Note: This is an old version of my page, taken from backups.
The Web Archive has
a newer version available which
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Note that it's absolutely necessary to use ACPI on this machine.
For a model 2658, without built-in wireless, it all works moderately well. I have not tried the SVideo or VGA output.
I bought the above model, which happened to come with Microsoft's latest revision of their "operating system", Fisher Price Edition. The system comes with a "System Recovery" feature, which I planned on using to repartition the hard disk with, as I wanted to keep MS Windows on the machine. It would be useful for running some accounting software.
I decided to repartition the hard disk with FDISK, and create a smaller partition that I could restore the XP image onto, using the onboard System Recovery feature. Unfortunately, the partition table became corrupted, which meant that I could not use the System Recovery facility that was preloaded.
IBM duly delivered the System Recovery CD's within a week, but I wanted to use the machine before then, so I repartitioned and installed RedHat Linux 7.3. My partitioning scheme has one small partition at the beginning of the drive, for loading boot files on. This was about 15M, which gives enough breathing room for upgrades. Follwing was a 9G partition, which I ended up installing Win2k on, then a swap partition and the rest being the root filesystem.
Installation of RedHat Linux is fairly straightforward. About the only change I made were to install lilo in the partition (/dev/hda1), instead of the MBR. As I was installing W2k later, this was the less painful choice. Also, don't forget to test your video configuration during the installation.
If you have a floppy drive, you would be well served to create a boot disk. Don't forget that the Windows installation will set the MBR and partition table so that it will boot. You can also use the rescue mode of the RedHat Linux installation CD to recover a setup that Windows has clobbered.
LCD's are a fixed resolution. Thus, if you want to run at a lower resolution, the video subsystem has to perform some magic to display the image across the entire panel. Generally the stretched image that results is not great. The obvious solution is to set the resolution to match the panel. The default text resolution is 640x400, however.
It is possible to change the text mode resolution in Linux. This is a parameter that is passed into the kernel at boot time. You can fix this by adding the parameter vga=795 to the /etc/lilo.conf file. Don't forget to run lilo as root.
Extra information can be found in vesafb.txt, which is part of the kernel-doc package.
No doubt you'll want to use an external mouse at some point. In the Bad Old Days, one would plug in a PS/2 mouse - this would disable the inbuilt TrackPoint and all would be well. The R32 does not have a PS/2 mouse port, so the XConfiguration needs to be tweaked so that X recognises your additional USB mouse(s).
I followed this mini-howto, which explains how to change the XF86Config-4 file.
The ThinkPad comes with four customised buttons at the top left of the keyboard. Three are volume controls, and the first being the ThinkPad button. Normally this would launch the Access ThinkPad program in Windows.
There is a program called tpb which can provide functionality to these buttons. Installation is fairly straightforward, however one must take the README with a grain of salt. tpb can be build against xosd, which will provide an onscreen display. If nothing else, the xosd plug-in for xmms is cool. :)
Building xosd is straightforward. Simply build it and install as per the instructions. Repeat for tpb. You will need to make a couple of changes to sucessfully execute tpb, however.
Firstly, copy tpbrc from the tpb source directory to .tpbrc in your home directory. Then, open up .tpbrc in a text editor. On the line that has OSDFONT, change 250 to 240. Save this file.
The device NVRAM needs to be writable by your user login, so that the tpb program can control the volume. This is a potentially dangerous operation, as it means that any program that you execute can clobber your computers hardware settings. To enable this, edit the /etc/group file as root. Add a line nvram:x:76:userid, where userid is your login. Save this file, then logout.
Login again, and switch to superuser. Change the /dev/nvram device so that it is owned by group nvram (which you just created), and change permissions so that it can be written to by nvram group members. To do this, execute chgrp nvram /dev/nvram, followed by chmod g+rw /dev/nvram. Now the nvram device should be accessible to the tpb program.
xosd installs itself into /usr/local. The library path does not normally include these libraries. To include it, execute export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=/usr/local/lib:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH. Now try executing tpb -v -m. Press a button and note that a message is printed to the console. Hopefully, if you press a volume control button, the volume actually changes. You should also see an on-screen display when you change the volume.
