====================================================================== IBM THINKPAD 75x SERIES FAQ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Maintained by Sean Chou (ychou@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu) Edited by John Kim, Tim Noonan and many others Last updated 7/10/94 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- This FAQ documents the IBM Thinkpad 750 series (the 750, 750C, 750Cs, 750P, and 750Ce). The information in this document has been obtained from the various manuals (including the technical references), personal use, the TP750 mailing list and it's users, and IBM tech support. Attempts are being made to add support for the TP755 and TP360 series into this FAQ as well. If you have any additional information that you would like to add or notice a mistake, please email me at ychou@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu. DISCLAIMER: I do not claim that all the information in this document is mine. I do not claim that it is all accurate (although I've tried my best to make it so). And I do not claim any responsibility to any damage you, your equipment, your company, your well-being, your sanity, your dog, or whatever may incur as a result of this document. Furthermore, I do not claim any grammatical errors as my own! I must also mention (so that you know any potential biases) that I possess a TP750C with 12MB RAM and a 340MB hard drive. I run OS/2 as my primary operating system but remain open-minded to Windows 4.0 and Windows NT (or Daytona), as well as any non-DOS-ish OS (such as any *NIX). Lastly, if it sometimes sounds like I'm just parrotting what has been said to me, it's because I am. I do not claim to be an expert in any of the areas discussed but I do my best to relay the knowledge intact. CREDIT: I must thank all the TP750 mailing list, with special thanks to Robert Dewar, John Kim, Keith Moore, Randy Whittle, and Tim Noonan for their many contributions to the list as well as this FAQ. As much as possible, I try to credit the person who gave me the information listed herein (most unmarked information is from the manual or myself). MAILING LIST: All requests for addition, changes, or deletions should got to tp750-request@cs.utk.edu. All articles should be addressed to tp750@cs.utk.edu. Special thanks are in order to Keith Moore who has graciously donated his time and equipment to the maintenance of the list. ====================================================================== ORGANIZATION OF THE FAQ ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. Current drivers and information 2. Technical specs 3. Using the machine in general 4. Using DOS/Windows 5. Using OS/2 6. Using other OS's 7. Multimedia 8. Our questions (Please help us) 9. Battery Survey ====================================================================== TABLE OF CONTENTS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: New or changed questions are marked by an asterisk. 1. CURRENT DRIVERS 1.1. What are the latest drivers? 1.2. Where can I get them? 1.3. Where can I get the latest IBM release notes? 2. TECHNICAL SPECS 2.1. What are the various designations of the 750 series? 2.2. What are the dimensions and how much does it weigh? 2.3. What type of battery does it use and what's the average battery life? 2.4. What CPU does it use? 2.5. Is it expandeable/upgradeable (what external connections does it have)? 2.6. How easy is it to take out the floppy/hard drive/battery? 2.7. Does it have a dock or port replicator? 2.8. What is the screen size? 2.9. Is the screen upgradeable? 2.10. When I turn on my 750C , I get a flickering effect for a while and then it goes away. What's wrong? 2.11. What hard drive sizes are available? 2.12. What's the maximum RAM it can support? 2.13. What video chip does the TP750 use? 2.14. I want some solid numbers to compare by! 2.15. Is there a reset button? 2.16. Is the removable hard drive a standard 2.5" hard drive? 2.17. What are the specs for the floppy dirve? 2.18. How can I read the battery capacity from a program? 2.19. What's a good source of tech info for the TP750's? 3. USING THE MACHINE IN GENERAL 3.1. My screen looks "squished" when I'm running in graphics mode. 3.2. How do I get my PCMCIA devices to work? 3.3. Can I shut off the hard drive while leaving the screen on? 3.4. How can I get a SCSI connection to my TP? 3.5. Can I format high density (2MB) floppies to 2.88mb? 3.6. I don't like how the screen dims when it's unplugged. 3.7. My keyboard letters and symbols are starting to come off. 3.8. How durable is the Trackpoint II? 3.9. How do I suspend? 3.10. What is hibernation? How do I hibernate? Does it work? 3.11. When I swap batteries, my system shuts off. 3.12. which is connected to my serial port doesn't work. 3.13. My PCMCIA light stays on all the time. 3.14. Can I turn off that annoying/embarasing beeping noise when my TP750 goes into hibernation? 3.15. Is it normal for the 750C screen to look faded out when viewed from an angle? 3.16. What documentation is there on the TP750? 3.17. Is there any on-line documentation? 3.18. How are the power management and other BIOS features accessed? 3.19. What PCMCIA cards have been used sucessfully? 3.20. How can I get my 3COM PCMCIA network card to work? 3.21. Can I shut off the screen's lighting to prolong battery life? 3.22. Is it possible to completely turn off the screen of the TP750 to save battery power but still use the unit? 3.23. What known imcompatibilities are there with the TP750? 3.24. How do I use the EPP port? 3.25. How can I secure my Thinkpad? 3.26. Okay, how do I get rid of the password I set? *3.27. Can I move the IBMVESA directory? 4. USING DOS/WINDOWS 4.1. How do I get more memory with the PCMCIA drivers loaded? 4.2. I'm having problems with serial communications? (My modem keeps getting errors) 4.3. I'm having problems with QEMM and my TP750 machine. 4.4. WordPerfect for DOS is crashing my TP. 4.5. Can I use the 32-bit disk access and 32-bit file access? 4.6. What DOS games work with the TP750's audio? 4.7. What DOS games definately do NOT work with the TP750's audio? 4.8. How do I get my game to work with the TP750's audio? 4.9. I'm having problems with suspend in Windows. 4.10. When I exit Windows, my system crashes suddenly. 5. USING OS/2 5.1. Does the Thinkpad work with OS/2? 5.2. My seamless windows is messed up under OS/2 for Windows? What should I do to fix it? 5.3. How do I change resolutions on my external display? 5.4. How can I use my PCMCIA device under OS/2? 5.5. My suspend has been broken since I installed the CSD for OS/2 2.1. 5.6. MIDI files have been crashing my system since I've installed the CSD for OS/2 2.1. 5.7. If I'm playing a MIDI file and OS/2 plays a system sound, the MIDI playback pauses. How do I fix this? 5.8. It's too easy to lose the pointer on my mono/CS screen under OS/2. Is there a way to make the pointer more visible? 5.9. Does the TP750 support the IBM ScreenReader 2 program to provide speech access to OS/2 for blind users? 5.10. When I come out of suspend, I often crash. 5.11. How do I increase the speed of cursor tracking? 5.12. How can I use my whole screen in an OS/2 full screen box without vertical expansion? 6. USING OTHER OS'S *6.1. Does Linux work? 6.2. Does NetBSD work? (How to make NetBSD hobble along) 6.3. Does SCO Xenix work? 6.4. Does Windows NT work? 6.5. Any other OS's? 7. MULTIMEDIA 7.1. Can I impress my friends with the multimedia? 7.2. How is the multimedia component (specifically, the sound)? 7.3. What drivers are out for the TP75x soundcard? 7.4. Is there a text-to-speech utility? 7.5. Can I have exact measurements for the audio line-in and line-out? 7.6. What audio chip does the TP75x use? 7.7. Is the built-in speaker used for all sounds? 8. OUR QUESTIONS 8.1. Keith Moore questions. (And yes, he has the technical manuals) 8.2. Where's a better source of TP750 technical info? The technical manuals are terrible. 8.3. What PCMCIA cards work with the TP750's? 8.4. What games work with the TP750's audio? 9. BATTERY SURVEY ====================================================================== The FAQ Proper ====================================================================== 1. CURRENT DRIVERS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1.1. What are the current drivers? Diskette Rev. --------------------- ---- Utilities 1.31 Audio 1.31 Monologue 1.00 Video 1.32 System (BIOS) 1.07a Maintenance 1.10 Note that the same drivers (or at least the same disk) is used for the TP750, TP755, and TP360. 