As some of you know I decided to install Slackware 8.1 on my gfs laptop. The fun pretty much ended there though, as now it is unusable. (Nothing to do with linux of course).
I'm just curious as to whether or not any of you have encountered the following. ( or something similar )
The laptop was left on and ended up getting unplugged while it was in hibernate mode. When I got back the batteries had ran out. Now when I turn it on it boots, but the LCD screen does not turn on at any point. I definately know it's booting because BIOS is set to boot from CD, and I tossed the Slack cd in and it definately spins up, etc.
It's definately not a problem with the connector to the LCD screen because I tried connected it to an external monitor and that didn't work.
The model is a IBM ThinkPad 390E. It has a 2.5mb NeoMagic vid card. I can't remember the chipset off hand, but I can post it if anyone wants.
I've done some googling and read that some IBM's (as well as other laptops) come with a manufacturers defect where it can lock into hibernate mode. The solution is normally using an fn-f# combination, but unfortunately that doesn't work. Also on some IBM models it is possible to bypass all sleep/hibernate modes by booting up with F1 pressed, which also doesn't happen to work on this model.
Does anyone have any useful/creative suggestions? (Preferably more intuitive then in the irc channel a few nights back "Try hitting it" :P )
If you want any more technical specifications of the laptop let me know, I don't think the actual hardware is relevant to the issue so I neglected to post most of it.
Have you tried resetting the bios?
I don't know if this is true for laptops, but most desktops have a bios battery that you should be able to pull(sometimes soldered in though), and some have jumpers to do it. I would think that it should force a reset of the bios (and therefor bios power management) and hopefully get it back up and running - I can't say for sure, but it might be worth a shot and save on a hefty repair bill.
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