IBM TP 240

Forum: Laptops
Topic: IBM TP 240
started by: libretto

Posted by libretto on Oct. 13 2004,22:15

Hi there,

Finally got my 'newer' laptop last weekend

Nice IBM Thinkpad 240 (Celeron 300MHz, 192MB RAM)

Did a poor mans install booted with the 'vga=789' option to get the graphics to work (Neomagic 128 chipset). Managed to get my MA401 wifi card going after a little searching on the forums and even the external FDD works! :cool:

The soundcard chipset appears to be detected and sound did come out when playing XMMS, although after about 30secs it completely screwed up :S (I'll worry about this later)

My main problem now, is that I want to try a frugal install, as the soundchips are badly affected by HDD noise (not good for PSK31

). I have tried to make a Linux partition using cfdisk, it appears to 'write' the new parition table, but then says it cant read it back. Tried rebooting as suggested, seems the partition is picked up (ie in the slit), but it won't mount it

I've had a similar issue on my mini-ITX box (which means a few GBs are unusable).

Any ideas? Do I need to format these partitions?

Cheers for help in advance.

Posted by ke4nt1 on Oct. 13 2004,22:22

You might try running ' mke2fs /dev/hda? ' on the partition ,
now that you have rebooted and can see the partition.
and Good Work on the laptop !

73
ke4nt

Posted by libretto on Oct. 13 2004,22:34

wooah thats the fastest reply ive had yet :;):

seems that worked! Cheers another snippet to go in my folder of helpful hints ;)

Posted by ke4nt1 on Oct. 13 2004,22:41

Let us know what your sound chipset is,
Like copy/paste your lsmod output,
and we'll try to help you tackle that one as well..
Gotta have sound for PSK31 !!!!!!!!!!

" I just GOTTA "

73
ke4nt

Posted by libretto on Oct. 13 2004,22:42

Nope, seems I can 'mount' the partition now using the slit, but the frugal install script wont accept it.

The partition now appears to contain a folder called 'lost+found'.

Posted by libretto on Oct. 13 2004,22:46

Sound is apparently ESS1946 chipset

On boot the sound is detected, got sound out although after tweaking the audio put just got stuck on noise out. Seems to load module 'esssolo1', so this might not be exactly the correct module?

[Edit]Finally! The 'myDSL' GUI page loads up properly! So much for me going through and downloading all the modules on this main PC :;):

[/Edit]

Posted by ke4nt1 on Oct. 13 2004,23:08

Yeah! ibiblio has been really stubborn today..
There were many times today that it was non-existant..
I'd be careful, as I expect more outages..

Sound: Try running these commands from a root shell .

rmmod soundcore
modprobe esssolo1

Let us know if you get errors..
Might need to load other modules first..

Also , the alsadebs.dsl package has worked for me in getting
stubborn soundcards to "speak" !

What partition are you trying to install to?
Did it even run the install script?
Do you have your hard drive set to "large" blocks (LBA) in your computer's bios ?

73
ke4nt

Posted by libretto on Oct. 13 2004,23:20

The myDSL GUI is really great! Just got some more themes, wavemon and even firefox (bit slow but hey it works)

Well 'rmmod soundcore' said 'modules in use' (noticed in lsmod list that a gameport was listed under the esssolo1 part), so couldnt get them disabled. Ran modprobe esssolo1 anyway, got no errors returned.

I have tried to instal on /dev/hda6 (free space on my drive after M$ 2K), ran the script and it says 'Sorry system has not detected a linux partition'.

Didnt see any LBA stuff in the BIOS.

Bit late to check that sort of thing, will do that tomorrow. Cheers for you help so far.... 72 2E1LOK / K2 #2448

[edit]Killed the wmix process, but rmmod soundcore still says 'modules in use'[/edit]

Posted by libretto on Oct. 14 2004,22:37

Right heres my lsmod report:

Module Size Used by Not tainted
mousedev 3832 0 (unused)
hid 22372 0 (unused)
input 3168 0 [mousedev hid]
af_packet 13544 0 (autoclean)
nls_iso8859-1 2844 0 (autoclean)
nls_cp437 4348 0 (autoclean)
esssolo1 27528 1
gameport 1388 0 [esssolo1]
soundcore 3428 4 [esssolo1]
serial 52100 0 (autoclean)
usb-uhci 21868 0 (unused)
usbcore 57824 1 [hid usb-uhci]
orinoco_cs 4628 1
orinoco 35920 0 [orinoco_cs]
hermes 5056 0 [orinoco_cs orinoco]
ds 6536 1 [orinoco_cs]
yenta_socket 9504 1
pcmcia_core 39840 0 [orinoco_cs ds yenta_socket]
apm 9768 1
rtc 7036 0 (autoclean)
cloop 8740 2
ide-cd 28512 0
ide-scsi 8816 0

Still cant get the hda6 partition to be liked by the frugal script.

Posted by sexybanana on Oct. 21 2004,10:03

Write me baby! dmastetskiy@diasoft.ru

Posted by AwPhuch on Oct. 21 2004,16:35

Oh crap...it appears we have forum bots going nuts!!!

How many primary/logical partitions do you have...Linux only likes a max of 4 primary partitions on any one physical drive

sudo cfdisk to see (dont change nothing just see what they list as)

Brian
AwPhuch

Posted by libretto on Oct. 21 2004,21:28

I was intending to have 3 partitions:

hda1: windows 2k (FAT32)
hda2: General File area (FAT32) [so linux can access it)
hda?: Linux file area (type 82?)

So its one primary partition and two secondaries on the logical partition. This setup has worked for me before for dual boot HD installs of DSL. Despite Ke4nt1's suggestion of running 'mke2fs /dev/hda?', the frugal install doesn't like it. Otherwise the mount app and all the other DSL stuff can read it.

Does the partition for frugal install have to be clean, ie no directories

Posted by libretto on Nov. 09 2004,14:26

Well its been a while, been doing alot of other stuff so no time for playing with DSL. And to add inconvienice the win2k partition has just died. So I think this laptop may have to be fully DSL :;):

Just hope all the relevant APCI stuff will/can be made to work correctly :S

Posted by libretto on Nov. 26 2004,21:57

Finally got a frugal install going!

Appears 0.8.4 picks up my soundcard and got the PSK31 package to work! :cool:

Will have to see how bad the audio quality out is! Just glad it works! :laugh:

Now to get used to frugal installs and file/mydsl backup/restores :;):

EXTRA:

Despite he soundchipset being detected, I mydsl the alsadebs package. Now if I mute all the unused ports (PC speaker the worst), the PSK31 might be reasonable out to TX with! Will have to check RX tomorrow.