Laptops :: TI or Acer Extensa 355 HD install



Installing DSL on a TI or Acer Extensa 355 (may work for similar old laptop)

The Extensa 355 has a P133 processor, up to 48M Ram, 1.3G HDD (2G on mine), C&T 1M video card.  It has no CDROM, but came with a PCMCIA external CDR drive.  I did not have a suitable way of connecting this machine to the net, but have another machine with an internet connection.  I did some of the downloading at work, where the connection is much faster.

Here is what I did to get mine running properly with DSL.  There is probably a better way but I'm a complete linux newb, so please forgive.  For reasons of brevity, clarity and decency I have omitted the groaning, swearing, threatening the machine and reinstalling from scratch because I'd broken something.

***To get DSL onto the machine.***

I downloaded the DSL iso image and burned it to a CDR.

MY 355 had had the HDD completely wiped.  I downloaded this DOS bootable floppy (here).  I used this to create a 64M DOS partition, which I formatted /s.

To get the PCMCIA CDR working I downloaded these drivers (here) to a floppy.  I booted the HDD DOS partition and installed the drivers.  This woke up the CDRD and I copied all the files on the DSL CDR over to the HDD DOS partition.

I downloaded the DSL install floppy and used this to boot the machine.  This detected the image on the DOS partition and got DSL running.  From the Xterminal I ran cfdisk to create the appropriate HD partitions.  I rebooted the machine from the DSL floppy.  On the desktop, I chose the menu options for HDD install.  I followed the instructions and then rebooted the machine.  Now DSL booted from HDD.  But it looked wierd.

***To get DSL looking nice***

I used Beaver to edit /etc/lilo.conf  
I changed the first line to vga=771  
In the 'append' line I added "fb800x600 nodma" (I'm not sure if this made any difference)
In the Xterminal, I ran lilo (apparently this is important to do) and then rebooted.

I downloaded XFree86.dsl and XF86config.dsl and burned them to a CD.  

I logged in as root and put the CD into the Extensa's drive and used Emelfm to copy them to /home  Then I used the 'myDSL' button in Emelfm to install them.

In Xterminal I ran XF86 config.  I chose generic options for everything.  Then I used Beaver to edit /etc/X11/XF86Config.  I altered it as follows:

Under Section "Monitor" before the statement 'EndSection' (everything else commented out with #)...

Identifier "DSTN"
HorizSync 25-65
VertRefresh 40-150
ModeLine "800x590" 28.322 800 808 848 936 590 600 604 628

Under first section "Device" in the Graphics device section before 'EndSection' (everything else commented out)...

Identifier "Standard VGA"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"
Driver "vga"

Under second section "Device" before 'EndSection' etc.

Identifier "C&T"
Driver "chips"

Under section "Screen" before 'EndSection' etc.

Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "C&T"
Monitor "DSTN"
DefaultColorDepth 16

Subsection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "800x590" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection

Subsection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "800x590" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection

I saved it as '/etc/X11/XF86Config-4'

After this I used Beaver to edit /home/dsl/.xserverrc to read:

exec usr/X11R6/bin/XFree86 -nolisten tcp

I exited the desktop and logged in as dsl.  Everything worked.

Hope someone finds this helpful.

Thanks to cbagger01 and ke4nt1 for their guidance.

--Aidan

original here.