Putting GNU/Linux on the IBM Thinkpad 600E (or 600) Laptop (Mandrake9.2) General Blurb Internal Modem
on the 600E Internal Modem
on the 600 Sound Serial Port The /etc/modules.conf file Links to relevant GNU/Linux Thinkpad 600/600E sitesI have installed Mandrake 9.2 on both a 600E and a 600. These were set up for
someone else, and I no longer have them in my posession - I therefore can't
answer any
questions on this - sorry. Everything I know I've put in this page. Mandrake 9.2 installed easily (using the suggestions that the installation programme gave me) on the TP600E and the TP600, but sound, the internal modem and the serial port didn't work (I don't have a floppy drive, but you can get a plugin or an internal (swap with dvd-rom) floppy)... After much googling and head scratching, I worked out that some of the hardware has to be turned on or off in DOS or Windows using a programme called PS2.exe (so if you still have Windows or DOS on your laptop, make sure your hardware is set correctly before you reformat your hard-drive!) There is a Linux version called tpctl. I found this iso image, which you can burn to cd, and boot off - this drops you into DOS, so you can use PS2. To get information on PS2, type PS2 ?, or PS2 ? IMODEM to find out the settings for the internal modem. After some changes you are told to reboot - it's probably worth doing this before you put in the next command - I think this is one bit I did wrong, but I don't know. The ThinkPad 600E has three built-in serial interfaces, but can only use two at once(!?!?!) - these seem to be the Infrared Device, the Internal Modem and the Serial Port. Use the PS2 to do the switching on or off. Internal Modem on the 600EI had to switch the modem on with PS2 - so I booted into DOS (using the CD burnt from the ps2.iso) and used PS2. First I switched off the Infrared device: This is an mwave modem. IBM released a GPL driver, and the kernel modules are now integrated into standard kernels. So if you have a later 2.4 kernel, it should be in there already. You still need to get the mwave RPM package or the
mwave tarball to execute in userland. At time of writing
the orignals were no longer available, but Sourceforge
were hosting a few versions - so do check there for newer versions (source, RPM and FreeBSD
packages are available). The RPM worked fine with Mandrake9.2. Just install it -
urpmi whatever-directory-you-saved-it-to/mwavem*.rpm Now edit /etc/mwavem.conf - the first section should be [WORLDTRADE]. Change the Country=1 to whatever your number is - look further down that file for a list of countries and their numbers - GB is 44. You need to set up the serial port: setserial /dev/ttyS1 auto_irq autoconfig That should be it. Try your favourite dialler, setting it to look in /dev/ttyS1. Troubleshooting Internal Modem on the 600EThe things that got me were the PS2 thing to set the hardware up, and missing off auto_irq in the setserial command... After rebooting, kppp (or whatever you are using to dial) found the modem but couldn't initialise it. I found that restarting the mwavem service helped - sometimes had to stop it several times before it managed it: I tried making the service switch on later on in the startup process, but
that didn't help. The only way to get it working again seemed to be to restart
the mwavem service after the computer had booted up. Since root needs to restart
the service, I had to either set up sudo or suid on a script. Suid has its own
security problems, so I stuck with sudo. I've
called the following script kppp so that it can be started using the normal kde menus etc, and moved kppp to another
location. Make sure you do this before you save this script as kppp. You'll need to make sure that the users can run this - so edit the sudoers file using:
visudo Internal Modem on the 600I don't understand why this was different when I set up the 600 - maybe I didn't need to do all the above the first time round :-) This time I just installed the mwave RPM, edited the Country=x bit in /etc/mwavem.conf, and rebooted. KPPP found the modem, and it all worked perfectly :-) SoundCouldn't get sound working on the 600, but it was (relatively) straightforward on the 600E: draksound and Mandrake Control Centre couldn't sort out the sound - it found the right driver, but it just didn't work. I tried to set things manually in /etc/modules.conf, but failed... So installed sndconfig, and ran that: urpmi sndconfig Serial PortOnce again: boot into dos and use PS2 (use this ps2.iso bootup cd image): Boot into Linux, and as root do: The /etc/modules.confHere's the /etc/modules.conf file from the Thinkpad 600E. probeall usb-interface usb-uhci options opi3 io=0x388 options cs46xx io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 dma2=0 mpuio=0x388 alias sound-slot-0 sb options sound dmabuf=1 alias synth0 opl3 options opl3 io=0x388 options sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 alias char-major-10-219 mwave mwave_3780i_io=0x130 mwave_debug=0x00 Links to relevant GNU/Linux Thinkpad 600/600E sites
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