Works 95%: Fujitsu Lifebook B-2131


Forum: Laptops
Topic: Works 95%: Fujitsu Lifebook B-2131
started by: yangmusa

Posted by yangmusa on Aug. 22 2007,21:59
Fujitsu Lifebook B-2131
400MHz Celeron
192 MB ram
Addonics dual slot CF-IDE adapter
512 MB Toshiba CF card
800x600 touch screen

Since the B2131 doesn't have a cd or floppy drive, I borrowed by friend's desktop for the install. At first I had an expensive, high-speed TwinMOS CF card, and got all kinds of errors. Basically both the desktop and the laptop would freeze on boot whenever it was connected via IDE. I was on the verge of giving up and buying a hard drive, but thought I'd just try one final time - so I bought a cheapo Toshiba card from OfficeMax and everything pretty much just worked. Booted desktop from CD, did a frugal install to the CF in CF/IDE adapter. Moved adapter to laptop, booted and there it was. I needed to run xsetup since the laptop didn't like the settings from the desktop.

I had some "fun" setting up various things, like persistence and wifi. Posting here would have been useful, but the forum kept telling me I didn't have permission. Ah well, it was educational and searching around led to solutions eventually...

The only thing I can't make work under DSL (haven't really tried) is the touch screen. Amazingly the touch screen works out of the box on Puppy 2.17, though it isn't calibrated right. There are linux drivers for the screen, so I'll give it a try eventually. But I don't really need it, and for now the machine is performing fine as my work machine.

TIP for n00bs: whatever you do, don't save your files in /ramdisk/home/dsl It seemed so cozy and homely, just like on my Mac. But of course, if anything goes wrong and freezes the machine, the files are gone. They're only saved at shutdown. So, older & wiser, I'm now saving my files direct to the CF card..

Posted by curaga on Aug. 23 2007,09:49
What touch screen model is it? Full X has drivers for those...
Posted by yangmusa on Aug. 23 2007,16:08
Quote (curaga @ Aug. 23 2007,02:49)
What touch screen model is it? Full X has drivers for those...

This is from: < http://synth.no/~henrik/b2131/ >
Quote
10,4" TFT display Trident Cyber9525/DVD card with 2,5MB ram.

Quote
I got the driver from < http://parzelle.de/Linux/Lifebook/, > great work! You might have to fiddle with the mouse knob as X initializes to get it going. Just one flaw: I couldn't get his gpm driver to respond to touch screen events.
XFree3.3.6 support only.
The driver source code: xf86B112-0.9.tar.gz
My XFree86 3.3.6 config: XF86Config

Update: A driver for Linux 2.6 and XFree4/Xorg is available at < ]http://stz-softwaretechnik.com/~ke/touchscreen/
>
I read on another site that the touch screen driver needs to be loaded instead of the mouse driver. Anyway, it looks like it should be possible (said the n00b optimistically!) so I'll get around to fiddling with it eventually..

Posted by curaga on Aug. 24 2007,09:29
That's the video card (which has full support in XFree btw), not the touchscreen.. The link you gave would need kernel 2.6..
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