1.2. Where can I get them? FTP: ftp.pcco.ibm.com IBM NSC BBS: (919)517-0001 Sydney Australia IBM BBS Number: +612 899 8311 Compuserve in the Thinkpad forum 1.3. Where can I get the latest IBM release notes? You can ftp the latest information from ibminet.awdpa.ibm.com (192.35.233.1). However, be sure to NOT 'ls' or 'dir' the directory as it contains hundreds, if not thousands, of release notes. Download the 00INDEX and grep it for information (grep 750 00INDEX). After finding what you need, ftp to the site again and get the appropriate file(s). If you can't ftp, you can ftp by email by sending a message to ftpmail@decwrl.dec.com with the following message body: ---CUT HERE--- connect ibminet.awdpa.ibm.com chdir /pub/announcements get [filename, like 00INDEX] quit ---END HERE--- -John Kim The actual file name containing the TP750 series official product information is '193-269' (no quotes). - Tim Noonan You can also call the IBM PC Company (HelpWare) Automated Fax System: 800-IBM-3395 426-3395 (voice) ====================================================================== 2. TECHNICAL SPECS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 2.1. What are the various designations of the 750 series? The 750 has a dual scan passive matrix monochrome screen, the 750Cs has a dual scan passive matrix color screen, and the 750C has a TFT active matrix color screen. The 750P is a monochrome pen model (the screen can be folded over to be used as a pen-top). The 750Ce is a DX2/50 model (available only for corporate accounts ordering in large numbers). 2.2. What are the dimensions and how much does it weigh? From the IBM Thinkpad Spec sheet sent by John Kim: Width (750/750Cs/750C/750P): 297 mm (11.7 inches) Depth (750/750Cs/750C/750P): 210 mm (8.3 inches) Height: 750: 43 mm (1.7 inches) 750Cs: 51 mm (2.0 inches) 750C: 51 mm (2.0 inches) 750P: 53 mm (2.1 inches) Weight: 750: 2.5 kg (5.5 pounds) with battery pack 750Cs: 2.8 kg (6.2 pounds) with battery pack 750C: 2.9 kg (6.4 pounds) with battery pack 750P: 3.0 kg (6.6 pounds) with battery pack Battery: 576 g (1.3 pounds) FDD: 213 g (0.5 pounds) 2.3. What type of battery does it use and what's the average battery life? The TP750 uses a nickel hydride battery. Battery life varies tremendously with individual use. The following figures are gathered from the mailing list: Model Users "Typical" Use "Suspended" ----- ----- ------------- ----------- 750 750Cs Under Construction 750C 750Ce 750P Informal surveys have show that the typical life for a TP750 is about 3.5-4 hours while the typical life for a TP750C is about 2 hours. The average daily loss of the battery charge is around 10% overnight and the average battery charge loss during suspend is around 40%/day. 2.4. What CPU does it use? All the models except the 750Ce use the 486SL33 chip. The SL33 chip is a 3.3 volt CPU and does include a floating point unit (or coprocessor). The Ce uses a DX2/50 CPU. The 360 series uses an SL-Enhanced 486SX33 chip. Note that this does not have an onboard floating point unit. The 755 series has the option of either an SL-Enhanced 486DX2/50 or a DX4/75 CPU. 2.5. Is it expandeable/upgradeable (what external connections does it have)? Yes. The hard drive is removeable. There are two Type II PCMCIA slots. There is one 16450 serial port, one enhanced parallel port, a dock port, a PS/2 port, and an SVGA port. Also, there are audio line-in and line-out ports. The floppy drive is removeable and IBM has released the specs in hopes that third party manufacturers will produce more items for the bay. IBM currently has a cellular modem and is working on a TV receptor. The system BIOS is upgradeable using a disk that you can download from the NSC BBS or Compuserve. 2.6. How easy is it to take out the floppy/hard drive/battery? This is one of the "neatest" features of the TP750 series. The keyboard flips up like a car hood and everything is accesible. I've even tried it with the machine on with no ill-effects (although the machine does auto-suspend). You can change batteries without shutting down simply by lifting the keyboard and switching batteries (a built- in NiCad battery will keep it powered while changing batteries -- refer to question 3.11 for more info). 2.7. Does it have a dock or port replicator? Yes, it has the Dock I which is mobile itself (weighing 6.2 lbs.). The Dock I has one 5.25" drive bay, one expansion slot, a SCSI connector, and high fidelity speakers built in. It also includes an external keyboard connector. Also, there are two port replicators. The first one is simply a port replicator (for the convenience of plugging lots of devices in). The second port replicator, in addition to replicating the ports, also includes two more Type II PCMCIA slots. There have been various problems reported on the mailing list about the Dock. The main problem has to do with the non-standard SCSI connection. 2.8. What is the screen size? The active matrix is 10.4", the passive matrix is 9.5", and the dual scan color is 9.5" 2.9. Is the screen upgradeable? Yes, you can upgrade the monochrome to the pen or color screens when, or if, the upgrade becomes available. However, the upgrade seems to be much more expensive than the difference in price at last check. 2.10. When I turn on my 750C , I get a flickering effect for a while and then it goes away. What's wrong? Well, this appears to be a known problem with the BIOS. Contact IBM for a new BIOS or download it from the NSC BBS. The latest BIOS is version 1.04. 2.11. What hard drive sizes are available? There is a 170MB and 340MB hard drive available. They are removeable and interchangeable. 2.12. What's the maximum RAM it can support? A single IC-DRAM card: Base RAM IC-DRAM Total -------- ------- ----- 4 MB none 4 MB 4 MB 4 MB 80ns 8 MB 4 MB 8 MB 80ns 12 MB 4 MB 16 MB 70ns 20 MB 4 MB 32 MB ??ns 36 MB The card is identical to the ones used in the older TP7xx series, and the IBM 57NSX(?). Be warned that some users have reported problems using their older DRAM cards with the 750. -John Kim Note that although it was originally reported that 20mb was the maximum amount of RAM, it is actually 36mb. At the time, there were no 32mb DRAM cards available. It has also been reported that the TP750 memory is also compatible with the TP755 series. 2.13. What video chip does the TP750 use? The TP750 series all support 640x480x256 onscreen and 800x600x16, 800x600x256, 1024x768x16, and 1024x768x256 on an external monitor. There is also a VESA TSR for DOS. The sych rate is adjustable between 56, 60, 72 Hz for any of the above modes. It uses the Western Digital 90C24 chipset, aka "Rocket", not to be confused with the Western Digital 90C31, which is their top-line chipset and also nicknamed "Rocket". They are both accelerated and supposed to be compatible with the Paradise chipset (which wouldn't take advantage of the acceleration hardware). The 90C24 is an 8-bit card and cannot display 16-bit or 24-bit colors. - John Kim 2.14. I want some solid numbers to compare by! John Kim found out that is what WD (Western Digital) calls it. It has accelerated graphics (including BitBLT) and a local bus interface which in the case of the 486SL would be the PI bus. Some performance that came out recently in PC Week are (higher is better & note the video numbers): ThinkPad ThinkPad AST PowerExec NEC UltraLite 750C 720C 4/25 ColorPlus Versa 25C -------- -------- -------------- ------------- Processor 7,400 6,543 5,957 6,167 RAM 5,322 4,019 4,189 4,238 Video 3,833 4,068 4,192 3,890 Disk 32.5 27.4 29.7 22.3 DOSMark 29.27 24.56 25.17 21.60 Graphic WinMarks 9.19 5.39 3.55 4.40 Disk WinMarks 28,690 25,130 21,934 20,317 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Doug Haigh dhaigh@vnet.ibm.com NOTE: This isn't a really fair comparison since all the other machines are not DX33 machines. Both AST and NEC have released newer DX33 and above machines. The Thinkpad 750C isn't the fastest machine out there but it is a good, solid performer and quite acceptable to most users. 2.15. Is there a reset button? Yes, it's between the video port and dock port in the back of the machine. Get a paper clip and push the button in the hole. Tim Noonan reported an interesting piece of information to me. I would appreciate any confirmations for or against this: "I can't easily confirm this, but it seems like that if your config.sys or autoexec is totally stuffed that the resent buton can temporarily load from ROM resident versions of these files. I wondered why my machine was booting into windows after using the reset button while my autoexec.bat file had windows remmed out." 2.16. Is the removable hard drive a standard 2.5" hard drive? From John Kim: "According to one of the guys on the TP350 development team, yes, it's a standard 2.5" IDE drive in a non-standard case. The only thing you have to watch out for is that the new drive doesn't exceed power or current draw specs. "I have had zero luck trying to find out what these specs are. In fact, I have had zero luck trying to convince any of the tech support people that the drive is in some sort of case (so I can use a 3rd party drive and not have to sell my current one). Apparently they've never seen a bare hard drive. "If you put a 3rd party drive in there, it's obviously not covered by the ThinkPad warranty, but any problems caused by that drive are also not covered by the warranty." However, at least one successful attempt has been made to put a Maxtor 270mb hard drive into the hard drive case. Unfortunately, the owner of the machine brought it with the hard drive altered already and didn't know how to make the changes herself. Be warned that any damage incurred from a 3rd party hard drive will not be covered under your warranty. 