I was researching this issues, and found this informative posting:

I put Fedora Core 4 on my T43 a while ago,
and for the most part it works well. The only glaring issue is that DMA
is not available for the DVD drive. Something to do with the combo chipset
used for IDE/SATA. (the T43 uses a PATA drive via a SATA->PATA converter
w/the T43's SATA chipset) I believe there is hope for the future, but for
now, no DMA.
See: https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=163418

Another issue caused by the SATA-->PATA conversion w/any OS: IBM does something
to the HD firmware to make it compatible with this conversion. If you install
a primary HD (doesn't apply to ultrabay) that hasn't been breathed on by IBM
the BIOS will error out with a 2010 warning. Upgrades/replacements are
pretty expensive if they must be IBM drives.


Some HDs can have their firmware updated, some can't. See:
http://forum.thinkpads.com/viewtopic.php?t=11059&postdays=0&postorder...