On Mon, 25 Oct 2004 02:09:07 -0800, Floyd L. Davidson wrote:

> "Al C." <no.spam.acanton@adams-blake.no.spam.com> wrote:
>>
>>/dev/ttyS1 at 0x02f8 (irq -3) is a 16550A
>>
>>I suppose that means Slack is not even seeing the external modem. What now?
>
> A few years back I had a TP 600E.
>
> The problem is probably that the serial port is not enabled.
> The ThinkPad allows several sections to be disabled, to conserve
> battery power. I don't remember the exact details, but it seems
> that the Infrared port and the serial port use the same
> hardware, and you can have one or the other enabled.
>
> Check the BIOS setup; however, enabling it requires a utility
> from IBM that runs only under Windows. It's been 5-6 years
> since I was interested in that, so there might well be a way to
> do it without the IBM utility by now. (There was a program
> which supposedly did much of what the IBM utility did, but it
> wouldn't yet turn on the serial port at the time I tried it.)
>
> Use google...

The utility is tpctl

http://www.icewalkers.com/Linux/Soft...040/tpctl.html

Just one of many googled links.
The serial port is indeed disabled. I spent my vacation trying to get a
digital camera that had only a serial port connection working on my old
think pad before I figured this out.

good luck