2.17. What are the specs for the floppy drive? The TP750x has a 2.88 floppy. The diskette drive controller is configured to be compatible with PS/2 Model 30, the first AT bus PS/2. - Ken Inoue The TP755 and TP360 have a 1.44 floppy. But I don't know what the controller is based on. 2.18. How can I read the battery capacity from a program? "One way to do this in DOS is to use APM BIOS. The APM specification version 1.1 (by Intel et al.) is on CompuServe PLUGPLAY forum; the 750 supports version 1.0 but if I remember correctly the battery status interface should be the same between 1.0 and 1.1. Please be careful about some of the APM BIOS calls that control system power state, as improper use of these calls can result in system crash (the APM BIOS calls were not meant to be used by two power managers). I am afraid that currently there is no easy way to do this in OS/2 without interfering with the operation of the standard power manager." - Ken Inoue 2.19. What's a good source of tech info for the TP750's? ThinkPad 750,750C,750Cs, and 750P Technical Reference S71G-5389-00 (not terribly useful unless you need things like connector pinouts) Intel 82077SL floppy controller data sheet (I don't know if this is what the TP75X uses or not...but it must be very similar. The chip appears to be wired in PS/2 Model 30 mode...which means that the disk change line has inverted sense from what you would normally expect.) Intel 82365SL PC Card Interface Controller data sheet (this is similar to, but not quite the same as, the PCMCIA controller in the TP750. In particular, the ID bytes returned by the one on the TP750 are different. Not sure what the other differences are, but I've been able to write UNIX device drivers using this data sheet.) IBM Personal System/2 Hardware Interface Technical Reference - AT-Bus Systems S85F-1646-00 All info provided by Keith Moore ====================================================================== 3. USING THE MACHINE IN GENERAL ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 3.1. My screen looks "squished" when I'm running in graphics mode. "This is normal. The LCD is 640x480. Normal 25 row text mode is 640x400 pixels in resolution, and most graphical games are at 320x200 and 640x350. A monitor will automatically resych this to make it fill the entire screen. An LCD can't do this so you end up with a blank space 40 pixels high (75 pixels for 640x350) on both the top and bottom ends of the screen. "To alleviate this effect check to make sure that vertical expansion is on. Use the PS2 program under DOS, the Thinkpad applet under Windows, and the Display applet under OS/2. If you don't like the font under vertical expansion, there are several DOS utilities available with better fonts. A demo copy of one of these (Ultravision?) shipped with your ThinkPad." -John Kim 3.2. How do I get my PCMCIA devices to work? Get the latest copy (1.31) of the Thinkpad Utilities diskette, which have the EasyPlaying drivers. Using the EasyPlaying drivers can simplify PCMICA life dramatically if you use DOS/Win or OS/2. Also, under DOS, not all 100K must be excluded from high memory to get the drivers to work. It often only takes a little segment of memory to work. Of course, the segment required will vary depending on what PCMCIA cards you are using as well as what else lies in your high memory. 3.3. Can I shut off the hard drive while leaving the screen on? Why would I want to do that? Well, because you can save a TON of battery life by not using the hard drive. Also, you can enjoy deathly silence. There's multiple ways to concievably do this. One is to set the timer so that the hard drive spins down after a short amount of time (while your screen stays on). John Kim has suggested using RAM drive when using small programs (or if you have a lot of RAM). On a similar note, you can always use a PCMCIA Flash RAM in place of the hard-drive. Joe Bormel stumbled upon a nice trick. There is a shareware program called COLAP (short for color laptop utility) that runs in DOS or a dos box in windows on dos. It has an option for toshiba machines, /T, that enables you, even on the tp750, to press RIGHT-SHIFT with DEL keys to turn off the hard disk. In addition, it can dim or brighten the VGA screen by altering vga color pallate. Joe has reported that this works under OS/2 as well in a DOS box. And, Tim Noonan points out that using a cache helps to reduce hard drive access significantly. 3.4. How can I get a SCSI connection to my TP? The Dock I comes with a SCSI port. However, several people on the mailing list have reported problems with using the SCSI port. IBM has a cable, part number 32G4143, which has the wierd 60 pin connector on one end and a more traditional 50 pin centronics style connector on the other. - Keith Moore (unconfirmed) There are two primary ways to get a SCSI connection besides the dock -- a parallel to SCSI cable or a PCMCIA SCSI card. Trantor, as well as some other companies, offer parallel port to SCSI cables. The Trantor cable comes in three model -- 4-bit, bidirectional, and EPP. Both the 4-bit and bidirectional cables have throughputs that may be too slow for any high-speed application (such as a quadruple speed CD-ROM drive or hard drive). See 3.24 to see how to use the TP's EPP port with the Trantor EPP cable. Also note, Tim Noonan has reported that the Trantor drivers must be added to the _end_ of the CONFIG.SYS instead of the default installation to the _start_ of the CONFIG.SYS. Otherwise, the drivers will cause hangs during boot-up and the EPP will not be able to be properly accessed. Once properly connected, everything is reported to work well. Note that there are drivers for DOS/Win as well as OS/2. I don't have much info on PCMCIA SCSI cards yet since they are relatively new. New Media offers the high-speed Bus Toaster which has a 3MB/s burst, 1MB/s sequential, and 350KB/s overall data time. It supports up to 56 devices and comes with Corel SCSI. Contact New Media (800-CARDS 4 U) for more information. However, they do not support OS/2 at this time and I don't know if EasyPlay can be configured to support it yet. There's also a Future Domain and Platinum Access. 3.5. Can I format high density (2MB) floppies to 2.88mb? Yes. It does work, but you're on your own for data integrity. I've run informal tests and high-quality floppies (Maxell, Fuji, etc.) seem to have better odds of survival. I've had them survive at least a month with no damage -- but then I lost track. John Kim has reported similar circumstances. 3.6. I don't like how the screen dims when it's unplugged. There's an undocumented switch for the PS2.EXE program to control brightness levels. It's 'PS2 BR N' for normal (plugged) brightness and 'PS2 BR E' for the economic brightness. Various users have reported a battery life loss of anywhere from 15-20 minutes less to 30 minutes less. This switch was first reported to me by Andrew Houghton. 3.7. My keyboard letters and symbols are starting to come off. Mike Anderson, IBM rep on the Compuserve Thinkpad forum, has reported that this is a flaw in the manufacturing. When the new keyboards become available, we will be able to get them under our warranties for free. If your warranty has expired already, then you have an old Thinkpad and this is an old FAQ. Get a newer one. On the other hand, if it really bothers you, you can send it in anyway for a new keyboard but the letters will just wear off again. 3.8. How durable is the Trackpoint II? I use my machine for about four-five hours a day on the average in OS/2 which is very mouse intensive. I've had no problems with it in the long time I've had it. I did, however, recently replace the rubber cap with a new one (the old one was just getting too mushy). However, Bruce Reed has reported that one of his friends managed to break his Trackpoint II after playing X-Wing intensively and agressively for 3 weeks. The device did not physically break, but it just stopped functioning. Needless to say, don't do anything silly like that. Get a joystick or external mouse. OTOH, Stanley Wasserman had a Thinkpad 720 which he owned for about a year. He let his two kids play with it and it never gave out. The Trackpoint II does however drift slightly on occasion. This is normal and due to the way the TPII handles movement (or maybe recalibrate?). 3.9. How do I suspend? You can use software, the FN+F4 button, or push the little button on the right edge of the machine just above the area between the PCMCIA slots and PS/2 connector. John Kim noticed that, in OS/2, after suspending the machine once, a CTRL-ALT-DEL will reset the machine without flushing the buffers first. 3.10. What is hibernation? How do I hibernate? Does it work? Hibernation is th ultra power-conserving state of the TP750's. First, a hibernation file is built that is equal to the size of your RAM plus one meg. When you want to hibernate, hit Fn+F12. All the info in RAM is saved onto disk and the machine shuts off. Next time you start up, it starts where you left off. It takes my machine (with 12mb RAM) about 20 seconds to hibernate and about 15 to come out of hibernation. However, hibernation isn't perfect (yet hopefully). Under OS/2, I occasionally can't suspend after coming out of hibernation. Also, my PCMCIA cards sometimes lose their settings during hibernation and I'm forced to pull them out and hot-plug them back in. Other users have reported it can be flaky; however, the latest BIOS (version 1.04) was recently released and addressed a lot of the suspend/hibernation problems. 