Re: NetBSD 8 on Old ThinkPad - strange mouse issues

[David Brownlee <abs%absd.org@localhost>]

On 30 July 2018 at 18:53, Riccardo Mottola <riccardo.mottola%libero.it@localhost> wrote:
> Hi All!
>
> I just upgraded to 8.0 on my "super vintage" IBM ThinkPad 600... my oldest
> x86 laptop with NetBSD.
> 6.x worked very well on it! I upgraded to 7.x some weeks ago and had issues
> with X11, which I reported here but got no answer. Now I just upgraded again
> to 8.0! Luckily, this time there are many binary pacakges for x86
> (8.0_2018Q1, Q2 is almost empty?)
>
> I have a couple of issues though, in the following "importance" order:
>
> 1) X11 is almost unusuable due to the mouse not moving
> 2) with a little more heavy usage (I was removign packages, updating trees,
> etc) the tlp0 interface started complaining about timeouts. Only a reboot
> recovers!
> tlp0: transmit timeout
> tlp0: filter setup and transmit timeout
>
> the last one repeats forever... this did not happen on 6.x and neither 7.1
> for the short time I used it.
>
> 3) the PCMCI network card is work only in the uppter slot (I think to
> remember I compiled for 6.x series a custom kernel with an option to enable)
> 4) a hot reboot will usually hang when reaching "fdc0 at isa0 port
> 0x3f0-0x3f7 irq 6 drq 2" while a cold start goes through. Maybe it is
> related with 3)
>
> Issue 1) makes the machine unusable though
> What happens is very strange: X11 comes up correctly, including
> windowmanager, but moving the mouse pointer appears to move it only
> horizontally on a line! But in fact it is a display issue, I can blindly
> click and move menus, so it works but it appears not, something which I have
> never seen.
> This happens both with the internal trackpoint as with an external mouse.
> Strange thing is that the mouse already starts on the top line, instead of
> centered, on startup!
>
> I see nothing suspicious:
>
> Current version of pixman: 0.34.0
>         Before reporting problems, check http://wiki.X.Org
>         to make sure that you have the latest version.
> Markers: (--) probed, (**) from config file, (==) default setting,
>         (++) from command line, (!!) notice, (II) informational,
>         (WW) warning, (EE) error, (NI) not implemented, (??) unknown.
> (==) Log file: "/var/log/Xorg.0.log", Time: Mon Jul 30 19:50:06 2018
> (==) Using default built-in configuration (30 lines)
> mtrr set failed: Function not implemented
> The XKEYBOARD keymap compiler (xkbcomp) reports:
>>
>> Error:            Couldn't lookup keysym
>>                   Symbol interpretation ignored
>> Error:            Couldn't lookup keysym
>>                   Symbol interpretation ignored
>
> Errors from xkbcomp are not fatal to the X server

I now really wish I'd kept my old ThinkPad 560 :)

That is pretty wacky...

Can you edit your xorg.conf (or create one) and under the Section "Device" add:

Option "HWCursor" "off"

to see if that helps?

As a data point you could also try extracting a copy of netbsd-6 with
X11 into a subdir, then chroot into it and try starting X from there.
If it still has the mouse display issue then its a kernel issue,
otherwise X11...

Do you have a netbsd-6 dmesg to compare where the various devices
attach to see if there are any differences for tlp or the cardbus?

David