Re: debian and IBM Thinkpad
"Steve Lamb" <morpheus@rpglink.com> writes:
| On Wed, 13 Jan 1999 16:38:59 -0500, WERTZ, JASON wrote:
|
| >I'm thinking about buying one of these laptops to run debian. The hardware
| >HOWTO says it should run, but I wanted to see if anyone had any other
| >opinions...
|
| >IBM COLOR THINKPAD LAPTOPS mdl.755c/9545-log 486-DX----Floppy drive---- 12
| >Megs RAM----active screen-------sound card------ 540 MEG HARD DRIVE----2 pc
| >card slots------ 75 MEGAHERTZ---- INCLUDES POWER CORD---- INCLUDES EXTERNAL
| >CD-ROM NEC 3X SCUZZY W/CARD PCMCIA
|
| Ah, from eBay. Wish I had some $$ to get in on that auction. Debian
| should work on it just fine. I use Debian on an IBM Thinkpad 360CSE. X
| doesn't quite work, but just follow the directions and it installs smoothly.
| The 755C might do X.
It does do X, 640x480x8 anyway, with the standard SVGA XF86
server. It's not a speed demon, and you have to use the
"floppy=thinkpad" option at boot to install Debian, and put
append="floppy=thinkpad"
in your lilo.conf afterwards so the floppy will continue to work, but
it works.
The other thing is that the sound doesn't work. IBM uses a proprietary
DSP chip for that purpose and there aren't drivers for it under
Linux. Ditto if it's using a built-in modem (I don't think they had
the built-in modem option for the 755C, but if they did it won't work
under Linux). Some have reported success with the sound hardware by
first booting Windows and then using loadlin to boot Linux and using
the generic SB16 Linux driver, but just as many others have reported
that it didn't work for them.
PCMCIA does work, at least the Ethernet/Modem combo card I have and
the PCMCIA SCSI card both work flawlessly for me under Linux.
A good place to take a gander before purchasing would be:
http://peipa.essex.ac.uk/tp-linux/
All about Linux on the ThinkPads.
Good luck in the auction!
Gary
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