IBM Thinkpad 360CE

Forum: Laptops
Topic: IBM Thinkpad 360CE
started by: famewolf

Posted by famewolf on Oct. 11 2004,23:48

I'm at wits end trying to get X to work on this old laptop..the laptop is a 486 50mhz with 36 meg of ram (32 + 4 built int) and a 500 meg hd...I've tried vga=normal...fb800x600 etc...none of them will work for x...get the infamouse "fatal io error"...I think the display can do 640x480x4....using vga=normal is the ONLY mode that doesn't give me an error at bootup saying "you selected the wrong mode...hit enter for a list..etc"..and gives me selections like 80x24, 80x34 etc...says it's VGA on that screen. That probably means 640x480 by 16 colors. Any ideas?

Posted by cbagger01 on Oct. 12 2004,03:37

Try substituting your "vga=normal" for on of these other values:

depth------640x480-----800x600-----1024x768-----1280x1024
256----------769----------771-----------773-------------775
32000-------784----------787-----------790-------------793
65000-------785----------788-----------791-------------794
16.7 Mill.----786----------789-----------792-------------795

For example, if you want 640x480x8bit(256 color), use "vga=769" instead of "vga=normal".

Also, here is the original frambuffer table in HEX numbers:

Colours 640x400 640x480 800x600 1024x768 1280x1024 1600x1200
--------+-----------------------------------------------------
4 bits | ? ? 0x302 ? ? ?
8 bits | 0x300 0x301 0x303 0x305 0x307 0x31C
15 bits | ? 0x310 0x313 0x316 0x319 0x31D
16 bits | ? 0x311 0x314 0x317 0x31A 0x31E
24 bits | ? 0x312 0x315 0x318 0x31B 0x31F

So if you REALLY wanted to try 16 colors, you would need to do something like vga=770

Then try the "xsetup.sh" command and choose the xfbdev server and then "startx" to launch xwindows.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Oct. 12 2004,03:50

cbagger01 !

Your above post would be good faq material !!

I have found this "chart" buried in the forums,
and searched vigilantly for it at times....

ke4nt

Posted by famewolf on Oct. 14 2004,17:32

The wd90c24 chipset in the thinkpad 360ce needs the xfree svga server..it won't work with either the vesa or framebuffer servers....I tried deli linux and was able to get X going however I'd prefer to run DSL....can someone tell me the steps I need to do to use the xfree 3.3.6 or svga server with dsl?

Posted by nab on Oct. 17 2004,13:16

well, I'm just a newbie

I'm trying to install dsl on a thinkpad 560. Here I had the same problem with the X servers. Only 480x640x4 is working, though I know it can operate on 600x800x16.

I installed the complete x-window-system with apt-get (best you search for x-window-system, there are some very good posts on this topic), but I couldn't get the x-server running smoothly.

With slack 9.1 I found a X-config that worked even with the standard kernel (just for finding the config I had to compile a kernel just with vga and vesa support). With this config the complete screen was used, but some parts of the screen were inaccessable and others were behaving a little strange.

Until now I didn't find a solution to this problem, I'm stilling trying to get it working

Hope you have more luck with your tp.

Posted by libretto on Oct. 17 2004,14:29

Ive got my IBM 240 TP to work, needed to use the 'vga=789' boot option (found from an earlier post) and it works. Try to find out what video chipset you have and see what resolutions and colour depths it can do. Then you should be able to use the matrix/table above to pick the best mode.

HTH

Posted by skaos on Oct. 18 2004,10:01

famewolf: are you sure that 640x480x4 (16 colours) doesn't work? - this is standard vga and should work on (almost) anything.

Some time ago I did replace Xvesa with XF86_SVGA (3.3.6) on a Basic Linux 3.x box, and if I remember correctly, this is what I did:
- download the X-server and put it into /usr/X11R6/bin
- in Basic Linux /usr/X11R6/bin/X is a symbolic link to Xvesa, replace this link with the new X-server:
rm /usr/X11R6/bin/X
ln -s /usr/X11R6/bin/XF86_SVGA /usr/X11R6/bin/X
- create XF86Config (or copy the DeLi version) to /etc or /etc/X11.

I don't know if this works with DSL - there may be some setup files that need to be edited - but I guess it is worth a try.

Posted by famewolf on Oct. 18 2004,11:17

I ended up going with Deli Linux...can use 640x480x256 using standard svga server. DSL just wasn't a good fit for the old laptop I was trying to install it on and it seems to have been an ongoing problem as I found several posts about the wd 90c24 chipsets and DSL after searching that stated similar issues with no resolution. Bottom line is the framebuffer and xvesa servers won't work.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Nov. 09 2004,02:30

bookmark video