[ltp] Redhat 7.3 vs the Thinkpad 600 - Notes and questions

[Charles E Taylor IV]

I've spent part of this past weekend installing/configuring Redhat 7.3 on
a Thinkpad 600.  Here are a few notes that might be of use to others -
and some questions.

My machine has a PII/266, the mwave modem, a 4 GB hard drive, the 24X
CDROM, and 192M memory.  I *don't* have a TP600-compatible floppy drive.

Small DOS partition for hibernation:
* This was a bit of a difficuly.  I wanted to have a partition for my
hibernation file and PS2 from IBM.  I ended up removing the hard
drive, popping it into my 380XD (with a built-in floppy), and using a DOS
floppy disk to create a partition for the hibernation file and PS2.EXE.  I
plan on upgrading to 288M eventually (it's cheap), so I created a
partition of about 295M, formatted it and made it bootable, and copied
over PS2.EXE and its datafiles.  I then used PS2 HFILE C to enable
hibernation.  Since my battery can hold enough charge for about 10 minutes
of operation, hibernation is a necessety.  Suspend is useless. :)

Installation:
* I then popped the drive back into my 600 and used the Redhat install
CD #1 to boot.  To set the Thinkpad 600 to boot from a CD, you have to go
into Easy Setup (hold down F1 while booting).

* The install was a standard Redhat install - no tricks/gotchas here
except X setup.

* I used GRUB as bootloader.  No additional parameters to the kernel were
necessary.

* Choosing a Sony 200ES monitor type when asked in X setup works well. 
I noticed that SDL games wouldn't open up fullscreen unless I ran
Xconfigurator after the install, chose 1024x768, 800x600, AND 640x480 and
the Sony 200ES monitor type.  Choosing an LCD panel would cause the
fullscreen SDL games to show only a blank screen.  

* (Why the Sony 200ES?  It's my external monitor, but other than that it
works.)

Sound configuration:
* From reading this list, used PS2 to change PCIBusPower flag to
"disable".

* I used the OSS drivers.  Ran sndconfig, selected io=0x530 irq=5 mpuirq=9
dma2=0 mpuio=0x300 dma=1.  Sound and MIDI then worked - sorta.

* Followed instructions and copied the init script from
http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/MIGR-4BP6Q6.html to restart the sound
modules.  Otherwise, you get IRQ/DMA errors and other weirdness when you
play sounds.

Mwave:
* Drivers: http://www-124.ibm.com/acpmodem/

* To install drivers, it's mostly as in the mini-howto:
http://www-124.ibm.com/acpmodem/mwave.html#STARTUP

* To build the mwave driver, install the kernel source RPM and edit its
Makefile in /usr/src/linux-2.4/Makefile.  Change EXTRAVERSION = -3custom
to  EXTRAVERSION = -3, or else you'll have build problems.

* When building the driver, use ./configure --enable-mwavedd
--with-linuxsrcdir=/usr/src/linux-2.4;make;make install to build and
install the driver, then copy the init script as directed in the
mini-HOWTO.  The driver should then "just work" if you run "service
mwaved start".

PCMCIA:
* I had to edit config.opts and uncomment "exclude irq 3" to keep my
PCMCIA ethernet card from trying to take the mwave's IRQ.  After that,
they both work fine together - even simultaneously.

APM / Hibernation:
* Hibernation appears to work without a kernel recompile.  This is a
first - hope it's not too good to be true. :)

* The laptop apparently won't hibernate when my PCMCIA card is in the
slot.  No big deal, really.

The laptop now seems to work almost 100%.  All devices work, but I have a
few quirks related to APM.

Questions:
* When the laptop comes back from hibernation, the sound volume is set to
zero.  How do I prevent this?  Or, what do I edit to get the mixer
settings restored to what they're set to at bootup (with aumix)?  It
doesn't appear that the sound modules need to be removed/reloaded, as
sound still works if I manually run the mizer app and slide the volume
back up.

* Should I restart the mwave stuff after hibernation?  I haven't
hibernated the laptop enough to note its effects on the mwave.

* For that matter, should I unload the mwave stuff if I'm not currently
using the modem?  In other words, is there a speed penalty for just
havingthe drivers loaded and ready to go if I click "connect"?

Thanks,
-Charles

-- 
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*  Charles Taylor <tomalek@mindspring.com>
*  Chemistry teacher, Linux enthusiast!
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*  College Chemistry website: http://home.mindspring.com/~charletiv/
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