OK, here goes. First I'm a n00b to linux. I've tried a few distros in the past but never stuck with. I didn't get it. I feel like I'm on the outside of an inside joke in another language. But I want to learn. So I decided to build a digital picture frame from an old IBM thinkpad 380d. I went with Damn Small Linux. I used info from these sites.
www.thewares.net/item/33
and
www.frontiernet.net/~pictureframe/
I got it working (it's using feh) but I have a few problems. First it won't stop turning of after about an hour or 2. I did have winxp installed at first running a slideshow and it did the same thing even with settings to always stay on. Which makes me think it's something in the bios or in the hardware somewhere although I can't find out where. I did contact another guy who is using another thinkpad 380d running win95 as a picture frame and he didn't have this problem. I think I may have made a bios update a few years ago that may have something to do with it. Here's the code I used in the .xinitrc file
#
xset s off
noblank
xset s off
/usr/bin/aterm -T “Bash” -e /bin/bash &
#startx &
/home/dsl/frame/cron_start_frame.sh &
fluxbox 2>/dev/null

I'm basically copying and pasting since I know almost nothing about linux and have little understanding of what all that means. I think that'll be good for now. If I get this fixed I'll ask for more help with my other problems. Thanks in advance and sorry for the long-windedness.

... turn ACPI off in BIOS as well as on the kernel line.

Does anyone have any experience with a thinkpad 380d or similar? I can't seem to find the acpi settings in the bios. I have some hardware tests, boot order, and something called initialize??? (when i click on it all it says is "OK?" not sure i'm comfortable with trying whatever it does)