Gentoo on the IBM Thinkpad 600

[hds]

hi!
i'm just installing Gentoo on my old IBM Thinkpad 600

2 questions come to mind:
a) this is an 233MMX processor. what Cflags do i use (i know it takes ages to compile, but just 4fun)? was this a pentium2? i can hardly recall that.

b) cant get the pcmcia net to work. prior to installing Gentoo, i had SuSE installed and checked "lsmod | grep pc". the following modules were loaded:

pcmcia_core
ds
8390
pcnet_cs

modprobe fails on ds and pcnet_cs
any clues?

[hds]

found answers about the pcmcia here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... ht=pcnetcs
additionally i had to "modprobe 8390" then it worked

however, i am interessted to hear about others using a thinkpad 600 or similar. i wonder if i get my sound anf graphics to work, we'll see

[hw-tph]

I used a Thinkpad 600E (P2-366MHz, 192MB RAM, upgraded to 40GB disk) and it worked very well. One quirk that you may encounter is that unless the BIOS has been updated since the computer was purchased is that the BIOS won't be able to provide correct information about the disk, so installing Linux or even Windows 2000 will fail. A BIOS update should solve this, should you encouter the problem.

Sound works fine. The Gentoo release of alsaconf (from the alsa-utils ebuild) will auto-detect the make and model of your system and configure it correctly. OSS sound works too but it's quite crude.

The display probably uses the Neomagic driver, which works fine in both XFree86 and X.org. For high resolution framebuffer (if you want it) do *NOT* compile in neomagic support in the framebuffer configuration in your kernel config - only use the VESA framebuffer instead, this works better but admittedly a tad slower (at least in my experience).

I used to have a page dedicated to Gentoo and Debian (I dual booted the two for a long time) on my 600E but I screwed up and lost it - no backups either. You should not encounter any big problems though.


Håkan

[hds]

hi hakan,
could you recommend some cflags for make.conf?

thanks for the other hints. the BIOS is UpTodate. well, the machine is equipped with 160MB Ram only, and has a 3Gig disk. i was planning to use fluxbox or similar. i fear KDE will be too memory hungry for this old machine?

and yes, i have this neomagic graphics, and a crystal sound chipset. the monitor is passive tft only - i think this is the difference between the 600 and 600E.

[hw-tph]

The cflags should be the same for any other P2 CPU (if you have a P2, that is - cat /proc/cpuinfo to make sure!). These are the ones I used, and still use - I don't claim they are the best but it works and the system is very stable and I used it for everyday-allday work for a long time. They are a tad on the extreme side though - you might not want to use them. Now if it only had a working battery....

Code: Select all

CFLAGS="-O3 -march=pentium2 -fomit-frame-pointer -pipe -funroll-loops"

-funroll-loops also makes the executables much larger, and with a disk limit like yours I suppose you need to cut back on everything you can.

I have a fine working desktop using Openbox with fbpanel for a panel (for launchers and active apps) plus ROX as a graphical file manager on my Thinkpad and it's pretty responsive - more so than the same setup with Fluxbox instead of Openbox. Plus I love the simple XML configuration files that Openbox uses.


Håkan

[hds]

hmm, i just started compiling over night, and used pentium-mmx as cflags. also i used kernel 2.4.27 - dont think i need 2.6 on the old machine.

well, thx for the hints. wil keep you hooked about the results

so, the BaseSystem is on! 1st question: how do i get a large screen? i hope you know what i mean.. on windows there was a tool for the thinbkpad to use the full screen. i mean on tty1-6, not in X. would i have to use the "vga=" option in grub?

[hw-tph]

To get a high resolution framebuffer you can use the VESA driver. Just add vga=791 to the kernel line in your grub.conf and you should be OK. You could also try doing it on the fly before writing it permanently to grub.conf: As the computer boots and grub loads, highlight the kernel entry you want to edit and press "E". Add vga=791 to the end of that line, press enter, and then B to boot. 791 is really Lilo lingo (since Lilo cannot handle hex numbers). The correct way to type it is in hex. Here's a snippet from /usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb/vesafb.txt:

Code: Select all

So the table for the Kernel mode numbers are:

    | 640x480  800x600  1024x768 1280x1024
----+-------------------------------------
256 |  0x301    0x303    0x305    0x307   
32k |  0x310    0x313    0x316    0x319   
64k |  0x311    0x314    0x317    0x31A   
16M |  0x312    0x315    0x318    0x31B   

To enable one of those modes you have to specify "vga=ask" in the
lilo.conf file and rerun LILO. Then you can type in the desired
mode at the "vga=ask" prompt.

