to cool the machine!

[popophobia]

I want to give a heads-up: thermal management isn't quite there yet. I was playing Age of Empires III with a friend (over WiFi with her real MacBook and my X61T Hac) and it got hot to the point where my computer's BIOS kicked in and powered off my computer.

 

Once I put a fanned cooling pad under my computer we were able to start a new game and play through just fine. I should note that while it did run very well in OS X, I never had it get this hot playing the game under Vista.

 

For audio I used a USB adapter with optical output. Edirol something-or-another.

 

So... if you're planning on gaming make sure you have a way to cool the machine!

 

Actually just from browsing the net, the temperature can shoot upward around 65oC. and the fan is still on low speed. Not very healthy.

 

I'm curious if anyone tried speedstep or CPUThrottler on this machine (10.5.2). I'd love to lower a voltage a little, or at least lower the speed.

[outZider]

My apologies for not being around a while, I only had a little time to be able to work with this. I do have good news, though -- the serial tablet is now being detected on my ThinkPad X61. I will be knocking out some of the debug code after I get back from work today and unleashing it on you guys at around 5pm PDT.

 

We still have to work on TabletMagic calibration, but we will at least be at the point where we can ask within the TabletMagic thread and see what Scott has to say.

 

I am very, VERY happy.

[outZider]

Enclosed is ThinkPadTabletEnabler.kext, in a tar-gz archive. You can use kexthelper to install this extension, it will load before the Apple serial driver and allow the tablet port to be detected successfully. You will have to replace 'PNP0501' with 'WACF004' in your /System/Library/Extensions/Apple16X50Serial.kext/Contents/PlugIns/Apple16X50ACPI.kext/Contents/Info.plist, or to have access to both the tablet and your built in serial port, create an array with both values. An example info.plist is provided.

 

Once you reboot, you will be able to configure TabletMagic. I have found the following settings to work well:

Extras

> Don't Query Digitizer

> Range 24570x18430

Enabled

Mapping

> Select [all]

> Select [< constrain <]

> Select [max]

 

Seemed to work okay for me. Select Launch At Startup if it works well for you.

 

This kext may kernel panic your system or kill your family like the mafia. If it does work for you, let me know, and I'll put it on page 1 and send it to the TabletMagic thread.

ThinkPadTabletEnabler.tar.gz

Info.plist.gz

[popophobia]

Great news. I'm off to try it right now.

 

edit: yay, it works!!!

[outZider]

edit: yay, it works!!!

 

Sweet!

[hardboiledwonderland]

Holy {censored}, this is the coolest {censored} to hit the interwebs in a long time.

 

I just gotta pull out my Ubuntu drive, stick in my Mac drive, and reboot. I'll give it a spin =)

 

On a related note: I am officially Microsoft free: I returned from a night of partying and found myself wanting to use Skype, so I picked up my silent computer and went ahead swapping out the Leopard drive for the Vista drive. Then powered it on. Surprise surprise... it wasn't off, it was asleep!

 

Leopard must have done something or another to the drive. Vista refused to boot after that (something having to do with unverified DLL's?). Tried disk-checking it and all, but no go. At least all the data is still there.

 

After backing up the data, I installed Ubuntu. Its quite cool actually.

Anyways, time for me to give the MacTablet a spin!!!

[hardboiledwonderland]

Seems like a no-go here =(

 

TabletMagic detects the tablet as ISD V4.0 (TabletPC)

This is TabletMagic 2.0b13

For the install of outZider's enabler I used kext helper, and then I stuck in his customized plist as indicated in ACPI. I then repaired permissions using diskutil.

 

As far as I can tell, TabletMagic is detecting the tablet, but is showing no data from it. This machine has an SXGA+. Are you guys using the SXGA+ or the multi-touch 1024x768?

[outZider]

Seems like a no-go here =(

 

TabletMagic detects the tablet as ISD V4.0 (TabletPC)

This is TabletMagic 2.0b13

For the install of outZider's enabler I used kext helper, and then I stuck in his customized plist as indicated in ACPI. I then repaired permissions using diskutil.

 

As far as I can tell, TabletMagic is detecting the tablet, but is showing no data from it. This machine has an SXGA+. Are you guys using the SXGA+ or the multi-touch 1024x768?

 

SXGA+. Go to your Console, do a search in 'All Messages' for TabletEnabler, copy those lines, and send it over.

[hardboiledwonderland]

Ok, will do. Before I do that I wanted to note that ThinkPadTabletEnabler is not showing up in the list of kexts in System Profiler. Should it?

 

Hrm, i don't see an 'All Messages' but when I type 'TabletEnabler' into the filter box in the corner I get no listings.