3.11. When I swap batteries, my system shuts off. You are probably pulling out your battery too fast. After lifting the keyboard, wait for a few seconds (the screen blanking does NOT mean the TP750 has gone into suspend yet) before swapping batteries. - Randy Whittle Also note that if the ps2 cover switch setting is set to off that lifting the keyboard will not suspend the machine (this also allows you to shut or disable the screen without shutting the computer off). - Tim Noonan 3.12. which is connected to my serial port doesn't work. Be sure that the serial port is getting power. Check your power applet under OS/2 and Windows or, under DOS, type 'PS2 serial on', or use the menu options. You'd be surprised how many people do this! Also, see question 4.2 for more information on serial ports. 3.13. My PCMCIA light stays on all the time. This is normal. The PCMCIA light indicates that there is a card in the socket and that card and socket services are loaded. Power is no more than 10mA so it's nothing to worry about. - Mike Anderson, IBM Rep on CompuServe Thinkpad forum 3.14. Can I turn off that annoying/embarasing beeping noise when my TP750 goes into hibernation? Yes, go to the Sound applet under OS/2 or Windows and click on the 'Power Control Beep' under the Alarms section. Under DOS, use th PS2.EXE program and go to sound options and click on the 'Power Control Beep' option or type 'PS2 beep off'. 3.15. Is it normal for the 750C screen to look faded out when viewed from an angle? Yes, especially when viewed from above or below the 'optimal' level. 3.16. What documentation is there on the TP750? Besides this FAQ , there are the two manuals that come with the Thinkpads describing basic how-to's and the online documentation (see question 3.17). 3.17. Is there any on-line documentation? Yes, the IBM BookManager product is pre-installed on the machine and allows access to the TP Quick Reference Manual as well as documentation on warantee and the Bookm\Manager product itself. The software has a pretty frustrating front end, but it is possible to extract the entire reference manual to ASCII for easier access. -Tim Noonan 3.18. How are the power management and other BIOS features accessed? "Some, like power-up passwords are only available through the EasySetup mode accessed by pressing F1 during a power-up. This is a GUI system with a range of hardware configuration options. "Most power management features can be accessed at DOS in Windows and under OS/2. In addition to menu access under dos using the PS2 program, full command line access for all settings is available. PS2 -? and one of the appendixes in the Reference manual document most of these commands." -Tim Noonan 3.19. What PCMCIA cards have been used successfully? MODEMS: AT&T Keep-In-Touch Megahertz XJ1114 Megahertz XJ2114 US Robotics Worldport PCMCIA Intel (Name?) Banksia Technology PCM14.4F Data Fax Modem (NOTE: Tim Noonan has not been able to get fast data transfers with either Zmodem or Kermit, but didn't have the docs available at the time of testing. He did get a significant number of unsuccessful connections when using the modem in LA to contact netcom.com. He doesn't know if this was a problem with this modem, Netcom.com's modems or the telephone lines.) LAN ADAPTERS: 3Com Etherlink 2II 3C589 ethernet card Supports Twisted pair and thin coax connections. (NOTE: Tim Noonan has noted it only comes with Novell drivers and has not been able to get a packet driver working. He has noticed that battery drain seems pretty high and a lot of heat was generated with the thin coax that uses about 430mA . He also had some problems with suspend when EasyPlay wasn't loaded even though the enabler worked perfectly otherwise). OTHERS: ? 3.20. How can I get my 3COM PCMCIA network card to work? Todd Tannenbaum reported that he got his 3COM ethernet card to work with his TP750. Although EasyPlay doesn't support a dynamic configuration, it does support static configuration. He used the 3COM configure program to set "reasonable" values and then edited his AUTODRV.INI in the ETHER section so that the only configuratuion EZPlay had to "try" for an ethernet card was the same configuration which the 3com was setup for in NVRAM. Apparently, the only other thing he needed to load was the ODI driver (meaning he did NOT have to load the enabler). I'm not sure if this procedure works with (or can be done with) other network PCMCIA cards. Let me know. Also, note that the 3COM network card does NOT work with the port replicator. There is an incompatibility that needs to be worked out so call up 3COM and complain! Finally, Randy Whittle makes the point that, if you are not using anything other than the 3COM network card, you can just use the enabler and disable EZPlay. 3.21. Can I shut off the screen's lighting to prolong battery life? Nope. That would require a transflective panel which none of the Thinkpads feature. (Apparently, a transflective panel would be much less bright than a normal LCD of comparable power consumption since the reflecting part would absorb the backlight.) - Ken Inoue 3.22. Is it possible to completely turn off the screen of the TP750 to save battery power but still use the unit? Through the ps2 set-up program it is possible to disable the LCD screen if an external VGA monitor is connected. If you don't want to have an external screen connected, however, for example if you are using your ThinkPad with a speech synthesiser, then type "PS2 cover off" at the DOS prompt. This disables the resume function of the switch to the right rear of the unit that is depressed by the screen when its closed. This setting stops the unit from suspending but still disables the screen for improved battery life. It is best to use a small strip of cardboard in the slot where this small switch is situated to disable the screen. You may wish to use the "ps2 sound off" command to stop the various beeps that are generated by depression of the cover switch. If you don't do this you will hear a beep each time the unit realises the cover switch is depressed. - Quoted from Tim Noonan 3.23. What known imcompatibilities are there with the TP750? Floppy interface (compatible with the IBM PS2 model XX AT bus machine Change line a problem with Linux PC-Tools fast copy program scrambles disks on the TP. Hard Disk geometry problems? not in usual BIOS location? Cursor speed routines used by WP51 and probably WP 6.0 for DOS cause hangs Norton 7 System Info thinks the TP 750 is a PS/2 machine. I've had occasional crashes with MKS VI supplied with MKS toolkit v 4.1. - Quoted from Tim Noonan 3.24. How do I use the EPP port? To access the 750x EPP port, set the LPT port to LPT2 in EasySetup (although LPT1 is still used by the software). 3.25. How can I secure my Thinkpad? There are power-on and management passwords, as well as a hard drive password, which are effective in keeping people out of your info. There is a security loop that is located on the hard drive which can be used to secure the computer to a table or some other location. Also, Randy Whittle has suggested a motion detector which was designed for the Thinkpads that will sound off a loud alarm if armed. It can be set to various time delays, alarm times, etc. You can reach the makers at: SonicPro International, Inc. 5201 Great America Parkway Santa Clara, CA 95054 (408) 982-2568 Finally, and perhaps ultimately, Martin Smith (and many others, including myself) whole-heartedly recommend SafeWare. For $250 per year, they will insure you up to $10,000 for your computer, peripherals, and software. Insuring computers is all they do. Their number is 1-800-848-3469. or 1-614-262-0559. Also, if you think that your home insurance covers you, better call them up and make sure since many companies do NOT cover computers (especially if used for business purposes). 3.26. Okay, how do I get rid of the password I set? Enter the password at the prompt and then a space. 