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Generated on 2024-12-05 Contact
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Setup of Toshiba 6100 Pro for GNU/LinuxCipher Brain has bought a Toshiba 6100 Pro to load it primarily with GNU/Linux. Please find here a few tips about setting it up. System specification
The full XML report from HardDrake is linked here. Toshiba pagesToshiba has some interresting pages for setup Distribution choiceI went with Mandrake 8.2, because I had experience of it, from when I used it with my previous employer. Nothing here is very distribution specific, so you should be able to use those instructions with most distributions. BSD people might also use those about XFree. More help for BSD people should be located here The machine was initially setup as a dual boot, with a definite choice to be made between Windows 2000 and Windows XP. After choosing XP, and making the few steps to install it, I was left with one partition of 20Gb with XP (formatted in VFAT), and another one, empty, of 20Gb, also VFAT. One partition being a bit bigger than the other one, I carefully noted which one I wanted to keep (with Windows XP), and which one I wanted to reformat for Linux. Here is the output of fdisk after setting up the system: Disk /dev/hda: 255 heads, 63 sectors, 4864 cylinders Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 bytes Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System /dev/hda1 2434 4864 19527007+ 5 Extended /dev/hda2 * 2 2433 19535040 c Win95 FAT32 (LBA) /dev/hda5 2434 3070 5116671 b Win95 FAT32 /dev/hda6 3071 4217 9213214+ 83 Linux /dev/hda7 4218 4267 401593+ 82 Linux swap /dev/hda8 4268 4864 4795371 83 Linux Partition table entries are not in disk order Mandrake installationNo problem here, except that the nVidia card was not detected. I specified that I wanted to use XFree 4, and asked to boot in text mode. After having the basic system run in text mode, I downloaded the nVidia drivers from their site, installed them as they say. I had to add this line to my /etc/modules.conf: options NVdriver NVreg_SoftEDIDs=0 Not doing that gives a black band on the right of the screen. Chris Griffis reported to me that he had to put the next line in /etc/modules.conf options NVdriver "NVreg_SoftEDIDs=0" "NVreg_Mobile=2" You can find my XF86Config-4 file here. Note that I manually switch between having a dual head (one with the TFT of the laptop, the left screen, and a cheap monitor (the right screen); and one with only the internal screen). Stephen Jordan, who uses Debian Woody, recommend adding the following line in /etc/modutils/aliases: #NVdriver portion alias char-major-195 NVdriver That's all the configuration that I made... Here follows a report about what works, what doesn't, and what I don't use (yet):
The small detailsSoundIt was auto-probed, but here is the lines which Mandrake inserted for me in my /etc/modules.conf: alias sound-slot-0 i810_audio Stephen Jordan, who uses Debian Woody, recommended me the next settings:
Parallel portI had to enable it in the bios, and make it use IO port 0x378 and interrupt 7, then add this line to /etc/modules.conf: options parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7In the BIOS (accessible by pressing the Delete key at startup time, the F1 when proposed to by a short message), I have the following settings: Parallel Port Mode = Std. Bi-Direct. Device Config. = All Devices Serial = COM1 (3F8H/IRQ4) Parallel = LPT1 (378H/IRQ7) CD-ROMI can rip my CDs very fast with CD-paranoia, with all checks on, at about 4x the normal speed. It seems that data can be recovered quite easily from the CDs... CD-RI burn CD-Rs with the next command, with no problem since now (and I made a diff -r on every one of the first 5 CDs I made): cdrecord -V speed=8 dev=0,0,0 /tmp/CD.iso DVDI could see unencrypted DVDs using Xine with no problem. Still can't see encrypted one, but that not a problem with the drive ;) KeyboardIt seems that I have the same problem as lots of people have with Toshiba notebooks. The keyboard is not working properly under X11: sometimes when I push a key, two or three characters appear on the screen. It happens all the time, and is not user-friendly at all. Some people report this as being a problem with Toshiba that doesn't send the proper key events in the proper order, which explains that the keyboard works with Windows. Some other say me that the problem is a X11 problem which can be cured with the accessX program (Thanks to Chatchawan Wongsiriprasert for the link). A work-around for me was to disable 'xkb' extensions on X11, but you are then supposed to loose your 'Alt Gr+xxx' keys, which are absolutely needed on a Belgian keyboard as mine (it includes the pipe '|', the backslash, closing angle bracket,...) Disabling Xkb can be done by adding in the InputDevice section of /etc/XFConfig86-4 the following line: Option "XkbDisable" "yes" If you do this, the keyboard works fine, but the 'Alt' keys don't work anymore. However, I found that on my PC solving that was as easy as to type the next line to reload the X keyboad mappings. xmodmap /usr/share/xmodmap/xmodmap.be BluetoothI've bought a Nokia 6310i GSM, with bluetooth, and wanted to connect it to my SP6100 (with bluetooth). I haven't tested every points of it yet, but I'm progressing. For now, the PC can contact the phone, and get some information about it, so I suppose that I'll progress fast from here. I detail here what I did. I was inspired by the page http://www.holtmann.org/linux/bluetooth/toshiba.html. Also, I'm not sure if all the steps done were requiered...
Other linksPlease find here some other links which might be usefull. If you have advice, success stories, failures,... that you'd like me to add here, drop me a note by email vincent (at) cipherbrain.be |