Last update: 2000-1-18
Also thanks to everyone who has volunteered information to me since I set up this page!
Entries in the section list marked "UPDATE!" or "NEW!" have new information since the last update. Sections marked "(UPDATE!)" or "(NEW!)" had new information since the previous update.
komascr
document classes for use with German texts.
The installation is quite
straight-forward. Choose tcic for the pcmcia
configuration or else the subsequent boot will hang when the pcmcia
services are started. This is very misleading, since this is the wrong
driver! It only makes the boot succeed because it does not detect
anything and exits quietly;-) See the PCMCIA/CardBus section.
Don't forget to run texconfig after the installation
procedure is complete. Also set the locale appropriately. My favourite
light-weight editor jove, for example, does not display
the German umlauts correctly if the locale is not set to something
like de_DE.
I allowed the installation to install lilo.
In order to reactivate windows, I added
other=/dev/hda1
label=win
to /etc/lilo.conf.
I have been told that gpm version 1.18 has
support for the special funtionality for synaptics touchpads:
gmp -t synps2. See the READMEs for the specific options
(corner tap for middle mouse button rulez!) In order to use this in
X11, start gpm with the -R option and change your XFree86
config to use the repeater data that is written to
/dev/gpmdata in the msc format.
Section "Pointer"
Protocol "MouseSystems"
Device "/dev/gpmdata"
# more stuff ...
EndSection
XF86Setup. I manually edited the XFree86 config file
afterwards to set the identifier in the "Device" section. Don't forget
to change the "Device" entry to "NeoMagic" in all "Screen"
sections. Since I did not know the specifications of the display, I
lied about the "HorizSync" and "VertRefresh" entries in the "Monitor"
section until the 800x600 mode did not get rejected anymore. I hear
that SuSe's sax has an appropriate entry in their monitor
database. I miss 320x200 for playing DOOM.
Section "Device" Identifier "NeoMagic" #set manually VendorName "Unknown" BoardName "NeoMagic (laptop/notebook)" Clocks 28.32 28.32 28.32 28.32 # don't know about the clocks, left it in EndSection
The display dims to the lowest level when operating on battery power. This is even advertised in the manual as something to be proud of.
Even so, my 17" desktop monitor seemed so blurry and spherical after some time using the notebook. I have not yet tested using an external monitor.
Read the "Information for NeoMagic Chipset Users" in the XFree86 documentation to learn about further configuration options.
ossmixer programme, while e.g. aumix fails.
I hear that the ALSA drivers work also.
Caveat: During windows startup, it tells me that a gameport has been configured. Only the notebook does not have any gameport connector.
Kernel 2.2.12 has builtin support for the SOLO-1. Although it is not supposed to work with Plug'n'Play? I did not get it to work.
/usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/apm.c
and recompile. The only modification is the addition of the "&
0xffff". (Original thanks to Marek Wójtowicz.)
--- apm.c.orig Fri Jan 15 07:57:25 1999
+++ apm.c Mon Jun 28 14:36:29 1999
@@ -1349,7 +1349,7 @@
__va((unsigned long)0x40 << 4));
_set_limit((char *)&gdt[APM_40 >> 3], 4095 - (0x40 << 4));
- apm_bios_entry.offset = apm_bios_info.offset;
+ apm_bios_entry.offset = apm_bios_info.offset & 0xffff;
apm_bios_entry.segment = APM_CS;
set_base(gdt[APM_CS >> 3],
__va((unsigned long)apm_bios_info.cseg << 4));
Install apmd. The command apm gives the
battery status. It is also supposed to tell you how much battery time
is left, which it does not do for me, but I don't care anyway. Standby
mode (via hotkey-F3 or close display lid) seems to work
fine. Hibernate to disk does not work. The switching off of the
display backlight via the F6 hotkey has once caused the computer to
hang, so be careful.
