[ltp] Re: x20 questions

[Rolf Leggewie]

Hi Charles,

thank you for your reply.

Charles E. "Rick" Taylor, IV wrote:

>>* Can the battery be hot-swapped?

> If you mean changed out while on mains, sure.

Actually I meant swapping the battery while there is no electrical 
outlet in sight by maybe suspending the machine and swapping within say 
10 seconds.  IIRC the R4x of my brother can do this.

>>* Anybody ever thought of hacking the ultrabase into an external battery
>>   case?  I do not need the ultrabase but I'd like to extend battery time
>>   to at least 8 hours if possible.  Does the ultrabase have enough room?

> If you mean the thing I've seen called the "media slice", forget it.
> Buying one of those external batteries that will power any device is
> probably a better option

Probably.  What I thought makes the ultrabase/media slice attractive is 
that it snugs tightly to the machine which I guess will not be the case 
with those external batteries.

>  ... and if you get 8 hours of battery on anything you can put INSIDE an
> X20, I'd love to hear about it. :)

Me too ;-)  Actually, the media slice would count as "inside" for me. 
That would be the whole point of going to the trouble.  (see above 
paragraph)

>>* Can the X20 be used in dual-head mode under Linux (TFT plus external)?

> With current software, you can only use the VGA port and internal
> display at the same resolution.

Same resolution would be OK, but do they display the same content?

> You *can* get accelerated 3D on an X20.  Admittedly, it's not FAST by
> any stretch of the imagination.  But you can play Tux Racer.

I am not a gamer.

> IBM BIOSes
> are said to contain a list of officially supported cards and will fail
> to boot if you put in an unsupported card.  I'm not sure if the X20 does
> this or not, because I replaced my ether/modem combo with another IBM
> card.

Wow, that does not sound nice.  Can anybody confirm this for the X20?

> My wife uses a Netgear WG511 PCMCIA card with her X20.  No problems,
> provided you get one of these cards with a Linux-supported chipset.
> 
> The X20 has only one PCMCIA slot,

To keep it unoccupied I was therefore considering to use my Compact 
Flash WLAN card which works nicely with my Linux-based PDA Sharp Zaurus.

 From your homepage I gather you put in a 40GB drive.  I guess that 
anything up to 128GB should not be a problem, right?  Apart from the 
fact that I have to see anything that big for a laptop ;-)

Regards

Rolf