A friend of mine was having black screen and lockup problems with a IBM ThinkPad T20 laptop. The problem persisted with ubuntu, xubuntu and kubuntu. Even the graphic installation screen didn’t show.
After googling a bit, i found this site, which explains all. All you have to do, is to use non-graphic installation (use the Ubuntu alternate install CD, because it doesn’t use X).
After the installation, enter to the Grub menu by pressing Esc, when the Grub boots up and select the recovery kernel. When you are in as a root, edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
In a Section Device, add a line “Option “BusType” “PCI”. As shown below. It is case sensitive.
Section "Device"
Identifier "S3 Inc. 86C270-294 Savage/IX-MV"
Driver "savage"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "BusType" "PCI"
EndSection
That worked for us.