IBM Thinkpad 240x

Of course, this page is still under construction.  There are a lot of unanswered questions, questions that need more detailed answers, and, overall, I need to clean up the grammar.  My goal for right now was just to get some information out there quickly.

There are several web pages (found on Kenneth E. Harker's  excelent Linux on Laptops page)  about installing various Linux distributions on Thinkpad 240's, but the 240 and 240x have some subtle differences.  Below, is a listing of of the major subsystems and their levels of support within Linux.  (Note that this is how *my* 240x was configured - check yours carefully to make sure you have the same things.)

Since the 240x doesn't come with a CD-ROM, I planned to do the installation via NFS, using one of my other Linux boxes to serve up the RedHat CD.   With the exception of some problems with the PCMCIA network drivers (see below for my rant on that subject) the install went quite smoothly.  The only glitch was that I had to specify a text install because the install program choked when it tried to switch to graphical mode.  This was no great inconvienience, and except for the problems with the network card, everything went smoothly.  Once the installation was complete, there were a few tricks required to get everything up and running and I've tried to document those below.

Note:  If you're interested in using Mandrake 7.2, see below for a brief synopsis of my experiences installing it.

Video:  Silicon Motion LynxEM+

• XFree86 4.0.2 has arrived!  Even better, it's got native support for the LynxEM+.  I installed it over the weekend and am pleased.  The xf86cfg program crashed on me, but it wasn't a big deal since I was able to use my XF86Config file from 4.0.1  (At the request of a reader, I've made the file available  here .)
• I'm still having a few display problems with Netscape (parts of the screen not being redrawn..) but for now, I'm assuming that this is a Netscape problem.
• XFree86 3.3.6  supposedly has native support (use the XF86_SVGA server), but I had lot's of wierd problems....   If I disabled acceleration, the display would look all right, but still wouldn't reset itself properly when exiting from X.
• Frame Buffer works driver works fine.  Using it has both good and bad points though:
• Good:  Allows one to use the full 800x600 resolution in text mode.  (Gives you 100x37 characters.)
• Bad:  If  I understand this right, the video is always in 'graphics mode'.  That is, the characters on the console are rendered as graphics.  This is slower than the usual way of just sending text to the screen, and is particularly noticeable when one scrolls a screen full of text.   It  will actually cause music from Xmms to skip when one scrolls through a large file (I think because the CPU is so busy dealing with screen redraws that it doesn't have time for Xmms....)
• Bad:  Trying to use either of the faster scrolling methods (ywrap and ypan) hung the system at boot.  (See the vesafb.txt file in /usr/src/linux/Documentation/fb )
• Bad:  No acceleration in X.
• For more information, check out http://www.linux-fbdev.org
• Right now, I'm using the accelerated driver in X and the frame buffer for the text consoles and I'm reasonable happy with that.

Sound:  Crystal Sound 4281

• Kernel version 2.2.18 has been officially released.  You probably want to upgrade your kernel as this version fixes some bugs in the sound driver that were present in 2.2.17.  (I finally have - just in time for 2.4.0..;)
• A visiter to this sight (there actually are a few - wow! :) was kind enough to email me and let me know that the latest version of the Alsa sound drivers also support this chipset.  I haven't had a chance to mess about with these drivers (and given the quality of the driver in the kernel, it's not a real priority of mine, either), but if you want to try them out, their homepage is  here.
• The OSS site says that you should disable apmd prior to loading the sound driver, but this doesn't seem to be necessary on my setup (YMMV).
• Several sites have mentioned that you should unload the sound module before entering standby or susbend modes.  This seems to be the case for me, as well.  Luckily, RedHat has made this easy to do:
• Edit (as root) the file /etc/sysconfig/apmd
• Near the bottom of the file you should find three entries for sound: RESTORESOUND,  RESTORESOUNDPROGS and SOUNDMODULES
• Change the RESTORESOUND line to read: RESTORESOUND="yes"
• Change the SOUNDMODULES line to read: SOUNDMODULES="cs4281 soundcore"
• Optionally, you can also change the RESTORESOUNDPROGS line from "no" to "yes", but I didn't bother
• Occasionally,  the module will fail to load, and spit out a message to the effect that it couldn't calibrate the codec.  I haven't been able to figure out the exact conditions that this occurs, (or even what it really means) but the only way I've found to fix it is to shut down and power off.  (Simply restarting doesn't help.)  If you load the driver at boot time, you'll probably have no troubles.
• I haven't figured out how to make it play midi files.   I can play them in Windows, so I know the card has the hardware.  Does the driver not activate it?  It's not a big deal, since I've pretty much converted to mp3's, but I'm curious....
• I'm no audiophile, but sound quality through a decent pair of headphones is just fine.  The single 1" diameter speaker really isn't good for anything more complicated than a system beep or two, but that's to be expected.

