Installing 13.1 hangs on IBM ThinkPad T41

albr · Jan 19, 2023

Hello,

I've faced with problem installing 13.1 on IBM Thinkpad T41. When I boot from installation media this process fails down into endless trip with "CAM status: Command timeout, Retrying command, 0 more tries remain..." I get the same result booting from DVD and memstick.
I've tried 12.X and 10.X releases also with the same result. Finally I've managed to install 9.4 on this laptop, but after uprgade to 10.1 I get the same problem. What can be wrong and Is there a way to fix it?
Thank you for help and any advices.

serjsk8 · Jan 19, 2023

Hello,
If I understand correctly, then this error is related to the hard drive.
Can you try to change something in BIOS associated with PATA.

smithi · Jan 19, 2023

albr said:
I've tried 12.X and 10.X releases also with the same result. Finally I've managed to install 9.4 on this laptop, but after uprgade to 10.1 I get the same problem. What can be wrong and Is there a way to fix it?

Is it updated to the latest (probably last) BIOS for the T41? If not, try that first if changing nothing in its present BIOS helps.

Be sure to have its full model number for the Lenovo site.

albr · Jan 19, 2023

Unfortunatelly BIOS update didn't help. And the are no PATA setting in BIOS setup at all. May be something wrong with IDE driver in 13.1?

cracauer@ · Jan 19, 2023

Why is CAM involved? Is that a USB CDROM drive?

serjsk8 · Jan 19, 2023

Mmm...
Maybe you try disable dma

Code:

hw.ata.ata_dma=0

serjsk8 · Jan 19, 2023

cracauer@ said:
Why is CAM involved? Is that a USB CDROM drive?

I think cracauer@ in this case CAM makes a reference to everything: SCSI, ATA, NVMe, MMC / SD devices. Not only CD-ROM

smithi · Jan 19, 2023

albr said:
Unfortunatelly BIOS update didn't help. And the are no PATA setting in BIOS setup at all.

T41 was before SATA drives in Thinkpads, so it's just ATA.

albr said:
May be something wrong with IDE driver in 13.1?

Seems unlikely, or it would have come up for many older laptops including T41s.

I've just downloaded thinkpad_t41t41p.pdf from

Download Lenovo THINKPAD T41/T41P Hardware Maintenance Manual | ManualsLib

www.manualslib.com

to add to my collection.

Have you tried diagnostics from booting the T41 BIOS?

We don't know for sure that it's a HDD error yet; what about the DVD/CD drive?

Can you post a photo showing some context up to where it hangs on booting?

ralphbsz · Jan 21, 2023

Really dumb question: Is the T41 a 32- or 64-bit CPU? I know the T2x were 32 bit CPUs, and I think the T60 was a 64-bit CPU. Perhaps you're installing the wrong architecture?

smithi · Jan 21, 2023

ralphbsz said:
Really dumb question: Is the T41 a 32- or 64-bit CPU? I know the T2x were 32 bit CPUs, and I think the T60 was a 64-bit CPU. Perhaps you're installing the wrong architecture?

No, good question. Pentium M at 1.4, 1.6 or 1.7GHz, and yes, 32 bit.

astyle · Jan 31, 2023

Maybe an SSD for OP's laptop might help? I got my first SSD-equipped laptop in 2012, and it's still going strong. Battery on that laptop no longer charges, and its trackpad is fried (so I have to use a USB mouse, no big deal, I prefer mice anyway

), but the SSD is fine, and the laptop is pretty snappy, running win10 and taking updates...

cracauer@ · Jan 31, 2023

astyle said:
Maybe an SSD for OP's laptop might help? I got my first SSD-equipped laptop in 2012, and it's still going strong. Battery on that laptop no longer charges, and its trackpad is fried (so I have to use a USB mouse, no big deal, I prefer mice anyway ), but the SSD is fine, and the laptop is pretty snappy, running win10 and taking updates...

I have a 2013 laptop that refuses to take SSDs (no BIOS recognition). Otherwise a cool machine with a 4-core Haswell, too bad.

I think randomly trying another drive might be the right move for the OP.

smithi · Jan 31, 2023

smithi said:
No, good question. Pentium M at 1.4, 1.6 or 1.7GHz, and yes, 32 bit.

I think we've been talking to ourselves ... OP has made [edit: these] 2 forum posts in total, last on 20th January, 12 days ago.

ralphbsz · Jan 31, 2023

cracauer@ said:
I have a 2013 laptop that refuses to take SSDs (no BIOS recognition).

(No longer specific to the OP, as they have probably left ...)

About 10-20 years ago, some of the IBM (pre-Lenovo!) ThinkPads could only use disk drives that supported on-disk encryption. The BIOS was in charge of managing the unlocking of the encrypted disk, using the BIOS (boot) password, and cooperating with the OS when doing hibernation and wakeup (which also involves a password). If you installed a disk drive that did not support that encryption mechanism, the BIOS would not even detect the disk. This was a security mechanism to make sure "data at rest" is secure in case a laptop is stolen. This immediately implied that off-brand SSDs would not work in the laptop.

I don't know whether this was a customer-specific modification or configuration of the BIOS; at the time I worked at IBM, and the above was true for the laptops issued to and used by IBM employees. And I don't know what happened when the ThinkPad production shifted to Lenovo, as by that point I was using a different type of laptop at work.

covacat · Jan 31, 2023

ralphbsz said:
(No longer specific to the OP, as they have probably left ...)

About 10-20 years ago, some of the IBM (pre-Lenovo!) ThinkPads could only use disk drives that supported on-disk encryption. The BIOS was in charge of managing the unlocking of the encrypted disk, using the BIOS (boot) password, and cooperating with the OS when doing hibernation and wakeup (which also involves a password). If you installed a disk drive that did not support that encryption mechanism, the BIOS would not even detect the disk. This was a security mechanism to make sure "data at rest" is secure in case a laptop is stolen. This immediately implied that off-brand SSDs would not work in the laptop.

