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PlatformNotes/ThinkPadR32Notes

1. Running Red Hat Linux 9 on an IBM ThinkPad R32

  1. There is a site dedicated the Linux on ThinkPads at http://www.linux-thinkpad.org/, including a mailing list.

  2. The BIOS is only accessible from a cold start.

  3. The wireless card driver is the orinoco_pci. Add 'alias eth1 orinoco_pci' to /etc/modules.conf and you'll be able to use it, including setting it up with the Red Hat Network Config application.

  4. Everything comes up by default on IRQ 11--the network cards, the PC Card slots, the video chip, etc. Go into the BIOS -> Config -> PCI and give 'INTX' all different IRQs. I'll try to make more specific recommendations later. Note that IRQs around 7 seem to be unavailable ; if you select one of these you'll get a yellow asterix--change it to something else. Check /proc/interrupts to see assignments. Note that it will only show IRQs for loaded drivers, so the Radeon won't show until you start X and the network cards won't show until they're brought up. (You can also manually load the drivers. I cannot seem to get the Radeon to not share an IRQ with the USB controller; I'm still working on that.

  5. The keyboard does funny things. Maybe it's only in X, and maybe it's only me, since I have the Caps Lock re-mapped to a Ctrl key. (Uncomment 'ctrl:nocaps' option in /etc/X11/XF86Config.)

    1. Sometimes the Ctrl key seems to get stuck on, so e.g. typing an 'l' will clear the screen. The solution (I think; I keep forgetting right after I do it) is Fn+Ctrl.

    2. The Caps Lock somehow magically seems to come on; Shift seems to remove it.

    3. The keys will sometimes be stuck on repeat, even though the key itself isn't stuck. Hitting another key stops it.

    4. The keys can be hard to depress fully; I think it might just be because the springs are strong because they're new and over time I'll adjust.

  6. Drive access speed seems to be optimized with '-u 1 -c 1'. The 32-bit interface access improves buffered access by 50-75MB/s. DMA is on by default. Here are the settings: 

    $ sudo hdparm /dev/hda
 
/dev/hda:
 multcount    = 16 (on)
 IO_support   =  1 (32-bit)
 unmaskirq    =  1 (on)
 using_dma    =  1 (on)
 keepsettings =  0 (off)
 readonly     =  0 (off)
 readahead    =  8 (on)
 geometry     = 3876/240/63, sectors = 58605120, start = 0