Do not enable neomagic framebuffer support in your kernel config. It is much worse than the VESA driver, and prone to bugginess (garbled console after exiting X) and acting up.


Håkan

[hds]

anyone an example for xorg.conf? i am unsure about the monitor settings, because this is passive TFT. is this 60hz? or 70hz?

[hw-tph]

This is the xorg.conf from my 600E. I am pretty certain the LCD is 60Hz only but I'm not willing to swear on it in court.

Code: Select all

Section "ServerLayout"
	Identifier     "X.org Configured"
	Screen      0  "Screen0" 0 0
	InputDevice    "Mouse0" "CorePointer"
	InputDevice    "Keyboard0" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection

Section "Files"
	RgbPath      "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
	ModulePath   "/usr/X11R6/lib/modules"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/misc/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/TTF/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Speedo/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/Type1/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/CID/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/75dpi/"
	FontPath     "/usr/share/fonts/100dpi/"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/fonts/corefonts"
	FontPath	"/usr/share/fonts/artwiz"
	FontPath	"/usr/local/share/fonts"
	FontPath	"/usr/local/share/fonts/truetype"
EndSection

Section "Module"
	Load  "record"
	Load  "extmod"
	Load  "dbe"
	Load  "dri"
	Load  "glx"
	Load  "xtrap"
	Load  "freetype"
	Load  "type1"
	Load  "speedo"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Keyboard0"
	Driver      "keyboard"
	Option		"XkbModel"		"pc105"
	Option		"XkbLayout"		"se"
	Option		"XkbVariant"	"nodeadkeys"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
	Identifier  "Mouse0"
	Driver      "mouse"
	Option	    "Protocol" "PS/2"
	Option	    "Device" "/dev/psaux"
	Option		"Emulate3Buttons"
	Option		"Emulate3Timeout"	"50"
	Option		"ChordMiddle"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier   "LCD"
	VendorName   "IBM"
	ModelName    "Thinkpad 600E"
	HorizSync	30-64
	VertRefresh	50-100
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Identifier  "Card0"
	Driver      "neomagic"
	VendorName  "Neomagic Corporation"
	BoardName   "NM2200 [MagicGraph 256AV]"
	BusID       "PCI:1:0:0"
	Option		"OverlayMem"	"829440"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "Screen0"
	Device     "Card0"
	Monitor    "LCD"
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     16
		Modes		"1024x768"
	EndSubSection
	SubSection "Display"
		Viewport   0 0
		Depth     24
		Modes		"1024x768"
	EndSubSection
EndSection

[hds]

just wondering where i could save a little diskpsace..
all i have installed sofar is the normal base-system and xorg. this takes 1.3GB space, now just 1.4G left. ;(

maybe i could tar.bz the kernel sources, and move them to the server temporary. i dont think i need them often.
anything else i could get rid off? i know 2.8GB harddisk is small today, though i think gentoo might have installed a lot of things i might never need?
all i did sofar in "emerge system" and "emerge xorg".

[cato`]

Have a look at Cleaning out stale distfiles and Portage utilities not in portage. There you will find scripts thats cleans your gentoosystem and gets you more space.

[hds]

hum, that wasnt my point. i know how to get rid of this, have a look here:
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php? ... highlight=

what i am wondering is, if i could unmerge things i dont need. i have the feeling "emerge system" installed too much perhaps? i mean, hey, 1 GIG+ is a lot. specially with a small drive.
and, yes, var/tmp and /usr/portage/distfiles is already empty of course.

[petris]

Does anybody get 3D acceleration working?

[e-ipi]

Does anybody get 3D acceleration working?

Neomagic chips don't support 3D acceleration.