Normally tpb should be started with tpb -m.
Normally I get kde to automatically start tpb. I created the following small script to do this:
It lives in .kde/Autostart. Don't forget to chmod u+x it.
Speaking of KDE, if you use it as your desktop environment, I recommend that you upgrade. The beta that RedHat included with RH7.3 is not great, and the Konqueror web browser has a security issue. Visit the KDE web site and get yourself a new version. In my experience the results definitely justify the effort involved.
On a related issue, the handling of the NumLock key is a little weird. To get it to work, give the following command to get numlock to work in X:
You can add keycode 77 = Num_Lock to /etc/X11/Xmodmap, so that all users have access to this key.
Put simply, the USB floppy drive works as most do. Plug it in, and the module should load. There are various ways to handle USB drives, but I chose the simpliest (because I'm slack). Add this line to /etc/fstab:
/dev/sda /mnt/floppy auto noauto,owner 0 0
Create the mountpoint /mnt/floppy. You should be able to issue the command mount /mnt/floppy and all should work. If you use KDE, you probably also want to create a shortcut on your desktop for this.
DVD playback does work, as long as the appropriate items are installed. I used xine. Unfortunately, there appears to be a problem with the XVideo driver and the ATI video, with the version of X that RedHat ship. Consequently, I ended up using the XShm driver, with reasonable results.
There is more information regarding DVD playback. You should review this to have a successful install.
Out of the box, your laptop should work happily with RedHat 7.3, including the ability to suspend to RAM. Johnathon Edwards sent me an email and offered this advice:
Hibernation can be made to work on the R32 in the "typical" APM manner - one has to create a contiguous file of the appropriate size on a FAT or VFAT partition. The name of the file is save2dsk.bin; a utility that creates it under Win98 is here: http://www.pc.ibm.com/qtechinfo/MIGR-4HT3R8.html?lang=en_US&page=brand&brand=IBM+ThinkPad%7CThinkPad+R32%7C2658%7CK4U&doctype=Downloadable+files&subtype=Power+management It may be necessary to run the utility rather than simply creating the file - I don't know what sort of structure (if any) the file has, and I don't know if perhaps there is some sort of coordination with the BIOS that is required to get things to work. With this setup I can succesfully hibernate using a kernel built with stock RH 7.3 and the appropriate APM options enabled. Unfortunately after coming back out of hibernation X is dead, so I still have some investigating to do...
I can tell you from my own experince that STR does not cause X to die immediately, but shortly after resuming (<5 mins) after resuming, it will die - at least with the X server in RedHat 7.3. So that gives you enough time to save your work and logout of X. :) If you use a version of XFree86 other than 4.2, and you have expereience to share, then please send me an e-mail.
In short: it works. I have only bothered to get SIR to work, so that I might sync my Palm. I have given about fifteen minutes to getting FIR to work, but haven't been successful. Having said that, I'm not aware of any devices (other than laptops), that support it anyway. For the Palm Hotsync I followed this tutorial.
Specifically, for RedHat 7.3:
To get the irda service to start each time, type chkconfig irda on as root.
If you're machine is on for a significant amount of time, you may discover that the time keeping is less than accurate. You may find that the notsc kernel option improves the situation. Note that you will need to install a i386 glibc if you are using RedHat 7.3
Note: see note at bottom.
Jon Seymour pointed out that SmartLink have produced drivers for the internal modem.
You should now have a linux set up that takes full advantage of most of your ThinkPad's capabilities. Have fun!
If you have any queries/corrections, then please send me an e-mail by using the write link at the top of the page
Written 7-Sep-02, last updated 03/03/03
Note: ACPI is absolutely necessary. Without it this machine is not reliable. 06/06/06
© Peter Ortner 1994-2008. All rights reserved.
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