[ltp] Thinkpad i1230

Steve Dalton linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com
Mon, 21 Aug 2000 22:14:43 +1000


----- Original Message -----
From: Thomas R. Dean <trdean@home.com>
To: <linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com>
Sent: Monday, August 21, 2000 4:35 AM
Subject: Re: [ltp] Thinkpad i1230


> From:           "Steve Dalton" <steved@writeme.com>
> To:             <linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com>
> Subject:        Re: [ltp] Thinkpad i1230
> Date sent:      Sun, 20 Aug 2000 17:17:52 +1000
> Send reply to:  linux-thinkpad@www.bm-soft.com
>
>
> > I also have a 1200 - the 1260, which is the same as yours but with a TFT
> > screen, so I probably can't help you with your problem. HPA is IBMs low
cost
> > screen technology - not as clear as TFT and you can't get the high
> > resolutions that TFT gives you.
>
>  Thats over $2600 here in Canuck land. It's not my main machine
> anyways (not enough memory, my desktops run with 512M).

It's my first laptop - normally I probably wouldn't shell out as much cash
(I even upgraded the RAM to 196M) but
a) I bought it through a friend who works at IBM <grin>
b) As Australia has decided to completely overhaul their tax system this
year - computing equipment is a 100% tax write-off (as long as I use for
accounting of course - which I do)

>
> > X works fine for me (although the SMI EM+ chipsets are not yet supported
by
> > XFree86 4 - so we'll have to wait a little for that). I use the "IBM
9514- B
> > TFT Panel @ 1024x768" setting for my monitor - this probably won't work
for
> > you, but you could give it a try. I know that you can't break TFT laptop
> > screens with odd refresh rates the way that you can break monitors, but
I'm
> > not sure if this is true for HPA.
>
> Hence my question.  I'm using XFree38 3.x.x (whatever came with
> Rehat 6.2 and the SMI Lynx EM+ driver seems to work fine. It even
> claims it is using harware acceleration.
>

Same here, Redhat 6.2 and X that came with it. I tried out XFree86 4, but
quickly reverted to the old version when I discovered SMI wasn't supported.

> > On another note, you are the first person I have come across who has
> > installed Linux on a 1200 and would be interested in swapping stories.
These
> > are my current problems:
>
> I'm game. I just got the machine on friday.  IBM's policy is 30 day
> money back, and I told the sales guy over the phone
> that I was returning it if I couldn't get Linux up and running.
> Seems to have gone fine. After first investigating some
> of the parameters of the windows, I decided to go for broke
> and install just Redhat. It worked, so I installed again (I wanted
> to adjust some of the partition sizes, and leave room for Win98).
> I have some astro software that runs on Mac and PC, and I want
> to try it out in the field. I'm leaving Tuesday for a week long star
> party, and I'm hoping to catch up on class preparation for the fall
> during the day. I haven't had more than a quick glance at the
> other issues you raise. Let me know what you find out, I'll let
> you know what I find out.
>
> > a) Sound card not supported by any the sound implementations. The
chipset is
> > a CS4229 - which is pretty new....it wasn't even on the Cirus Logic
webpage
> > when I first brought the machine. Suppose I will have to wait a bit for
> > this...
>
> It that a typo? The ad for mine says CS4299.  I did a search on
> the ALSA site. There have been some queries about this codec
> there, so I hope someone over there is working on it.  When
> I tried sndcnfg I got unrecgonized device, vendor: 8086 (Intel),
> chipset id 7195. I'd love to get sound working, I could have
> the laptop talk to me in the dark at the telescope.
>

Yes, I think I wrote it down wrong in my logbook... I got the same problem
with sndconfig. Alsa doesn't supported it yet. Haven't tried OSS - they
don't mention it on the website so I didn't bother (it's not GPL anyway).

> > b) Lucent Winmodem driver doesn't work with my Kernel. Although I
believe
> > there is a workaround at http://www.heby.de/computer/ltmodem that I
haven't
> > had the chance to try yet.
>
> Haven't tried yet. I currently have ethernet at home (cable modem
> with Linux masquerading firewall) and at work. But I'm movint out
> to the country next spring (see comments on astonomy) and will
> have to live at the end of a modem. So I guess I should work on
> this as well.

I tried this last night and I can't get insmod to load the module. It keeps
saying that it was compiled for another Kernel version even with the -f
option. Any ideas anyone out there????

>
> > c) I seem to have a problem with my PCMCIA controller, which is causing
> > problems with using my Netgear 510C Cardbus Ethernet card. The Soundcard
and
> > the Cardbus controller are both using IRQ11 and I think this is causing
the
> > PCMCIA controller probe to fail when the kernel module for the ethernet
card
> > is loaded. Hopefully I should get this one sorted soon.
>
> I hope that this gets sorted out. I'm planning to borrow the ethernet
> card we use on the Thinkpad we use for client demos at work. It's
> a DLINK 10/100 somthing or other. We bought it specifically
> because it's supported under Linux.  I was planning to use it
> to load the software onto my machine on Monday.  I'll let you
> know how it turns out.

I'm still having problems with this. I will compose another email to the
list with more details I think...

Let me know how you go

Steve
______________________________________
Steve Dalton
Sydney, Australia
http://members.dingoblue.net.au/~groundhog

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