3.27. Can I move the IBMVESA directory? No. It's hardcoded into the VESA software. If you just don't want to have to look at it at a 'DIR' or whatnot, hide the directory and it won't show up. - Bryan Parker ====================================================================== 4. USING DOS/WINDOWS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 4.1. How do I get more memory with the PCMCIA drivers loaded? Here's a sample CONFIG.SYS and AUTOEXEC.BAT for Windows for Workgroups users: -----------------------------CONFIG.SYS------------------------------- [MENU] REM This creates the menu. You may want to set up other settings for REM doing such things as DOS use, network use, etc. If you have a REM request, send it in to me, and I'll add it in if there seems to be REM enough need for it. menuitem=NORMAL, Setup for Windows menuitem=GAMES, Setup for game use [COMMON] DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\HIMEM.SYS DOS=high SHELL=c:\DOS\COMMAND.COM /p FILES=40 BUFFERS=20 LASTDRIVE=G REM I use NANSI but others may not need it at all or may be using ANSI REM or NNANSI or what-not. Note that ANSI uses more memory than NANSI REM and so may cause you to lose some main memory. I don't know. REM However, NANSI is widely distributed and freely available. DEVICE=c:\bin\nansi.sys REM The VESA driver must be loaded for Windows to work DEVICE=c:\ibmvesa\vesa.exe [NORMAL] STACKS=9,256 REM The C000-C0FF region of memory has served me fine but all I've REM been using is an AT&T KIT PCMCIA modem. DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\EMM386.EXE NOEMS X=C000-C0FF DEVICE=c:\dos\ramboost.exe load DEVICE=C:\DOS\POWER.EXE REM PCMCIA drivers DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\IBMDSS01.SYS /S0=2 DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\IBMDOSCS.SYS REM Make sure that the /MA parameter matches the region of memory you REM have marked for your memory manager. DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\DICRMU01.SYS /MA=C000-C0FF DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\AUTODRV.SYS C:\THINKPAD\AUTODRV.INI DEVICE=C:\THINKPAD\$ICPMDOS.SYS REM This file is necessary for Windows for Workgroups. If you use REM regular Windows, you will not need or have this file. DEVICE=C:\WINDOWS\IFSHLP.SYS [GAMES] STACKS=0,0 DEVICE=c:\windows\emm386.exe DEVICE=c:\thinkpad\audio\DIAG\AUDTEST.SYS /V=10 DEVICEHIGH=c:\thinkpad\audio\AUDIODD\TPAUDDD.SYS ----------------------------AUTOEXEC.BAT------------------------------ @ECHO OFF PROMPT [$p] PATH=c:\dos;c:\bin;c:\windows;c:\thinkpad SET TEMP=c:\temp REM C:\WINDOWS\net start REM C:\THINKPAD\FUELDOS REM SmartDrive is unnecessary if you use Windows for Workgroups since REM it has it's own caching system. REM C:\WINDOWS\SMARTDRV.EXE /X 2048 128 IF NOT "%CONFIG%" == "GAMES" GOTO End C:\DOS\MOUSE.COM c:\thinkpad\audio\vdd\svaudio.exe :End ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTES: My config.sys is for a Windows for Workgroups 3.11 setup. If you use Windows 3.1, then you don't need IFSHLP.SYS, but you will need a cache loaded in the AUTOEXEC.BAT (notice mine is REM'ed out). Also, I assume that I never use audio outside of Windows unless I boot up the Games option. All Windows sounds will still work without the TPAUDDD.SYS and SVAUDIO.EXE loaded. Obviously, this will all take a little modification, but you should get over 600K with this setup (or close to at least). Also, edit out the REMarks if you don't need them. It'll make things look much nicer! :) 4.2. I'm having problems with serial communications? (My modem keeps getting errors) John Kim first reported that the fueldos.com TSR provided with earlier versions of the TP750 utilities disk caused excessive loss of characters as well as bad packets. This has been confirmed by many other sources. Don't load the TSR at all if you use Windows primarily. If you use DOS frequently, then use the fueldos.com from version 1.31 of the TP750 Utilities disk or a higher version. Randy Whittle has also reported that the Windows fuel program _can_ cause problems in certain cases. Specifically, he was using an external v.32bis from his serial port with Procomm Plus for Windows. 4.3. I'm having problems with QEMM and my TP750 machine. Bob Page provided me with this from qdeck.com: ID:TH IBM's Thinkpad 750/750C and QEMM Quarterdeck Technical Note #198 Filename: THINKP.TEC by Tom Bortels CompuServe: THINKP.TEC Last revised: 02/08/94 Category: HW Subject: How to configure QEMM for IBM's Thinkpad computers. Here are the recommended QEMM 7 settings for IBM Thinkpad 750/750C problems. These recommendations may also apply to other computers in the Thinkpad family. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Problem: Adding the RAM parameter to my QEMM386.SYS line in my CONFIG.SYS causes my Thinkpad to hang after 10-15seconds. Solution: Add XBDA:L to the QEMM386.SYS line Explanation: The eXtended BIOS Data Area (XBDA) is a data area normally located at the top of conventional memory, just below the 640K mark. This memory is used to hold BIOS-specific information. By default, QEMM will relocate this XBDA, reclaiming the conventional memory it uses and allowing programs such as VIDRAM to extend conventional memory past 640K. On the Thinkpad, this relocation can result in a crash when the Thinkpad operating system writes data intended for the XBDA into the wrong place. Using the XBDA:L parameter will solve this problem, by telling QEMM to move the XBDA to low conventional memory. The only drawback to using XBDA:L is the loss of 1K of conventional memory. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Problem: Sometimes QEMM can't tell what addresses the Thinkpad PCMCIA card is using. Symptoms of this are trouble loading programs high, and hangs or odd behavior by TSRs/Device-drivers or the PCMCIA cards themselves. Solution: Exclude the upper memory range where the PCMCIA card is mapped. The address range should be very easy to find, because a properly configured PCMCIA card should have a line in your CONFIG.SYS file that specifies the correct address. See the explanation below. Explanation: The Thinkpad includes slots for PCMCIA cards; these cards will take up up from 0 to 64K of upper memory addressing space, which must be eXcluded from QEMM's use. There is no guarantee that QEMM's autodetection will see the region. If your PCMCIA card is properly configured, there should be a line in your CONFIG.SYS that loads a driver called DICRMU01.SYS; this driver is the resource map utility, which tells the adapter card (among other things) what area of memory it is to use. Check that line for a /MA= parameter; this parameter will be followed by the ranges of memory to exclude with the X= parameter on the QEMM386.SYS line. An example will best illustrate how to do this: If your CONFIG.SYS file has a DICRMU01.SYS line with /MA=D000-D3FF, you would need to add X=D000-D3FF to the end of your QEMM386.SYS device line in your CONFIG.SYS file. Some information on the DICRMU01.SYS driver and on using PCMCIA adapter cards with software EMS providers such as QEMM can be found on pages 2-13 of the IBM Thinkpad 750/750C user's guide. For further information: The QEMM Analysis procedure will help you if you need to confirm what addresses need to be excluded because your hardware is using them. It is discussed in Appendix A of the QEMM manual, under the heading, "Solving a memory conflict with the Analysis procedure." The general technote TROUBLE.TEC is a useful source of other problem-solving suggestions; most QEMM usershave a copy of TROUBLE.TEC in the TECHNOTE subdirectory. ********************************************************************** *This technical note may be copied and distributed freely as long as * *is distributed in its entirety and it is not distributed for profit.* * Copyright (C) 1994 by Quarterdeck Office Systems * ************************ E N D O F F I L E *********************** 4.4. WordPerfect for DOS is crashing my TP. "I don't know if this will fix your problem, but the TP750 has a problem with all of the rapid cursor features in DOS wp5.1 and wp6.0. It will sometimes hang the machine. You can start WP with "WP/nc" to get the normal cursor speed. When you get into WP, got to setup and turn off fast cursor. The default is 50cps, change it to 'normal'." - Douglas Diamond 4.5. Can I use the 32-bit disk access and 32-bit file access? Yes. The TP750 series is fully compatible with 32-bit disk access. The main problem occurs in portables that power down the hard drive while a write is in action. The TP750's (being fully APM compliant) won't power down as long as the hard drive is being used. 32-bit file access from Windows for Workgroups is entirely compatible also. - Randy Whittle (who quoted Herb Chong of RIME) 4.6. What DOS games work with the TP750's audio? Blake Stone, The Summoning, Ultima Underworld, Willy Beamish, Wolfenstein 3-D, Spear of Destiny, Might & Magic: Clouds Of Xeen 4.7. What DOS games definately do NOT work with the TP750's audio? Alone in the Dark (unpredictable SoundBlaster emulation, Adlib fine) DOOM (AdLib music under OS/2) Mortal Kombat (Adlib sounds only) Syndicate 4.8. How do I get my game to work with the TP750's audio? The games that are most likely to work are the ones that automatically scan for the sound card. For the games that do not work, it is up to the user to try different combinations of sound cards, IRQs, port addresses, and DMA channels. The most likely sound card to work is the Adlib card, especially since it doesn't require any additional port information. Unfortunately, it's usually also the most boring sound. To get SoundBlaster emulation to work, set the IRQ to 10 (or whatever you've changed it to) since most programs accept IRQ ranges from 2 to 10. Set the DMA channel to either 0 or 1. Most programs can't accept the port address that the TP uses so that leads to the main source of problems. Some programs can operate fine with the wrong address so try that. Otherwise, I'd probably give up buy you're welcome to continue fiddling... 