Laptops :: Thinkpad T42 "Ultranav Mouse" not working

I have a Thinkpad T42 (made by IBM). When I run DSL, it doesn't recognize the built in pointing devices. This computer has the little red joystick button and a touch pad, and 2 sets of mouse buttons, but none of them do anything. If I plug in a USB mouse, that works, but I don't want to cary the mouse around with me. Are there some settings that I should experiment with, or do I need to get a driver from another source?

Try this..

Exit X ( crtl-alt-bksp )

run this command ( xsetup.sh )

First , pick whatever xserver you are using ( xvesa or xfbdev )
( only choose xfbdev if you booted DSL with a fb800x600 or similar command )

Then for your mouse, select
USB = NO
IMPS/PS2 = YES

If xvesa, choose your resolution..

The rest of the screens are self-explanatory..
Usually, the defaults are fine..

Once you get back to the prompt,
type his command ( startx )

See if your "red joystick" mouse works..

Let us know

73
ke4nt

Thanks!
That did the trick.

I am noticing that my sound hardware, and wireless card are also not being recognized and configured automatically. Is there any way to save the proper settings on the USB key, so that (once I figure out how to make all my hardware work) I won't have to manually enter a bunch of options each time I run DSL?

I am having the same problem with my pointing devices. I have a Winbook XLi with a glidepoint and one of those red joysticks. I tried what ke4nt suggested, too, but didn't get it to work. In fact, after rebooting into X and finding out that it didn't work, I tried to exit X again, but without success, and had to reboot the whole machine.

Does it matter that I am booting DSL from the live CD instead of from the hard drive? I have tried Knoppix also with the same non-results.

Thanks for your help!

Guy

Hi Guy,
I am not the expert, but since nobody else answerred, I'll try. In my case, gnoppix, knoppix, and ubuntu all would autodetect my hardware and outomatically configure it. DSL sometimes does and sometimes tries to use a USB mouse. My boot method is identical to the CD boot (I think) it just pulls the data from a USB pen-drive instead. I haven't figured out how to save any changes to the USB stick yet. Don't know if it's possible. I suspect that I would have to get into the "image" file that gets expanded to the ramdisk and make my changes there to get any lasting alteration of how my system boots. There is a command called insmod that seems to "install modules" into the kernal to support various hardware items, and I got my sound to work once for a few minutes by playing with that, so maybe (if you knew which module) it might work for your glidepoint. modprobe is another command that is related to insmod, but I still am trying to figure it all out. I guess you can't hurt anything because you're booting off of a CD, and don't have your HD mounted, so might as well experiment and see what happens.

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