Linux on an IPC-Radiance Notebook

 
  1. Introduction
  2. Technical Stuff
  3. Installation
  4. Setting up the Kernel
  5. Setting up X-Windows
  6. Setting up PCMCIA support
  7. Setting up sound support
  8. Links

1. Introduction

This page is designed to help owners of IPC-Radiance 900 and similar notebooks get Linux installed on their machines. I hereby assume you aren't a complete newbie to Linux and know how to partition your disk, install a Linux Distribution, compile and boot a new kernel. This page is intended to save you time and help you around the (few) obstacles I encountered while configuring Linux for this notebook.
I've not been able to find any IPC-webpage. If someone can point me to the origins of this notebook, please drop me an email.

2. Technical Stuff

 
 

CPU 

Intel Pentium 233MMX
512k Pipeline Burst L2 Cache
Intel 82439TX 
BIOS  SystemSoft (??) version 1.01 
Video  Trident Cyber 9385 with 4MB Video-RAM
supporting 1024x786 @ 24bpp 
PCMCIA  O2-Magic OZ-6832 CardBus Bridge
Intel i82365 compatible
Drives  Toshiba 3.8GB (MK4006MAV)
Mitsumi 20x ATAPI CD-ROM (Bay Swappable)
Whatever 1.44" Floppy (Bay Swappable or Parallel Port attachment) 
Audio  Yamaha OPL3-SA3 (YMH0020/1)
Supported by ALSA Sound Drivers (beta) and OSS-Linux Commercial Sound Drivers
Pointing Device  PS/2 compatible Touchpad and external PS/2 port 
External Ports  9-pin Serial port, PS/2 port
IrDA Infrared Transceiver
External Parallel Port ( or external floppy usage)
Two PCMCIA Slots (One Type III or Two Type II)
15-pin SVGA Port
Port Replicator/Docking Station Connector 
Battery  Li+ Battery, runs for about two hours 
Display  14.2 TFT 1024x786 
Misc  Single Bay for either CD-ROM or Floppy (floppy can reside on the parallel port)
Suspend to RAM or to disk when closed 
 

3. Installation

I installed the S.u.S.E.-5.3 distribution on the laptop. The installation was straightforward without any problems (no news are good news ;-)). So I wouldn't expect trouble with other major distributions. This page will only describe things that did not configure out of the box:

4. Setting up the Kernel

This should cause you no trouble. Refer to the Kernel-HOWTO if you do not know how to compile and boot a new kernel.

Note: if you build a new kernel you have to rebuild the pcmcia-package also.
However, there are some settings that you should be aware of:

PCI bios support

Since the Radiance, like most today's Pentium notebooks utilizes an Intel-TX chipset say ´yes´

Enhanced IDE/MFM/RLL disk/cdrom/tape/floppy support:

Say 'yes' to "Intel 82371 PIIX (Triton I/II) DMA support"

Character devices:

Don't forget to enable PS/2-mouse support.
These are my APM-settings:
Ignore USER SUSPEND: no
Enable PM at boot time: yes
Make CPU Idle calls when idle: yes
Enable console blanking using APM: yes
Power off on shutdown: yes
Ignore multiple suspend: yes

Sound:

Say ´no´ since the kernel- (OSS-Free-) driver doesn't support OPL3-SAx chips yet.
 

5. Setting up X-Windows

The Cyber-8385 video chip is supported at least since Xfree -3.3.2 via the SVGA-Server. Unfortunately neither ´SaX´ (S.u.S.E.´s X-setup tool) nor ´XF86Setup´ managed to get X up and running. XF86Config hasn't been able to start the X-server and SaX did something unspeakably nasty to the display.....
I had to revert to the good old ´xf86setup´ command line tool or completely write the XF86Config by hand. Here it is:
Section "Files"

RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"

FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/"
Section "Keyboard"

Protocol "Standard"
AutoRepeat 500 5
XkbModel "pc102"
XkbLayout "de"
XkbVariant "nodeadkeys"
Xkbkeycodes "xfree86"
XkbTypes "default"
XkbCompat "default"
XkbSymbols "en_US(pc102)+de_CH"
XkbGeometry "pc"

EndSection
Section "Pointer"
Protocol "PS/2"
Device "/dev/psaux"
Emulate3Buttons
Emulate3Timeout 50

EndSection
Section "Monitor"

Identifier "TFT"
VendorName "ipc"
ModelName "tft"

HorizSync 31.5 - 48.5 # I don´t know better
VertRefresh 50-70 # comments welcome

Modeline "1024x768" 62 1024 1032 1176 1344 768 771 777 806 -hsync -vsync
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "cyber"
VendorName "Trident"
BoardName "Cyber-9385"
#VideoRam 4096
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Driver "svga"
Device "cyber"
Monitor "TFT"
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection
A tip: I've been quite happy when I recognized that tipping with one , two or three fingers on the touchpad simultaneously results in pressing the left,middle resp. right mouse-button.