4.9. I'm having problems with suspend in Windows. Make sure that you've selected "MSDOS System with APM" for your system setup under the Windows setup program. Also, check to make sure you have the latest utility diskette (current version is 1.31). 4.10. When I exit Windows, my system crashes suddenly. When TPAUDVXD.386 is loaded to give you sound capability in Windows, some sound must be played before exiting Windows, or else the system will reboot the first time you bump the Trackpoint. Either add a sound at start-up or exit, or disable the sounds by commenting out the TPAUDVXD.386 drive in the [386Enhanced] section of the SYSTEM.INI. -Victor C. Kress ====================================================================== 5. USING OS/2 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 5.1. Does the Thinkpad work with OS/2? It works great with OS/2! IBM has also provided Fuel, Power, Sound, Display, and System Info applets for use with OS/2. There are also audio device drivers which support MMOS/2 as well as SoundBlaster (and all other supported formats) emulation in a DOS window. 5.2. My seamless windows is messed up under OS/2 for Windows? What should I do to fix it? The TP750 video driver installation is the culprit. It's rather braindead and assumes that your Windows subsystem will be under the :\OS2\MDOS\WINOS2 directory. However, in the case of OS/2 for Windows, this often isn't the case. You can solve it in one of two ways. A. Reinstall Windows in the :\OS2\MDOS\WINOS2 directory. But this is probably too much trouble for most people since you'll also have to change the directory of all the apps (and probably edit INIs) in Windows. B. Create the :\OS2\MDOS\WINOS2 directory and a SYSTEM subdirectory under that. C. Copy your WIN.INI and SYSTEM.INI to the WINOS2 directory. D. Install the TP750 video drivers. E. After the installation, copy all the files installed in the WINOS2 and WINOS2\SYSTEM directories back to the appropriate real Windows directories (ie. C:\WINDOWS and C:\WINDOWS\SYSTEM). You will probably overwrite some files but don't worry, this is the right thing to do. F. Now, you should check the SYSTEM.INI to make sure that the seamless drivers are loading properly (mine wasn't even there for some odd reason). Make sure you have a "sdisplay.drv=wspdssf.drv" (without the quotes) under the [boot] section. NOTES: I'm not sure if this last part is necessary (would someone please let me know?). Also, is this clear? If not, please let me know and I'll clarify more. 5.3. How do I change resolutions on my external display? There are no PM notebook settings. You have to use the command-line utility CHANGRES. 5.4. How can I use my PCMCIA device under OS/2? First, get the latest Thinkpad utilities diskette. It features a nifty program called EasyPlay which has the software necessary to run most PCMCIA modems. The network card support is still unknown at this time, but at least one individual has reported having problems with it. OS/2 comes socket and and card services but you still need one more level of support. Unfortunately, many manufacturers still don't have OS/2 drivers. Luckily, more and more are coming out with them. In the meantime, many people have managed to get their PCMCIA devices to work using their DOS drivers. Specifically, for PCMCIA modems, you can load the PCMCIA drivers in a DOS session (giving it the minimum memory it needs) and let it run in a hidden DOS session. Also, be sure to specify the existence of COM2 in your CONFIG.SYS. Make sure you have this line: DEVICE=D:\OS2\COM.SYS (1,3f8,4) (2,2f8,3) or if you use Ray Gwinn's SIO: DEVICE=D:\OS2\SIO.SYS (COM1) (*COM2) Of course, use the appropriate drive letters. 5.5. My suspend has been broken since I installed the CSD for OS/2 2.1. This is a known problem. Install the APM from OS/2 2.1 using selective install and the original OS/2 2.1 disks. 5.6. MIDI files have been crashing my system since I've installed the CSD for OS/2 2.1. This is one of the two known problems with MMPM/2. Aren't you lucky you got it? :) There is no fix yet. If you need MIDI, use MMPM/2 from the OS/2 2.1 disk. 5.7. If I'm playing a MIDI file and OS/2 plays a system sound, the MIDI playback pauses. How do I fix this? The \mmos2\ibmaudio\readme.os2 file has the following instructions on how to fix this behavior: To play PCM and MIDI files concurrently, a line must be added to the MMPM2.INI file. This file is found in the MMOS2 directory. In the [ibmampmixtp01] section, add the following line: VALIDCOMBINATIONS=1,2,2,1 5.8. It's too easy to lose the pointer on my mono/CS screen under OS/2. Is there a way to make the pointer more visible? The readme file in your root OS/2 drive has the following REXX program which will enlarge your pointer. You only need to run it once. See the readme for instructions on returning the pointer to its normal size. /* LARGE.CMD Set VGA pointers to large */ /* (c) Copyright IBM Corp. 1992, All rights reserved */ call RxFuncAdd "SysIni", "RexxUtil", "SysIni" call SysIni "USER", "PM_IBMVGA", "CURSOR_SIZE", "1", say Result exit 5.9. Does the TP750 support the IBM ScreenReader 2 program to provide speech access to OS/2 for blind users? Yes, it works well. You do need to disable the TrackPoint II in EasySetup first though or it interfeers. -Tim Noonan 5.10. When I come out of suspend, I often crash. I've found that this occurs most often when you try to use your Trackpoint immediately or during the period the machine is coming out of suspend mode. Make sure the drive is done spinning and give it a second or two afteward before you start moving around the cursor. 5.11. How do I increase the speed of cursor tracking? You can't. Ha! Actually, the mouse driver would need to be patched. Anyone care to give it a try? 5.12. How can I use my whole screen in an OS/2 full screen box without vertical expansion? Some people find the fonts with vertical expansion on rather nasty looking. An alternate way of getting the full-screen's worth of text (ala Ultravision for DOS) is with the command: mode 80,30 You can make it the default of your OS/2 full screen prompts by adding '/K mode 80,30' in the options section of the settings. - John Kim ====================================================================== 6. USING OTHER OS'S ---------------------------------------------------------------------- NOTE: The brunt of this has been reported by Keith Moore and so you can safely assume I got all this info from him, unless I specifically say otherwise. 6.1. Does Linux work? Every revision of this FAQ seems to see more headway in making Linux work with the TPs. Keith Moore began the task and many others seemed to have made it possible now. The following is a summary of an excellent text by Adrian Clark (forwarded to us by Derek Chan). The following modifications must be made to the basic kernel: 1. Floppy disk driver: IBM has specified type 5 and 6 as the drive type for the Thinkpads since it uses a 2.88mb floppy. Since Linux doesn't understand what a type 5 or 6 drive is, just replicate the entries for floppy drive 4 for types 5 and 6. 2. Hard disk driver: The code that determines the number of drives from the CMOS doesn't work. What is actually failing is the code that determines the number of drives from the CMOS. A one-line patch to routine of the hard disk driver corrects the problem. The hard disk driver is in the file /usr/src/linux/drivers/block/hd.c and the modification simply increments the number of hard disks if the number of cylinders of a particular drive is non-zero. The region of code concerned is if (!NR_HD) { for (drive=0 ; drive The additional line is clearly indicated by a comment. An alternative approach is to specify the disk geometry via lilo. For example, on the author's machine, which has the 340Mbyte hard disk, the line to add to the LILO configuration file would be: APPEND = "HD=914,15,49" Modification to the memory manager Michael Steiner tells me that there is a problem in kernels before the official v1.1 release regarding BIOS power management functions. If you need to run an old kernel for some reason, the appropriate patch is given below. diff -r -c linux-1.0.DIST/mm/memory.c linux/mm/memory.c *** linux-1.0.DIST/mm/memory.c Wed Feb 23 17:36:51 1994 --- linux/mm/memory.c Tue Mar 8 02:29:59 1994 *************** *** 1069,1075 **** *--p = MAP_PAGE_RESERVED; start_low_mem = PAGE_ALIGN(start_low_mem); start_mem = PAGE_ALIGN(start_mem); ! while (start_low_mem Support for Advanced Power Management (APM) Michael Steiner also reports that the APM package (available from tsx-11.mit.edu as packages/laptops/apm/apmd.tgz at the time of writing) works "if you just ignore the reply". He also reports that the built-in suspend/hibernate stuff works anyway (if you created one under DOS or OS/2). Inevitably, the APM driver needs patching. *** ../apmd.c Wed Apr 13 17:52:17 1994 --- ../old/apmd.c Tue Dec 7 18:37:54 1993 *************** *** 8,30 **** #include #include "asmi.h" - void apm_dettach() { - int retval; - - retval = asmi(APM_INTERFACE_DISCONNECT, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0); - if (retval) { - printf("interface disconnect: %s\n", apm_error(retval)); - exit(1); - } - } - - - /* !! inserted by sti */ void signal_exit_handler() { ! /* !! moved to newly created function apm_dettach() by sti */ ! apm_dettach(); exit(0); } --- 8,22 ---- #include #include "asmi.h" void signal_exit_handler() { ! int retval; + retval = asmi(APM_INTERFACE_DISCONNECT, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0); + if (retval) { + printf("interface disconnect: %s\n", apm_error(retval)); + exit(1); + } exit(0); } *************** *** 42,48 **** int retval; unsigned int vers, check, flags; unsigned int event; ! if (iopl (3) Using PCMCIA devices Bernardo Lam /CODE>; reported on 4-Jul-1994: "I have had good experience with the MHz 14.4 PCMCIA modem and the Dlink DE650 ENET PCMCIA, they work flawlessly". Bernardo apparently uses the generic PCMCIAD kernel driver from tsx-11.mit.edu and is currently running Linux 1.08. Additional goodies Keith Moore has also written a driver for IBM's PCMCIA Ethernet card. He says of it in his README: "This is a device driver I wrote for Linux (pl13) and IBM's Credit Card Adapter for Ethernet. It assumes that your system uses the Intel 82365 PCMCIA controller, or a compatible chip, to interface between the system bus and the PCMCIA cards. "The IBM documentation for this card is thoroughly brain-damaged. It leaves out a number of important details and gets some things wrong. For instance, it says that all of the registers that deal with the Remote DMA mode are reserved, but inside it just uses an ordinary NS83902 chip (ST-NIC) (this according to an unnamed source at IBM). Anyway, remote dma mode worked just fine for me. Your mileage may vary. "Other things that you might need to know about this card if you are writing your own driver for it or for a different system: * The 16K shared-memory buffer is at offset 0x4000 on the card's address space. That means that, to the ST-NIC chip, the first page of memory is 0x40, not 0x00. * The PCMCIA Configuration Index needs to be set to any nonzero value, and it appears that you need to enable level interrupts rather than edge triggered interrupts. So the Configuration and Option Register needs to be set to 0x41. * The Ethernet address of the card is stored in attribute memory at offset 0xff0, and every other byte thereafter. "This driver would probably work on the Linksys card also, except that its configuration registers are at offset 0x8 in attribute memory, and the IBM card's registers are at offset 0x20000. This information could be obtained by parsing the card information structure's tuples. It might be that this technique would work for any Ethernet PCMCIA card." I am on the point of trying the driver myself -- you can get a copy of it in a tar-file from here. Using LILO Perhaps the best way to show a possible LILO configuration for the ThinkPad is to describe my own. I have configured my machine to have three partitions: /dev/hda1 This is an 80 Mbyte DOS partition which I never seem to use these days. :-) /dev/hda2 This is a 16-Mbyte swap partition for Linux. (I do image processing on my ThinkPad, so I need lots of swap.) /dev/hda3 The main Linux partition, about 250 Mbytes. My fairly _de luxe_ system with TeX, X, gcc, etc occupies about 90 Mbytes. The LILO configuration file, /etc/lilo.conf is as follows: boot=/dev/hda image = /zImage label = lin-hd ramdisk = 0 root=/dev/hda3 vga = normal other = /dev/hda1 label = dos table=/dev/hda Linux is booted from the hard disk by default but, by holding the shift key down while booting, one can elect to boot DOS by typing `dos' at the resulting prompt. It is also possible to tell LILO the geometry of the hard disk, which avoids having to patch the hard disk driver. Configuring X for the ThinkPad Unfortunately, things do not seem to be identical on all ThinkPad screen types. X CONFIGURATION FOR THE 750C The following X configuration file works fine on the LCD screen of my 750C: I haven't tried it on an external monitor. It is said that, to be able to drive an external monitor via the VGA port on the back of the ThinkPad, you must switch to it from DOS before booting Linux. RGBPath "/usr/X386/lib/X11/rgb" FontPath "/usr/X386/lib/fonts/misc/" # FontPath "/usr/X386/lib/fonts/Speedo/" FontPath "/usr/X386/lib/fonts/75dpi/" # FontPath "/usr/X386/lib/fonts/Type1/" # FontPath "/usr/X386/lib/fonts/100dpi/" Keyboard AutoRepeat 500 5 ps/2 "/dev/mouse" Emulate3Buttons VGA256 Virtual 1024 768 ViewPort 0 0 Modes "1024x768" Modes "640x480" Chipset "wd90c30" # Clocks 28.30 # wd90c00, wd90c10, wd90c30, wd90c31 wd90c20 # vga256 # Clocks 25 28 32 36 40 45 50 60 65 # ChipSet "WD90C30" # Modes "640x480-25" VGA16 Virtual 800 600 Viewport 0 0 Modes "640x480" Chipset "generic" # Clocks 30 30 0 30 VGA2 Virtual 1024 768 ViewPort 0 0 Modes "640x480" # Modes "1024x768" Chipset "wd90c20" Clocks 28.30 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 36 ModeDB # name clock horizontal timing vertical timing flags "640x480-25" 25 640 680 720 864 480 488 491 521 #"640x480" 28 640 680 720 864 480 488 491 521 "640x480" 28.3 640 672 768 800 480 490 492 525 "1024x768" 65 1024 1032 1176 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync X CONFIGURATION FOR THE 750CS Michael Steiner has also done some work on getting X to work on the 750cs, with some success. The standard X86_SVGA X server does not work on the 750Cs: everything comes out double! He has found some of the reasons and fixed them; here are the patches. *** lib/Server/drivers/vga256/pvga1/driver.c --- lib/Server/drivers/vga256/pvga1/driver.c.orig *************** *** 134,142 **** #define IS_WD90C3X(x) (((x) == WD90C30) || ((x) == WD90C31)) ! /*!! commented by sti */ ! /* #undef DO_WD90C20 */ ! #define DO_WD90C20 static unsigned PVGA1_ExtPorts[] = { /* extra ports for WD90C31 */ 0x23C0, 0x23C1, 0x23C2, 0x23C3, 0x23C4, 0x23C5 }; --- 134,140 ---- #define IS_WD90C3X(x) (((x) == WD90C30) || ((x) == WD90C31)) ! #undef DO_WD90C20 static unsigned PVGA1_ExtPorts[] = { /* extra ports for WD90C31 */ 0x23C0, 0x23C1, 0x23C2, 0x23C3, 0x23C4, 0x23C5 }; *************** *** 383,400 **** if (!vga256InfoRec.videoRam) { unsigned char config; ! #ifdef DUAL_SCAN ! /* check if we have a dual-scan LCD */ ! outb(vgaIOBase + 4, 0x31); ! if ((inb(vgaIOBase + 5) & 0x3) == 0) { ! /* clear bit 6 to disable upper 512k The remaining ! 512Kbytes of video memory are not disabled by clearing ! the bit, but it is actually used as a shadow of first ! 512Kbyte */ ! outb(0x3CE, 0x0B); config = inb(0x3CF); ! outb(0x3CE, 0x0B); outb(0x3CF, config & 0xAF); ! outb(0x3CE, 0x0B); config = inb(0x3CF); ! } ! #endif switch(config & 0xC0) { case 0x00: case 0x40: --- 381,388 ---- if (!vga256InfoRec.videoRam) { unsigned char config; ! outb(0x3CE, 0x0B); config = inb(0x3CF); ! switch(config & 0xC0) { case 0x00: case 0x40: However, some problems still remain: for example, when switching to or from other virtual terminals, the screen is occasionally messed up. Putting the machine into suspend mode for a short while cures this, but Michael is working on a solution. The vanilla XF86_VGA16 driver apparently suffers from the same problem. In Conclusion Although Linux itself works fine on the ThinkPad and X is happy on at least some of the machines, there are things that are still not supported: these include sound support, utilization of the power management facilities, and drivers for the other PCMCIA cards. If you come up with solutions to these problems -- expecially a driver for IBM's Ethernet PCMCIA card or support for sound -- please let the author know and he will incorporate details of them into this note. Oh: if anyone figures out a way of using xmodmap (or anything else) to interchange the Ctrl and Caps lock keys, please let me know too! Adrian F. Clark alien@essex.ac.uk 8-Jul-1994 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Keith has made the Linux hacks available at cs.utk.edu, directory pub/moore/linux. If you get them working, let me know! Finally, check out the Linux-on-a-ThinkPad web page at http://peipa.essex.ac.uk/html/linux-thinkpad.html 6.2. Does NetBSD work? (How to make NetBSD hobble along) Yes! Well, sort of... "Okay, I now have NetBSD 0.9 running on my ThinkPad 750. It even runs X (in monochrome mode, at least ... I don't have a color display!) "Changes I had to make: 1. boot block needed to be hacked to deal with a "type 6" (2.88 Mb) drive 2. same for kernel floppy driver. in both cases the code currently treats the drive like a 1.44 Mb drive (no 2.88 Mb capability yet!) 3. kernel keyboard/console driver: don't reset the keyboard controller when booting. if you do it spits out different scan codes than the kernel expects to see. 4. installed a different mouse driver that I got from someone on the net. had to hack it a bit because the code to recognize a normal ps/2 mouse doesn't work on the thinkpad." Keith has also gotten crude PCMCIA ethernet support (yikes! can this guy hack or what?). All of his patches are available at ftp://cs.utk.edu/pub/moore/netbsd. See the "OUR QUESTIONS" segment in the back if you want to support Keith's efforts. 