TP755CX

[Ted Baker <baker@ada.cs.fsu.edu>]

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OK.  I'll tell my story as it has unfolded so far, but forgive me
if it is too long.

I just bought a TP755CX, whose main claims to greatness are the
Pentium processor and 800x600 display.  It somes with 8Mbytes of
RAM and 810 Mbytes of disk.  I added a 32Mbyte RAM card, since I
plan on doing big compiles, and would like to speed these up using
a RAM disk.

I intended to use this machine on the road, with LaTeX at IEEE
POSIX meetings (for my work as Technical Editor for the IEEE
POSIX.5b project) and as a development station for porting our
Pthreads and Ada tasking (GNARL) implementation to Linux.

I also ordered an IBM PCMCIA ethernet card, version II, which I
have sent back.  My plan was to ftp Slackware via the ethernet
onto the disk using DOS, and install it from ther.  This did not
work very well, since I could not find a (DOS) packet driver for
that PCMCIA card, and IBM supplies it with a male RJ45 connector.
Between trying to adapt the gender of the connector and the lack
of packet driver, I was frustrated enough to send the card back to
IBM.

I installed Slackware using a borrowed PCMCIA card from a
colleague, who has a Sager 90Mhz pentium laptop machine.  I have
now ordered one of the Sager PCMCIA ethernet card (about half the
price of the IBM card), since it apparently works OK with both DOS
and Linux on the TP as well as the Sager machine.

Before installing Linux, we zipped up all the preinstalled
software, and ftp'd it to another system for backup, figuring we
could reinstall what we wanted later.  This was a mistake.

If you do this, run the "disk factory" utility, and make
installation disks of everything, before you start.  You may want
to use DOS and/or OS/2 to be able to take advantage of all the
nifty DSP software.

I only reserved about 200 Mbytes for DOS, and scrapped OS/2.  This
is not enough space to reload the software.  The preinstalled
stuff takes over 400 Mbytes, and has components in various
directories.  The only way to remove things cleanly is to use the
remove-utilities provided with the software.  You can't really
reinstall just pieces, unless you have first used the IBM-supplied
"disk factory" to make your own installation disks.  (This is
aggravated by the fact that the disk factory software crashes when
you run it to create disks for the OS/2 windows installation.)  We
tried to restore enough of the DOS installation to allow us to ftp
over Slackware.  The result is an oversized and crippled
DOS/Windows installation, with a lot of miscellaneous junk from
OS/2 and other preinstalled software, that came along in the
directories we restored.  There is no reasonable way to get all
this stuff out of there, since the uninstall utility dies if it
larg chunks are already missing.  It looks like I've effectively
lost all the preinstalled software, unless I want to remove Linux,
repartition the disk, restore the whole thing, and start over.

Slackware, which I downloaded from sunsite.unc.edu, installed with
no hitches.  XFree86 came up with no trouble in 640x480 mode,
using the XF86Config file from the TP755 FAQ.

I fetched linux-1.2.11, modules-1.2.8, apm_bios.0.5, and
pcmcia-cs-2.6.2, and built a new kernel.  It seems to run OK.

I still have the following problems:

1. APM only partly works.  If I use the daemon, it does put the
   screen into sleep mode after a period of idleness, but it keeps
   the disk running, and if I use the fcn-key bindings to idle the
   machine, it locks up.  Killing the daemon restored use of the
   key bindings.  I don't know how to proceed on this without some
   documentation on the TP's apm controller and bios.

2. When you come out of X11, the tty video controller is left in
   a weird state.  Portions of the line seem to be overwritten, 
   and shifted slightly, so that you end up with some characters
   duplicated and overwritten.  It is useless until you power down
   the system.

3. No amount of fiddling with XF86Config gave access to the 800x600
   pixel mode.  Looking at the clock numbers reported by the SVGA driver,
   from several experiments between which I used the display in 800x600
   vis DOS/Windows, I see differences that indicate one probably needs
   to reprogram the controller to adjust the clock rate.  

4. I guess I am going to have to sacrifice all the neat
functionality of the DSP, including modem and sound card services,
since I've not seen anything on the net about support for that
under Linux.  

I'm most worried about problems 2 and 3, since right now my
display at 640x480 is smaller than most el-cheapo laptops, with a
nice big black border all around it, of unused pixels.

It seems problems 2 and 3 will require mucking with the
SVGA driver, for which some documentation on the programming
interface to the video controller is going to be needed.  I tried
to get help from IBM tech support, but it turned into a waste of
half a day's time on the phone.  I must have talked to over a
dozen people, but it was a merry-go-round.  They passed me back
and forth, through various phone numbers, each time eventually
coming back to the same number.  

Right now, I need to get some real work done, so I've put it aside
and am using my trust Sun workstation until I can get some more
information.

Besides e-mail to this list, my efforts to get more information
will include a call to the IBM publications folks to see if I can
find any sort of hardware reference manual for this machine.  I've
also asked Western Digital for data sheets on their WD90C24 chip
set, which the SVGA driver seems to think is present, and am
waitint to see if they help any.

If you have any advice or information that might help, I would be
pleased to hear from you.

Prof. Ted Baker
Department of Computer Science
Florida State University
Tallahassee, FL 32306-4019

phone:  904-644-5452
fax:    904-644-0058
e-mail: baker@cs.fsu.edu