Lenovo ThinkPad T400

From ArchWiki
Hardware PCI/USB ID Working?
Bluetooth 0a5c:2145 Yes
Webcam 17ef:1004 Yes
Ethernet 8086:10f5 Yes
8086:10bf Yes
WLAN (Intel) 8086:4237 Yes
8086:4236 Yes
WLAN (Realtek) 10ec:8172 Yes
WWAN (Sierra) 1199:0220 Untested
WWAN (Ericsson) 0bdb:1900 Untested
GPU (Intel) 8086:2a42 Yes
GPU (ATI) 1002:95c4 Yes
Touchpad Yes
Trackpoint Yes
Keyboard Yes
TPM Untested
Fingerprint reader
(STMicroelectronics)		 0483:2016 Yes
Fingerprint reader
(AuthenTec)		 08ff:2810 Yes
CardBus slot 1180:0476 Untested
Smart card reader 17ef:1003 Untested
SD card reader 1180:0822 Yes
Memory Stick reader 1180:0592 Yes
xD card reader 1180:0852 No
Audio 8086:293e Yes

Accessibility

The appearance of the BIOS Setup Utility is simple and uses contrasting colours, so it may work well with OCR software. A legend of keyboard navigation shortcuts is also clearly listed at the bottom of the screen.

Note: Blind users should request the help of a sighted person to change BIOS settings. Keyboard beeps in the BIOS Setup Utility are enabled by default but only happen when unmanageable/invalid key combinations are pressed.

Keyboard shortcuts needed to trigger certain features on device startup are mentioned throughout the hardware maintenance manual:

Key Effect
ThinkVantage Interrupt normal startup and bring up the Startup menu
F1 Start the BIOS Setup Utility
F12 Bring up the Boot Menu window

Firmware

fwupd does not support this device yet.

Graphics

Selecting the graphics device

(This section only applies if your laptop also comes with the ATI graphics card.)

Both the Intel graphics card and the optional ATI graphics card must be turned on to allow graphics switching by restarting Xorg. Selecting a graphics device can also be done by entering the BIOS Setup Utility and selecting one of the following options from Config > Display > Graphics Device:

  • Integrated Graphics
  • Discrete Graphics
  • Switchable Graphics

See Intel graphics, ATI, and Hybrid graphics for more details.

Hardware video acceleration

Intel graphics#Hardware accelerated H.264 decoding on GMA 4500 suggests installing libva-intel-driver-g45-h264AUR instead of libva-intel-driver to enable support for hardware accelerated H.264 video decoding on the Intel graphics card.

The output of vainfo will indicate that H.264 decoding (with libva-intel-driver-g45-h264 installed) is supported by the VA-API driver, but this is misleading. Attempting to play an H.264 encoded video with mpv and hardware acceleration results in the screen momentarily freezing. This may ultimately lead to a session reset which will force you back to the login screen. Session resetting seems to happen more frequently with the modesetting driver compared to the xf86-video-intel driver.

Visually corrupted GRUB menu

GRUB's framebuffer may cause the GRUB menu to disappear or appear "corrupted" during the boot process. Fortunately, the menu will still be functional even without visual aid. This issue can be resolved by disabling GRUB's framebuffer.

Touchpad

Although libinput is recommended over Touchpad Synaptics, the latter driver provides more touchpad scrolling options, namely:

  • Horizontal and vertical edge scrolling.
  • Horizontal and vertical two-finger scrolling.
  • Circular scrolling.

libinput, on the other hand, only supports vertical edge scrolling for this particular touchpad.

Touchpad Synaptics

Note that two-finger pressure may need to be decreased in order to increase the responsiveness/sensitivity of two-finger scrolling. This can be done by decreasing the default value of 282 to a value like 50: 

$ xinput set-prop 'SynPS/2 Synaptics TouchPad' 'Synaptics Two-Finger Pressure' 50

You can experiment with different values to find something that works for you. See synaptics(4) for more input device properties (and configuration options), e.g., selecting the scrolling method. See Touchpad Synaptics#Configuration for making the above change persistent across sessions.

Mute key

T400 laptops with BIOS versions older than 3.01 (7UET71WW) may need to pass acpi_osi=Linux as a kernel parameter to allow the mute key to function as intended. See https://thinkwiki.org/wiki/Mute_button and the relevant thread on the linux-acpi mailing list for more details.

Power management

Fan speed control

See Fan speed control#ThinkPad laptops.

Function keys

Key Visible?1 Marked?2 Effect
Fn Yes Yes XF86WakeUp
Fn+F1 No Reserved3
Fn+F2 Yes Yes XF86ScreenSaver
Fn+F3 Yes Yes XF86Battery
Fn+F4 Yes Yes XF86Sleep
Fn+F5 Yes Yes XF86WLAN
Fn+F6 Yes No XF86WebCam, reserved3
Fn+F7 Yes Yes XF86Display
Fn+F8 Yes Yes XF86TouchpadToggle
Fn+F9 Yes Yes NoSymbol
Fn+F10 Yes No XF86WakeUp, reserved3
Fn+F11 No Reserved3
Fn+F12 Yes Yes XF86Suspend
Fn+PageUp No Yes Toggles the ThinkLight
Fn+Home Yes Yes XF86MonBrightnessUp
Fn+End Yes Yes XF86MonBrightnessDown
Fn+Space No Yes None
Fn+PrintScreen Yes Yes Alt_L Alt_L+Sys_Req
Fn+ScrollLock Yes Yes Num_Lock
Fn+Pause Yes Yes Control_L+Break
  1. The key is visible to xev and similar tools.
  2. The physical key has a symbol on it, which describes its function.
  3. The key is marked as "reserved" in the hardware maintenance manual.
Note: Pressing Fn+ScrollLock even once (to toggle Num Lock) will cause subsequent Fn+ScrollLock key presses to become invisible to xev and similar tools until the system is rebooted. However, the Num Lock LED indicator will still function and correctly indicate whether Num Lock is enabled.
Tip: Fn key lock can be enabled in the BIOS settings. When this option is enabled, pressing Fn once keeps the key in a pressed condition, similar to sticky keys. Pressing Fn twice will keep it in a locked stated until Fn is pressed again.

See also