Before we get into a Toshiba bashing, other mfrs. have had similar problems.
I had something similar on my older Compaq laptop that my new Toshiba A65 takes the place of.
It had only 195MB memory & a slow processor, so I couldn't install Linux on it, hence the new Xmas gift to myself.

From the Compaq website at this URL: http://h18027.www1.hp.com/athome/sup...5/electro.html :

Typical Electrostatic Voltages:

At Relative Humidity 10% 40% 55%
Event
Walking across carpet 35,000 V 15,000 V 7,500 V
Walking across vinyl floor 12,000 V 5,000 V 3,000 V
Motions of bench worker 6,000 V 800 V 400 V
Removing DIPS from plastic tubes 2,000 V 700 V 400 V
Removing DIPS from vinyl trays 11,500 V 4,000 V 2,000 V
Removing DIPS from Styrofoam 14,500 V 5,000 V 3,500 V
Removing bubble pack from PCBs 26,000 V 20,000 V 7,000 V
Packing PCBs in foam-lined box 21,000 V 11,000 V 5,000 V
NOTE: 700 volts can degrade a product.

As you can see, walking across a carpet generates the most juice.
Regards,
Moonrover

I dont recall a lock up either on batteries. Sounds like this is it. Apparently, Toshiba will even pick up my lap top at home. Hard to believe that living on the We(s)t coast I have static problems...but oh well.

Well, I'll let you know what happens after my repair. Other than the lockups, I like this machine.

Question for statguy: I have a A70C-KL100E. This must be a canadian model number since I can't find this number on the US support web site (and the canadian site seems flaky and less complete). Do you know what the equivalent US model number is ?
Thanks

I suspect you are correct about that being a Canadian part number. My part number is PSA70C-SC100E. A quick glance at the US site suggests two models, an A70 which can be customized and an A70-S249. Mine has the 60 gb drive so is likely the A70-S249, whereas yours is a customized A70. Software bundles also look a bit different.

My conclusion, there is probably no direct translation between the Canadian part number and the US part number.

I can check, but I suspect my support person simply contacted Toshiba Canada to arrange the repair.

Thanks...I was trying to verfiry that I have the latest BIOS and wasnt sure what to model to check out on the US page. By the way, I presume during all the previous conversations people have been keeping on eye on http://linux.toshiba-dme.co.jp/linux/index.htm ? There is some useful stuff there, although nothing I want on fan control or ACPI modes.

I don't think that the BIOS is that specific. When I went looking on Toshiba Canada's web site, the bios downloads were at the level of model (ie. A70) and not any more specific than that. The latest bios available for download was 1.30 which is what mine has.

That site you posted came up a lot in my searching. I ended up there on more than one occasion.

BTW, now that I know what the problem is, I got through an entire day with only one freeze. That's a record! Almost as stable as windows.

Gertjan, thanks for the Toshiba Linux link; I didn't know about it before.

Hi Statguy,

Did you get your Toshiba fixed and back ? Did you lose your install or anything in the process ? I am curious to know if it's a painless process. After working well for a week, my A70 just froze in the middle of doing my taxes (under windows).

Thanks

Gertjan

Your lockup doing your taxes confirms what I've long suspected; taxes are evil. A bit ironic that while doing your taxes, one of your assets was frozen.

I have not had the A70 repaired yet. It's a bit of a complicated story. It's not been due to difficulties with the company. My liason was off sick for awhile which delayed the process. The delay created other problems. Specifically, since I know what is causing the freeze, by grounding myself before I touch the computer, I have been able to keep it running throughout my workday, thereby enabling me to do actual work. To send it out for repair would put me without the computer for about a week, which is longer than I can be without computing. Therefore, my liason will arrange for onsite service for me, I just do not yet know when. BTW, the on-site service is a real racket, they come out once to "diagnose" the problem and then come back to fix it and apply a $50 service charge to each visit.

In any case, I will back up my /home partition (which is also where I install third party software) to DVD before the service calls. I can handle re-intalling the OS, the stuff in /home needs to be preserved. Just so you know, I had no trouble using k3b to write /home to a DVD-RW, so that works.

Repair completed. My contact was able to arrange things so that the repair shop was able to order the part and I just brought the laptop in before I went to a lunch meeting. The repair takes a couple of hours. I did not appear to lose any of my install.

In case it helps you, the part number for my A70 is listed on the receipt as K000016190 and is called a cover assembly. The entire faceplate was replaced, so now I don't have that annoying "desgined for microslop" sticker staring at me.

Hopefully, this will do the trick.

Thanks for the repair update. My freezes are fairly irregularly now (perhaps weather related) so I havent done it yet. Good to know what it involves though.

I just want to report that I have an A70 and have hyperthreading working OK here, but Im having some weird rebooting issues, and Linux is not turning the cooling fans on enough, so it heats up and turns itself off.

Boot it up with NOACPI & the fans might work better. If not, boot up into Windoze first to heat up the CPU, then reboot up into Linux & stay cool all day.
Regards,
Moonrover

Which OS version are you using? I'm using SuSE 9.2 and KDE 3.3. The problem people seem to have with hyperthreading enabled is that the KDE login freezes while initializing peripherals.

I remember from reading the admin guide that there are problems with ACPI and SMP kernels, specifically, suspend will not work.

In the course of tracking down my initial lockup problem, I went through tons of variations on the boot parameters. There is a boot paramater NOAPIC which has to do with interrupts (I think for multiprocessor stuff). This is different from NOACPI which includes the power management stuff. Question, has anyone tried using hyperthreading with NOAPIC? Does it work? Does power management, cooling, etc. work then?

Lastly, as it turned out, my A70 had more serious problems than just the lockup issue. I just had it's motherboard replaced because of other strange power problems!

Cheers