[2000-06-01]
The Toshiba 2520CDS is a nice little laptop in the low-end of the spectrum. It's go a built in CD-ROM (that does CDDA extraction) and discdrive, and run on a 300MHz AMD K6-2. Except for modern games, it will do everything you need. Console work is snappy. The really bad thing linux-wise is that it's using a so-called winmodem.
I though I'd collect a few tips on how I set it up.
First of all, I'm not running X on this thing. It can be done, but the Virge/MX (86c260) with only 2Mb of on-board memory will limit you to 800x600x24.
For console work I'm using mode 0x0F05 which is a 80x30 VGA-mode. It's much better than the standard 80x25, which will leave a big border. SVGATextMode can give you a bit more modes, but having experimented with it, I've settled with standard 80x30 just the same. To get this automatically, compile the kernel with CONFIG_VIDEO_SELECT and add vga = 0x0f05 to your kernel parameters (I put it into /etc/lilo.conf)
If course we need sound support for playing those MP3s, right? I had no problem setting this up once I discovered the extra page of settings in the BIOS setup (which you can reach by forcing a keyboard error on cold boot, which will prompt you to press F1 for setup). Get in there and extract the settings, and then supply them to the kernel.
The soundchip is a Yamaha OPL3-SA2 (AD1848), so to config option you want is CONFIG_SOUND_OPL3SA2. Here's my parameters:
I compiled this into the kernel, but if you prefer modules you could try something like this:
insmod mpu401
insmod ad1848
insmod opl3sa2 io=0x370 mss_io=0x530 mpu_io=0x330 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0
insmod opl3 io=0x388
I found the output gain a little low, so you'll probably want to fix that in whatever player you are using. With mpg123 the option is -g
The computer is equipped with two PC-CARD slots. I'm connecting to my network using an IBM Turbo 16/4 TokenRing adapter, which means CONFIG_TR is for me. I do not compile for any specific chipset in the kernel, that part is taken care of by the PCMCIA code. In the beginning I couldn't get it to work, but somewhere along they way the code matured enough to start working, I'm now running pcmcia-cs v3.1.14 and it's working great. If you have trouble, go into the BIOS setup and select 'cardbus' for pcmcia, that's what I use.
You can check out my dmesg below if you want to see how it should look on startup.
Once pcmcia was installed and running, I could bring up the interface as easy as this:
ifconfig tr0 inet 192.168.2.34
route add default gw 192.168.2.10
And that's all there is to it.
Standard ATAPI CDROM of course, no problems there. However, I discovered that when streaming MP3s off CDs, it would constantly spin up and down making annoying noices. This I solved using hdparm -S 8 /dev/hdc. There, much better.
This, I haven't set up. I simply have no devices to test it with. My understanding, however, is that the chipset used by this computer is supported, and IrDA should work.
Here you have my boot-messages.
Linux version 2.2.15 (root@leif) (gcc version 2.95.2 19991024 (release)) #3 Fri May 12 01:22:07 CEST 2000
Detected 299947363 Hz processor.
Console: colour VGA+ 80x30
Calibrating delay loop... 598.02 BogoMIPS
Memory: 30964k/32832k available (868k kernel code, 412k reserved, 548k data, 40k init)
Dentry hash table entries: 8192 (order 4, 64k)
Buffer cache hash table entries: 32768 (order 5, 128k)
Page cache hash table entries: 8192 (order 3, 32k)
CPU: L1 I Cache: 32K L1 D Cache: 32K
CPU: AMD AMD-K6(tm) 3D processor stepping 0c
Checking 386/387 coupling... OK, FPU using exception 16 error reporting.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
mtrr: v1.35a (19990819) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd7fb
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.2
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0 for Linux NET4.0.
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP
TCP: Hash tables configured (ehash 32768 bhash 32768)
Starting kswapd v 1.5
Detected PS/2 Mouse Port.
Serial driver version 4.27 with no serial options enabled
ttyS00 at 0x03f8 (irq = 4) is a 16550A
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 8250
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x02 (Driver version 1.12)
Sound initialization started
Found OPL3-SAx (YMF719)
<MS Sound System (CS4231)> at 0x534 irq 5 dma 1,0
<MPU-401 0.0 Midi interface #1> at 0x330 irq 9 dma 1
<Yamaha OPL3> at 0x388
Sound initialization complete
PCI_IDE: unknown IDE controller on PCI bus 00 device 80, VID=1179, DID=0102
PCI_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
ide0: BM-DMA at 0x1800-0x1807, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
ide1: BM-DMA at 0x1808-0x180f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
hda: TOSHIBA MK4309MAT, ATA DISK drive
hdc: CD-224E, ATAPI CDROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: TOSHIBA MK4309MAT, 4126MB w/0kB Cache, CHS=526/255/63, UDMA
hdc: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache
Uniform CDROM driver Revision: 2.56
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is an 8272A
Partition check:
hda: hda1 hda2 < hda5 hda6 > hda3
VFS: Mounted root (ext2 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 40k freed
Linux PCMCIA Card Services 3.1.14
kernel build: 2.2.15 #2 Fri May 12 00:15:45 CEST 2000
options: [pci] [cardbus] [apm]
PCI routing table version 1.0 at 0xf9060
Intel PCIC probe:
Intel i82365sl B step rev 00 ISA-to-PCMCIA at port 0x3e0 ofs 0x00
host opts [0]: none
host opts [1]: none
ISA irqs (scanned) = 4,7,9,10,12 status change on irq 10
cs: IO port probe 0x1000-0x17ff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x220-0x22f 0x378-0x37f 0x480-0x48f 0x4d0-0x4d7
cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.
cs: memory probe 0x0d0000-0x0dffff: clean.
ibmtr.c: v1.3.57 8/ 7/94 Peter De Schrijver and Mark Swanson
v2.1.125 10/20/98 Paul Norton <pnorton@ieee.org>
v2.2.0 12/30/98 Joel Sloan <jjs@c-me.com>
tr0: ISA P&P 16/4 Adapter/A (short) | 16/4 ISA-16 Adapter found
tr0: using irq 0, PIOaddr a20, 16K shared RAM.
tr0: Hardware address : 00:06:29:65:C1:63
tr0: Maximum MTU 16Mbps: 4056, 4Mbps: 4568
tr0: port 0xa20, irq 12, mmio 0xd2000, sram 0xd4000,
hwaddr=00062965C163
tr0: Initial interrupt : 16 Mbps, shared RAM base 000d4000.
tr0: Adapter initialized and opened.
There. I hope this is of assistance to someone out there, or I just wasted half an hour of my life.
(c)2000 Eddy L O Jansson. All rights reserved. All trademarks acknowledged.