• Battery life doesn't seem too great, (2 hours?) but I'm still looking at this....
• Standby and Suspend modes work just fine.
• Automatic suspend on lid close and resume on lid open.
• Hibernate mode:
• Good news: Works just fine.  And the BIOS even pops up a slick graphic while the process runs...
• Bad news:  The progress bar that is part of the aformentioned graphic appearantly has no basis in reality - it shows 100% complete long before the hibernation is complete.
• I have my computer set up to hibernate to a file on a FAT32 partition (this is sort of the default) but another reader has told me that you can, in fact, set up a "hibernation partition" and thus do away with the FAT partition completely.  His instructions are here .

I was visiting my family over the holidays and had a chance use the modem pretty extensively for a couple of weeks (ie: I had to leave my cable modem behind and use my Dad's dial-in account....) and here's what I found out:

• There's a new driver available as source code!  Get it from LinModems.org.  The instructions were pretty good, and compiling it was a snap under 2.2.18.  (Haven't tried under 2.4.x, yet, though that's supposed to work as well.)  I don't use dial-up internet access, so I haven't been able to test it with PPP, but I did get it to take the phone off hook and dial a number.  For good measure, the instructions also explain how to set up the driver so that it is loaded by the kernel as needed.  On the whole, I'm quite happy.

With the release of the source code version of the driver, the following pretty much obsolete:

• The binary-only driver that Lucent released will work just fine with 2.2.18pre18 (and presumably 2.2.18) providing that you don't mind making a minor change to part of the serial code, and recompiling your kernel.  (Detailed instructions are available  here.)
• Use 'insmod -f  ltmodem' to insert the driver (the driver is compiled for 2.2.12-20, so ignore the warning messages).
• Assuming that you've followed the directions that came with the driver, you will now have a modem attached to /dev/ttyS14 that will work just like a 'regular' modem.  Just fire up your favorite dial-up script and you'll be surfing in no time....
• Note:  From what I've heard (I haven't actually tried, yet) this driver won't work at all with the 2.4 series of kernels.  It looks like it's time to pester Lucent to just release the source code...
• Some folks are also working on an open-source driver, but it doesn't seem to be progressing too fast.
• More information is also available at  Linmodems.org

• 2.2.17 has native FIR support, but I had a little trouble getting the module to load at first.
• I had to update the BIOS to the most recent, and then make sure that IrDA was enabled in the BIOS.
• Once I did this, the nsc_irda.o module loaded fine and the messages in the syslog seem to indicate that everything is working fine, but I don't have any other IR devices to try it on.
• ir_comm  also seems to work, but again, I haven't actually tested it....

• The  drivers load and the messages in the syslog seem to indicate that everything is working.  I don't have any USB devices, though, so I don't know.

• Proper XFree86 Drivers.  Unaccelerated X is just too slow.  (You can actually count the number of redraws after resizing a Netscape window..)  NOTE: This one looks like it's about to come true! (See above :)
• Ability to use the full 800x600 resolution in console mode *without* resorting to the frambuffer - perhaps by using SVGATextMode?
• Faster scrolling with the frame buffer.  (This is probably a hardware issue, and so can't be fixed.)

Another reader has also reported that the Day Traveler Wanderer (made by Eagle Creek) is also a good fit.  More details about this bag are available here.

A few days later, I borrowed a 3Com 10/100 cardbus card from a friend, stuck it in, booted up using the standard 6.2 PCMCIA install disk, and everything went great.  (This was just a test - by this time, I'd already installed RedHat using the D-Link card...)

The moral of the story:  For ease of use and painless installation, go with 3Com.  If, however, you feel you computing experience isn't complete without stress, frustration and several reboots, then by all means, buy another manufacturer's card......

Installing XFree86 4.0.2 turned out to be a bit of a challenge - the source RPM that I got failed to build, and the precompiled RPM's wanted me to upgrade to GLIBC 2.2  Upgrading to GLIBC 2.2 unfortunately caused some other problems with the C++ libraries.  In the end, I found that the easiest thing to do was to not upgrade any RPMS, but to download part of 4.0.2 precompiled from the XFree86.org site.  Specifically, I downloaded the Xxserv.tgz and Xmod.tgz files.  After I unpacked those in the correct directories, and copied my old XF86Config file back to /etc/X11  (and renamed it XF86Config-4, which is appearantly what XFree86 defaults to now), I had a working XFree86 4.0.2 server.

I don't like bypassing the RPM system like this,  since it means that my RPM database is probably no longer accurate.  But, this method works and when Mandrake 8.0 comes out (it should include XFree86 4.0.2),  I'll upgrade everything, and my RPM database will be accurate again.

A few other Mandrake specific tidbits:

• Neither sound nor networking seem to come back properly after a resume.  I need to look at apm scripts some more.  This worked fine on RedHat 6.2, so I may end up replacing the apm RPM from Mandrake with the one from RedHat.
• For those of you who use DHCP to connect to you network and like to compile your own kernels, be aware that the DHCP client in the Mandrake distribution (dhclient) requires you to enable Packet sockets and Socket Filtering (CONFIG_PACKET and CONFIG_FILTER) in your kernel configuration.  Once I did that, though, DHCP worked just fine.