Speedstep.app freezes on IBM Thinkpad T60

[cptsalek]

Hi,

 

my machine is an IBM/Lenovo Thinkpad T60 with Intel Core Duo CPU with 2GHz. The Laptop has 1GB RAM, ATI x1300 GPU with a 14.1" TFT display allowing a resolution of XGA/1024 x 768, SATA HDD and a CD/DVD Combo drive. I hope I got the specs right. The CD/DVD Combo drive is attached to the media bay, which allows me to attach a PATA HDD. So I'm not sure wether or not the CD/DVD drive is SATA, too.

Just for the record: I've sound working, problem with sleep and to some degree obviously with PowerManagement (fan won't work).

 

But what really bugs me is that Speedstep.app freezes the laptop. Not every time, if the speed is increased everything wents fine, but if the speed is decreased the last on screen action I see is the new speed being displayed, and then the machine freezes. If I'm fast enough with login in on reboot I manage to set speedstep to "custom clock" and choose 2000MHz. Afterwards the machine runs stable.

When I choose a lower speed manually, 1667MHz doesn't seem to kick in at all, the speed display stays at 2000MHz. Choosing a lower speed freezes the machine, tried it with 1333MHz once.

Speedstep.app gives me 2000, 1667, 1333 and 1000MHz. This doesn't entirely match what the CPUs are capable of, FreeBSDs cpufreqd reduced the speed down to 255MHz when idle. Is this intentionally?

I didn't found a thread dealing with this issue, but in some other thread concerning Speedstep someone mentioned that his system freezes, too.

 

Some ideas regarding this issue?

 

Thanks

CptSalek

[00diabolic]

Actually this is interesting. Your issue is a bug in the speedstep kernel according to the makers of the speedstep.app. If you read the documents on it they say no speed below 1gz should be used without freezing the machine. Yet what is odd about your problem is you are freezing above 1gz. I think you have an inconsistent setup. Either the cputhrottler kext is not loading, or the speedstep.app is having the problem. You can actually run without the speedstep.app if thats the issue. If its the throttler your in trouble.

 

There are 2 speedstep kernels that I know of. netkas SS 9.1 kernel was for 10.5.1+ and netkas SS kernel 9.2 10.5.2+.

 

you can get them both here: http://minsong79.tistory.com/10

 

I would try a different combination including completely removing the speedstep.app and see if you can get it to throttle. You can see if the throttler is working by doing a sysctl -a | grep freq You can also do a sysctl kern.cputhrottle_freqs to see the available throttling frequencies. There are only 4 and I have no idea how it comes up with them. The version I have of the throttler is v1.04. Also I can get a freq below 1gz without problems. I believe this is because of the updated kernel though.

 

If all that fails and you are still freezing. I would log in in safe mode and see if you can do anything there.