[ltp] Thinkpad i1230

[Thomas R. Dean]

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).

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

> 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.

> d) No USB support for the Teac USM Floppy disk drive yet.

Haven't though of USB yet. I bought a set of USB speakers
for the desktop at home and patched my home machine
kernel, but didn't succeed yet in getting it working.  The
speakers pop when the driver is loaded, but no sound
comes out. I'm waiting for the details to stabalize.

> Sorry I can't help more. If you want information on HPA and the spec of you
> laptop - there's a whole heap of information on the ibm website.

Digging though the IBM website is like panning for gold. The
nuggets are there, but you have to wash away a lot of silt
and sand to find them.

Tom.

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