I don't know whether this was a customer-specific modification or configuration of the BIOS; at the time I worked at IBM, and the above was true for the laptops issued to and used by IBM employees. And I don't know what happened when the ThinkPad production shifted to Lenovo, as by that point I was using a different type of laptop at work.

i had one of those a long time ago
was pentium 1 cpu and i ran freebsd on it
the hdd password was not removable from bios you needed some special dos or window software
there was something in the hdd firmware too, the disk was not detected on other machines iirc
it had no removable storage and a xircom pcmcia card

IBM ThinkPad 560 - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

albr · Jul 24, 2023

smithi said:
I think we've been talking to ourselves ... OP has made [edit: these] 2 forum posts in total, last on 20th January, 12 days ago.

Hello again, I'd like to thank all of yours for your support and help. Due lot of more important tasks this job was postponed, but today I resumed it

So, I've tried a lot of things, but with the same result. When CD-ROM is inserted into drive bay the setup looping on "CAM status". When I removed it from the bay and tried to boot from USB stick it hungs on trying to mount root.
I going to give up and install debian on it. Also I installed freeDOS but there is no sound and packet driver for wireless ethernet, and I think it won't be useful for old DOS-era games and apps.

But what if I install some previous release, 6.0 for example and then upgrade it to 12.0?

balanga · Jul 24, 2023

ralphbsz said:
Really dumb question: Is the T41 a 32- or 64-bit CPU? I know the T2x were 32 bit CPUs, and I think the T60 was a 64-bit CPU. Perhaps you're installing the wrong architecture?

JFI, T60 was 32 bit. I had one. T61 (and X61) were 64 bit.

smithi · Jul 24, 2023

albr said:
So, I've tried a lot of things, but with the same result. When CD-ROM is inserted into drive bay the setup looping on "CAM status". When I removed it from the bay and tried to boot from USB stick it hungs on trying to mount root.

Welcome back. Please confirm that you're installing the 32-bit 'i386' version of FreeBSD, not the 'amd64' version which won't work.

albr said:
I going to give up and install debian on it.

Debian also would need its 32-bit version, but I don't recall tissues with FreeBSD on the T41 in general.

albr said:
But what if I install some previous release, 6.0 for example and then upgrade it to 12.0?

If doing that I'd try 12.4 i386 first. It's supported until the end of this year. Also you can use its .ISO files to burn to CD/DVD _or_ dd to a USB stick; see:

https://www.freebsd.org/releases/12.4R/announce/

I doubt any earlier release could be better. good luck.

smithi · Jul 24, 2023

balanga said:
JFI, T60 was 32 bit. I had one. T61 (and X61) were 64 bit.

[sigh] Yes they were, but not T41. See posts #8 & #10 ...

balanga · Jul 24, 2023

smithi said:
[sigh] Yes they were, but not T41. See posts #8 & #10 ...

When you try a 64-bit version of FreeBSD on a 32-bit machine an error msg comes up very quickly so you are unlikley to see the errors OP mentions.

albr · Jul 25, 2023

smithi said:
i386

Yes, sure, I'm trying i386 only, not x64. I've managed to install debian 11.7 on it, but I don't llke Linux at all and still have hope to maintain FreeBSD

So, I'll try 12.4 thank you.

smithi · Jul 25, 2023

albr said:
Yes, sure, I'm trying i386 only, not x64. I've managed to install debian 11.7 on it, but I don't llke Linux at all and still have hope to maintain FreeBSD So, I'll try 12.4 thank you.

Actually there's a bug on the 12.4 dvd1 and disc1 .ISOs (the amd64 ones, anyway) that causes a failure to boot on some BIOS systems (I'll need to hunt up the details).

So I'd suggest using a 12.4 memstick image first. If you want to use any packages from the 12.4 dvd later that will work, just boot was the issue. I don't know if it was also a problem on i386.

balanga · Jul 25, 2023

albr said:
Hello,

I've faced with problem installing 13.1 on IBM Thinkpad T41. When I boot from installation media this process fails down into endless trip with "CAM status: Command timeout, Retrying command, 0 more tries remain..." I get the same result booting from DVD and memstick.
I've tried 12.X and 10.X releases also with the same result. Finally I've managed to install 9.4 on this laptop, but after uprgade to 10.1 I get the same problem. What can be wrong and Is there a way to fix it?
Thank you for help and any advices.

Personally, I would try to install mfsBSD on the system, maybe on it's own partition or a separate USB device.

The latest i386 version is available here:-

https://mfsbsd.vx.sk/files/images/10/i386/mfsbsd-se-10.0-RELEASE-i386.img

smithi · Jul 26, 2023

albr said:
So, I'll try 12.4 thank you.

smithi said:
Actually there's a bug on the 12.4 dvd1 and disc1 .ISOs (the amd64 ones, anyway) that causes a failure to boot on some BIOS systems (I'll need to hunt up the details).

See the last post (mine) to:

https://bugs.freebsd.org/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=254490

Again, I'm unsure whether this affects i386 .ISO media, but I suspect that it would.

albr · Jul 26, 2023

So, I've tried 12.4 with the same result. I've managed to install clean 7.4 and it is ok. I've upgraded it to 8.4, ok. Then I've upgraded it to 9.3 the "CAM timeout" appear but system was booted after several retries, but booting was quite slow. I've tried to upgrade to 10.4 and it failed: CAM status: Timeout, Error 5, Retries exhausted and all these stuff in a loop...
Yes, it was too long jump between 9.3 and 10.4, will try to start with clean install 9.0...