6. Setting up PCMCIA support

You'll need the PCMCIA card services drivers. They should be part of your distribution. If not you can get them from ftp://hyper.standford.edu/pub/pcmcia. The current version is 3.0.4. The OZ-6832 CardBus-controller in the notebook is Intel i82365 compatible. So, if you have a S.u.S.E., set ´PCMCIA="i82365"´ in your /etc/rc.config. Now, if you reboot or do a ´/sbin/init.d/pcmcia start´ the driver modules ´pcmcia_core.o´,´ds,o´ and ´i82365´ should be loaded, and the kernel should say something like this:
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: Linux PCMCIA Card Services 3.0.4
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: kernel build: 2.0.35 #8 Sun Aug 16 14:56:27 MEST 1998
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: options: [pci] [cardbus] [apm]
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: Intel PCIC probe:
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: O2Micro OZ6832 CardBus at mem 0x68000000, 2 sockets
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: host opts [0]: [pci irq 9] [lat 168/176] [bus 32/34]
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: host opts [1]: [pci irq 9] [lat 168/176] [bus 35/37]
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: ISA irqs (scanned) = 3,4,7,11 status change on irq 11
The pcmcia-script will also run the cardmgr-daemon. Upon insertion of a card it will recognize it and load the appropriate driver module. In case of the D-Link DE-660 ethernet-card this would be ´pcnet_cs.o´. I had to exclude the memory-area 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff from cardmgr's scans for the card to be recognized properly. Comment it out in /etc/pcmcia/config.opts. Syslog says:
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: excluding 0xcf8-0xcff
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: cs: IO port probe 0x0800-0x08ff: clean.
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x200-0x207 0x220-0x22f 0x330-0x337 0x378-0x37f 0x388-0x38f 0x398-0x39f 0x4d0-0x4d7
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: cs: memory probe 0x0d0000-0x0dffff: clean.
Aug 26 14:41:41 moon kernel: eth0: NE2000 Compatible: port 0x300, irq 3, hw_addr 00:80:C8:89:AA:ED
You might play with ´cardctl´ to investigate about the PCMCIA card's status, remove or suspend it. For more information you should consult the documentation coming with the pcmcia-package and check the the PCMCIA-CS website and the PCMCIA-HOWTO.

7. Setting up sound support

For this one I don´t have any satisfying solution right now. Unfortunately the standard kernel (OSS-Free ) -drivers do not support the OPL3SAx chipsets right now. There are two ways to get it work:
  1. The OSS-Linux drivers
  2. Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

The OSS-Linux diver is probably the way to go, if you want to avoid pain. But they will cost you USD$20. Setup is very easy.

The ALSA-drivers on the other hand are still very beta but they've done the job for me and were easy to install. You have to obtain three packages from ftp://alsa.jcu.cz : 1. the driver package itself. It contains a whole bunch of modules. 2. the lib- and 3. the util- packages. The lib-package is needed by the utilities. These contain a mixer you'll need since the ALSA-driver mutes all channels by default. I don´t know any other way to wake them up, but using the alsamixer. Building the packages went like a breeze. Just do ´./configure´ and ´make install´. Read the instructions on how to load the modules. These are the relevant lines from my /etc/conf.modules:

alias snd-card-0 snd-opl3sa
alias char-major-14 snd
alias snd-minor-oss-0 snd-opl3sa
alias snd-minor-oss-3 snd-pcm1-oss
alias snd-minor-oss-4 snd-pcm1-oss
alias snd-minor-oss-5 snd-pcm1-oss
alias snd-minor-oss-12 snd-pcm1-oss

options snd-opl3sa snd_port=0x370 snd_wss_port=0x530 \
snd_midi_port=0x330 snd_fm_port=0x388 snd_irq=5 snd_dma1=0 \
snd_dma1_size=16 snd_dma2=1 snd_dma2_size=16

8. Links

Linux on Laptops
Linux PCMCIA Card Services Home Page
Linux Advanced Power Management Home Page
Battery Powered Linux Mini-Howto
Afterstep Battery status
Linux Laptop Volunteer Support Database
The OSS-Linux drivers
Advanced Linux Sound Architecture

Last updated: 08/26/98
Martin Hoffmann