Use hdparm to set the spin-down timeout for the
harddrive. This is useless for me: Although I installed /sbin/mobile-update
and killed the mailfolder watching feature of my new favourite window
manager icewm, I still get a disk access just when
the drive has spun down (even in single user mode). I wonder if the
processes kflushd and kupdate have anything
at all to do with /sbin/update in 2.2.x kernels.
I have now deactivated APM in the BIOS. Disk spin down
times can be controlled with hdparm. To switch off the
TFT display's backlight during blanking in console and X11, choose
"enable console blanking using APM" in the kernel options and add
Option "power_saver"to the section "Device" and add
# the numbers are the minutes until the operation is performed
BlankTime 5
StandbyTime 6
SuspendTime 7
OffTime 8
to the "Screen" section in the XFree86 config file.
The SIR drivers (IrTTY, IrPORT) also do not complain, but I do not have any ir devices to test their function anyway.
The controller seems to get recognized correctly.
I have been told that the 3Com 589Combo works in a 512T.
I bought a PCMCIA ethernet adapter from 3com. The 3cce589ec can do 10baseT and 10base2. The rumoured interrupt problems with O2 controllers did not occur. For a local network (notebook at 10.0.0.2, desktop at 10.0.0.1) I did
#adapted from the script I use to connect to our university net #the pcmcia services are assumed to be running #(i.e. '/etc/init.d/pcmcia start') modprobe 3c589_cs #usually not necessary #'dmesg' should show some new output for eth0 here ifconfig eth0 10.0.0.2 netmask 255.0.0.0 broadcast 10.255.255.255 up #'ifconfig' should show some output for eth0 here route add default gw 10.0.0.1 #ping 10.0.0.1 should work nowon the notebook side and the equivalent on the desktop side.
Curiously, the card is only recognized correctly bei PCMCIA services 3.0.9, if it is inserted after booting or if it is inserted in the second slot.
Since I do not (yet) really know what I am doing, you should probably consult some networking documentation yourself (such as the NET-howto).
As usual with debian (or so it seems to me), I had to manually
enter the FQDN into /etc/hosts in order to prevent
sendmail from hanging for minutes during DNS lookup. I
use ppp for dialup, so I do not have a constant link to the
internet. And yet I normally choose the sendmail setup
for constant internet connection, because the alternatives do not let
me send external mail at all.
PPP via null-modem to my desktop (no masquerading):
The startup script:
setserial /dev/ttyS0 spd_vhi pppd /dev/ttyS0 115200 10.0.0.2:10.0.0.1 #pppd /dev/ttyS0 115200 10.0.0.1:10.0.0.2 # on desktop side
The pppd config file:
-detach defaultroute asyncmap 0 crtscts lock local noipx noauth
I also installed PLIP with a self-soldered cable
(they are sold as "LapLink" cables). Just follow the instructions for
obtaining the cable and for a simple linkup of two computers do
insmod plip #choose X depending on parallel port used. #the first parallel port can be either 0 or 1 ifconfig plipX ownIP pointopoint otherIP up route add default gw otherIPon both sides. Note the spelling of
pointopoint! Execute
ifconfig without arguments to see if it worked. Gives
30kb/s for me. There is a HOWTO for PLIP, but it is
somehow in unmaintained/mini, so I have duplicated the minimum
information here.
If the insmod fails because the parallel port does not have an
interupt, add an entry irq=auto in the
parport_pc module options line in your module config
file. See /usr/src/linux/Documentation/parport.txt.
I finally bought an ethernet adapter. See the PCMCIA/CardBus section.
UPDATE: If my ethernet LAN is started before my ppp internet connection, the latter fails because pppd cannot set the default route, which is already set to the ethernet interface. I now set the default route manually.
-f option to insmod. The modem can
then be used as /dev/ttyS14, which is created by the
installation script. The installation script
tries to append the insmod command to
/etc/rc.d/rc.local, which does not
exist on my system, so I had to put it elsewhere.
Regards, Carsten.