Linux on a Thinkpad 365XD Laptop


The Thinkpad 365XD was a typical low-end laptop for 1997. With a Pentium-120, a smallish, but sharp 10.4" TFT display, 24 meg of memory, a 1 gig hard drive, and a 4x CD ROM, used examples of this machine can be picked up in the $500-$600 range.

I bought a used 365XL for my wife to use in writing and research on the Net. Linux installed easily with Mandrake 6.1, but it was necessary to create a boot disk ("one-floppy install"), since, for some reason, the installer refused to recognize the CD ROM drive.


The Linux Installation Procedure

Setting up a dual-boot machine (Win95 / Linux) complicates things a bit.

  1. Make certain that the floppy drive is attached.
  2. Boot up Win95.
  3. From the My Machine / System menu, disable virtual memory (removes swap file.
  4. Run scandisk in full mode to check for bad sectors.
  5. Exit from Win95 to DOS.
  6. Enable CD ROM drive by editing autoexec.bat and config.sys files. You will need to unrem one line in each.
    While you're working on these file, make certain that disk caching ("SmartDrive")is disabled.
  7. Reboot into DOS so the changes take effect.
  8. Insert the CD with the Linux distribution, and cd to the dosutils directory.
  9. Run fips to shrink down the DOS partition (read the fips docs first!)..
  10. You will likely need to reboot to DOS once more, because fips usually freezes up after doing its job.
  11. Now cd to the CD drive once more. Note that it may have changed to drive e: as a result of running fips.
  12. Run ezstart, and try the one floppy (involves creating a boot disk).
  13. Per instructions, reboot with the boot floppy in the drive.
  14. Choose the Custom install and select packages totaling less than 500 meg, in order to leave yourself enough space on your small 1-gig HD.
  15. Cross your fingers, and hope the install goes smoothly (it should).




Post-installation

Hand-tuning the XF86Config file enables an 1024x768 virtual desktop and 16-bit color. The display will run in 16-bit color, although with annoyingly slow scrolling, the colors just a bit washed out, and no virtual desktop (not enough video memory). You will probably prefer to run in 8-bit mode most of the time. The video chipset is a Trident 9320.
Note: Disable gpm, as it seems to cause problems for the X server.

Running sndconfig (as root) sets up the sound card. It's an ESS1688, (io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 mpu_io=0x330).

Mandrake automatically enables xdm. To undo this, and enable a login from the console, then (as root) change the line id:5:initdefault: in /etc/inittab to id:3:initdefault: .

This particular machine had a shiny new 56K "Megahertz XJ-1336 X-Jack" PCMCIA modem on /dev/ttyS1 (com 2). This is not a Winmodem. Getting this modem to work under Linux involves "rounding up the usual suspects" - chmod 666 /dev/ttyS1, updating /etc/resolv.conf to show your ISP's IP address, and writing appropriate chat and ppp-on scripts. (Fortunately, the newer Linux kernels have PCMCIA support.)



References

Mandrake Linux
The Linux Laptop Home Page
Linux Laptop HOWTO
Linux Thinkpad mailing list



Last updated 02/09/00

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