6.3. Does SCO Xenix work? Apparently, the only *NIX one that really works is SCO Xenix. I have a text file on installing SCO Xenix available at request. Klaus Eckhoff has installed SCO ODT 3.0 (SCO UNIX 3.2.4.2) using his docking station and an Adaptec 1542C SCSI controller. You need the SCO EFS 130 (one floppy disk via FTP from ftp.sco.com) which will give you the IBM support for various IBM hardware (including MC architecture). SCO supports only 640x480 with standard VGA and 16 colours. With XFree2.1 installed, he had 1024x768 with 256 colors on his external monitor. Additionally, suspend and hybernation work without any problems; the 2.88mb floppy is supported, and the processor speed can be toggled using Fn+F11. 6.4. Does Windows NT work? Get the file, TP750.EXE, which can be ftp'ed from ftp.microsoft.com in the /advsys/winnt/sup-ed/fixes/thinkpad directory. 6.5. Any other OS's? Keith Moore has heard that Solaris x86 works. ====================================================================== 7. MULTIMEDIA ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 7.1. Can I impress my friends with the multimedia? Damn skippy! The TP750 series come with an impressive multimedia demo that sure to have your friends pounding at IBM's doors trying to get one! Unfortunately, it doesn't run under OS/2 yet (although I was told a fix was being worked on). 7.2. How is the multimedia component (specifically, the sound)? The audio subsystem is 16-bit and can sample at up to 48 kHz (that's CD quality). The following emulations are supported for game play (or other use): 1) General MIDI mode 2) Roland Mode 3) Adlib Mode 4) Sound Blaster Mode 5) PC Speaker Mode So far the drivers output pretty nice sounds (subjectively speaking, of course), through the PC speakers. External speakers will get you better noise but at a price of more luggage. The MIDI reproduction is a bit tinny and SoundBlaster (as well as other sound cards) emulation works but may skip a bit and slows down the system. 7.3. What drivers are out for the TP750 soundcard? IBM has put out drivers for Windows 3.1 that support all standard Windows fare (WAV and MIDI). DOS drivers are also available as well as "game" drivers that basically allow for emulation of SoundBlaster, MIDI, Roland, and Adlib. OS/2 drivers are available that will support MMOS as well as "game" emulation in a DOS box. Win-OS2 sounds aren't working yet despite what the documentation claims (this is straight from IBM). 7.4. Is there a text-to-speech utility? Yes, it's called Monologue. The Audio Disk 1.10 contains initial verisions for both DOS and Windows. The DOS version reads ASCII text. The Windows version can read from the clipboard, Excel, or act as a DDE client. The voice is male and tinny but understandable. Future versions claim they will have a female voice option and more options. The DOS version does work under OS/2. 7.5. Can I have exact measurments for the audio line-in and line-out? Both audio jacks are stereo, 1/8 inch mini-jacks. The audio out jack will take headphones. Maximum headphone speaker output is 1.5 mW into 32 ohms. Max output level is 1.9 V peak-to-peak @ 75 Ohms. The input jack is software programmable; mic or line input. Sample rate is 5.5-48 kHz. Mic input: gain 32-54.5 dB; input level 4 mV p-p @ 9 kOhms Line input: input level 5.3 V p-p @ 8 kOhms Mic and line input can be toggled through software. 7.6. What audio chip does the TP750 use? The TP750 uses the CS4248 audio codec from Crystal Semiconductor (which is functionally equivalent Analog Devices AD1848 rev. K chip). The phone number to Crystal Semiconductor (Austin, TX) is (512)445-7222. "The CS4248 is a mixed signal integrated circuit that provides 16-bit audio for computer multimedia systems. The CS4248 includes stereo audio converters and complete on-chip filtering for record and playback of 16-bit audio data. The CS4248 combines conversion, analog mixing, and programmable gain and attenuation to provide a complete audio subsystem in a single 68-pin PLCC or 100-pin TQFP package. The CS4248 includes an 8-bit parallel interface to the industry standard ISA bus. "A complete register mapping is included in the data. There are also device drivers available for Windows 3.1 and NT, as well as diagnostic software. The Monologue software is also available in the Crystal data book (apparently it was a joint development by Crystal and First Source)." - Andrew Stevens *7.7. Is the built-in speaker used for all sounds? Yes, unless you have speakers or headphones connected to the machine. All sounds, including DOS (OS/2, Windows, or what-not) beeps are directed through the built-in speakers. ====================================================================== 8. OUR QUESTIONS ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 8.1. Keith Moore questions. (And yes, he has the technical manuals) 8.1.1. What's different about the floppy drive? What gap values, etc, are used for 2.88 Mb drives, and why does the drive change line act differently? 8.1.2. What does the power switch do? Under linux, it didn't work at all. (does it generate a keyboard scan code or something?) 8.1.3. How do I read the battery capacity from a program? 8.1.4. How do I slow down/speed up the CPU from the kernel? 8.1.5. How can I turn the display backlight off/on? 8.1.6. How to switch (from a program) between internal and external display? 8.1.7. How do I tell the serial port to be a com1/com2/whatever? (are there POS registers? same as for a TP720, or different?) 8.1.8. How do I program the SCSI controller in a dock 1. Is it compatible with any ISA bus card? (Can anyone confirm whether or not it's compatible with the Future Domain card) 8.1.9. How do I program the sound ports? The tp750's i/o address map lists 4 blocks of 16 registers each to access the audio subsystem, but the AD1848K chip only has 4 registers total. I gather that the audio subsystem can be mapped into i/o space at any of the four locations: 0x30-0x3f, 0x4e30-0x4e3f, 0x8e30-0x8e3f, and 0xce30-0xce3f. How does one set or change which of these is used? All of these questions related to Keith's ongoing attempt to hack a free *NIX system to work with the TP750's. See the section on 'Using Other OS's'. 8.2. Where's a better source of TP750 technical info? The technical manuals are terrible. - Keith Moore We've been told that one possible source is to get the technical info for each individual component. 8.3. What PCMCIA cards work with the TP750's? 8.4. What games work with the TP750's audio? ====================================================================== BATTERY SURVEY ---------------------------------------------------------------------- 1. What model TP750 do you have: Mono:__ Color:__ CS:__ P:__ 2. What OS(s) do you use: ___________________________________________ 3. What size hard drive do you have: ___ MB 4. How much memory do you have: ___ MB Who manufactured your card: ______________________________________ 5. What PCMCIA cards do you have (please place an x by the ones you normally leave in the machine)? PCMCIA Card Usually In Machine _______________________________________________ ______ _______________________________________________ ______ _______________________________________________ ______ _______________________________________________ ______ _______________________________________________ ______ 6. "Normal" Use Test: Just go about your daily routines and record the time you start and stop, as well as the battery gauge readings. Use the high CPU setting, and don't let the screen and hard drive turn off. Set screen brightness to low. Don't use PCMCIA cards (remove them). Try to use the computer for at least 1 hour, preferably >2 hours (or >50% of battery charge). Usage Start: Time:_____ Battery%:________ Usage Stop: Time:_____ Battery%:________ Difference: Time:_____ Battery%:________ Feel free to repeat this test as many times as you want. If you like, you can change options like CPU speed, screen brightness, etc. If you do change something, remember to note it when you fill out the survey. Otherwise we'll assume you tested with the toughest conditions, and be amazed you got 6 hours. Oh, playing games for a few hours is a great way to do this test. New conditions (if any):____________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ ____________________________________________________________________ 7. Suspend Test: Put your machine in suspend and let it sit. Now I know most of you are too busy to let your machines sit all the way through this one so I would just like you to record one or two overnight suspends. If you can leave it suspended for longer, great! Entering suspend: Time:_____ Battery%:________ Exiting suspend: Time:_____ Battery%:________ Difference: Time:_____ Battery%:________ 8. What peripherals (Dock, Replicators, Trantor cables, etc.) do you have? This is entirely optional for the battery test and is for another set of data I'm trying to collect. ------------------------------END BATTERY TEST------------------------ Please send all results to ychou@uxa.cso.uiuc.edu on the Internet or to 73672,2111 on CompuServe. ----------------------------------------------------------------------