Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 09:22:24 -0700 From: "Kevin Oberman" <oberman@es.net> To: "Kenneth Mays" <kmays2000@hotmail.com> Cc: Nick.Barnes@pobox.com, freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: recommended notebook for FreeBSD Message-ID: <200110051622.f95GMOk12754@ptavv.es.net> In-Reply-To: Your message of "Fri, 05 Oct 2001 10:44:03 EDT." <LAW2-F861MfHGJDmOnz0001fb89@hotmail.com>
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> From: "Kenneth Mays" <kmays2000@hotmail.com> > Date: Fri, 05 Oct 2001 10:44:03 -0400 > Sender: owner-freebsd-mobile@FreeBSD.ORG > > A recommended laptop for FreeBSD v4.4 is the IBM Thinkpad 600E (Model: > 2645-4au) series. I was testing for v4.3 and 4.4 of FreeBSD. Zero problems. While I think my 600E (2645-5AU) is a great platform for FreeBSD, there are a couple of gotchas that hit the new user. Once fixed, they are easy to forget about (with the exception of sound). First, ThinkPads use a separate utility, ps2, to set up most BIOS options. Only a couple of things are adjustable from the boot setup mode. While ps2 will not run under FreeBSD, you can make a bootable OS floppy with the ps2.exe file on it (if you have Windows on your 600E) or download a floppy image from the IBM web site. (Sorry, but I don't have the URL, but it's in the archives and not too hard to find on the site.) With ps2 you can enable or disable devices, set IRQs and DRQs, as well as configure a huge number of APM parameters to control disk spin-down, CPU speed, screen operation, and more. Unlike many laptops, APM is quite adequate for the ThinkPad. As long as you start at 4.4, you should not have any installation problems. If you try to install from an older release, the CD will probably not boot. You will need to boot from floppy even though you can then install from the CD. I run XFree86 V4.1, but the older version (3.3.6) works quite well. Configure to use the NeoMagic driver for either version. PCMCIA support is good. It use shared interrupts in 4.4 which frees up one or two IRQs that are in VERY short supply. Under 4.3 I had ONE free IRQ, so I could not run two cards until I disabled the printer port to free IRQ 7. The internal modem works pretty well. You need to install the mwavem port in comms as it is not a hardware modem, but a DSP. Something does not set up right after a power cycle and I often find that I need to reboot once to get the modem to respond. You can spot the problem when the sio1 port configures as an 8250 instead of a 16550A. Finally, sound is funky. One known problem is recovery from a suspend. It usually doesn't, although the failure mode varies from almost working to totally dead. This is common to most (all?) PCs as the pcm driver does not deal with re-initializing the device after it loses power. To get the sound working configure the kernel with: device pcm0 at isa? port 0x52c irq 5 drq 1 flags 0x10 and do not include "options PNPBIOS" in your configuration. Before building the kernel, run the following script: #!/bin/sh perl -pi.orig -e "s@(dev/sound/pci/csa.c\s+optional pcm)@#\1@g;s@(csapcm.c\s+optional) pcm@\1 csa pcm@g" /sys/conf/files Note that this script must be re-run every time you update your sources! That's about it. While I look forward to better PCMCIA support in V5 (about a year from now), I doubt that any laptop has more functional features than the 600E including the internal modem and audio. I routinely run with either a Xircom or Orinoco network card. (NOTE: the Xircom CardBus cards are NOT supported yet!) R. Kevin Oberman, Network Engineer Energy Sciences Network (ESnet) Ernest O. Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (Berkeley Lab) E-mail: oberman@es.net Phone: +1 510 486-8634 To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-mobile" in the body of the message
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