Built in Touch Pad PS/2 Mouse, 2 buttons
I wiped the hard drive of the pre-packaged software and started new. I first
loaded the hard drive with Windows 95 for 253 MB and I used a basic install
of it. The remainder of the hard drive, 1.250 GB, is used for Linux. I used
Slackware 3.1 / Kernel 2.0.27 which is from SAM's Publishing.
The next items will go into detail of Setup.
Power Saving
I kept the hard drives on power saving feature but however, I got a copy of
hdparm and set it to hdparm -S 1 /dev/hda which it causes
the hard drive to shut down after 5 seconds. I also go into
/etc/rc.d/rc.local and add these lines :
hdparm -S 1 /dev/hda
apmd
I also look for /etc/rc.d/rc.S and change the line of
/sbin/update which is also known as bdflush to
/sbin/update -f 5 -s 1200 which sets flushing to every 5 seconds
and syncing the hard drive to 20 minutes.
Warning : With syncing being every 20 minutes, if the machine crashes,
the repairs through fsck will be messier. When the drives sync, the
buffers, etc. in memory are written to disk which in the above example, is
every 20 minutes. You can also do a sync from a shell prompt.
BIO's
I also turned off the IR Port to where only COM1 (/dev/cua0 or /dev/ttyS0)
is active. I use COM1 for a mouse for X. I will expain that under X Setup.
The Sound and Printer IRQ's to where Sound uses IRQ 5 and Printer uses IRQ 7.
Explanation of the setup is under Sound.
Networking
I bought a Link Sys EC2T Ethernet PCMCIA Card which as both a
coaxial (10base2) and RJ45 Network Connector (10bastT).
I downloaded the newest version of PCMCIA Utilities which includes drivers
for newer PCMCIA cards. I went into the /etc/pcmcia/config and added these
lines
card "Linksys Ethernet"
version "Linksys", "Combo PCMCIA EthernetCard (EC2T)"
bind "pcnet_cs"
You must be careful when you type such as spacing and caps.
When the Ethernet Card becomes active and you use PPP/SLIP connection
to the net, you need to do a route del default which removes
a route line which can interfere in the connection to the net. Also,
there are a couple of errors that pop up such as tranceiver error. Just
ignore it. To verify ethernet connection, fo a ifconfig and
look for a line with ethN where N is usually 0. You can
also check by pinging another machine on the network.
X Window
I set up X-Window to recognize the CT 65550 Video chip and I use a serial
mouse which is hooked into port COM1 (/dev/ttyS0). The touch pad PS/2
mouse does not quite work too well with the X Server. It is another bug
I am looking into.
Here is a copy of my XF86Config File :
Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/packages/andrew/X11/fonts"
FontPath "/usr/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
EndSection
Section "Keyboard"
Protocol "Standard"
Autorepeat 500 5
ServerNumLock
EndSection
Section "Pointer"
# Protocol "PS/2"
# Device "/dev/psaux"
Protocol "Microsoft"
Device "/dev/ttyS0"
ChordMiddle
BaudRate 1200
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "RandomMonitor"
VendorName "Unknown"
ModelName "Unknown"
BandWidth 85
HorizSync 29-65
VertRefresh 47-120
ModeLine "640x480" 25 640 664 760 800 480 491 493 525
ModeLine "640x480" 31 640 664 704 832 480 489 492 520
ModeLine "800x600" 36 800 824 896 1024 600 601 603 625
ModeLine "800x600" 40 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628
ModeLine "800x600" 50 800 856 976 1040 600 637 643 666
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "RandomDevice-4"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"
Chipset "ct65550"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Driver "svga"
Device "RandomDevice-4"
Monitor "RandomMonitor"
Subsection "Display"
Modes "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubsection
EndSection
CD Player
The CD Player is built in and it is IDE/ATAPI compatible. On my machine, it
is known as /dev/hdc. I also set a link from /dev/cdrom to
/dev/hdc so as to be recognized from the CD Player Software.
Modem
I bought an EigerCom 33.6 PCMCIA Modem. The Modem is Plug'N'Pray. Since I
turned off COM2 (/dev/cua1 or /dev/ttyS1), the modem uses COM2 Port.
Sound
The built in sound on the laptop is Sound Blaster Compatible. In the BIO's
you want to keep the default audio settings such as IRQ 5, Addr 220h so that
way the Kernel would be set. Other Linux Kernel's might be set up differently
such as using IRQ 7 instead. You can swap the LPT Port and Sound IRQ so the
Kernel would use IRQ 7 for sound if it was built that way. CD Player works
as well as xvmixer. I use xmcd for a CD Player. You can
also get xplaycd which is simple to set up and use.
PCMCIA Drivers and misc
You can download a copy of the newest PCMCIA Utilities from FTP site
ftp://hyper.stanford.edu/pub/pcmcia/. There is a Linux PCMCIA Info
page at
http://hyper.stanford.edu/~dhinds/pcmcia/home.html.
When the machine boots up, it looks at the PCMCIA ports and there is a
particular problem I haven't solved yet. Socket 0 comes up and sets up
the driver for whatever is plugged in. In my case, the modem is plugged
in Socket 0. The Ethernet Card is plugged into Socket 1. I have to do a
command
cardctl eject 1; sleep 2; cardctl insert 1
to get socket 1 to be recognized and active.
In the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file, I also put in the line
exclude irq 5
so as to not have IRQ 5 assigned to something other than Sound.