Specifications:
| MODEL | Texas Instruments Extensa 670CDT |
MORE INFO | Extensa 670 (now owned by acer) | |
| CPU | Pentium 166 MMX 256 KB Internal Cache |
BIOS | PhoenixBIOS 4.05 | |
| DISPLAY | 12.1" (11.3) TFT C&T 65550 2MB 800x600 16 bits per pixel |
MEMORY | 64 MB | |
| SOUND | ESS ES1878 AudioDrive | PCMCIA | TI 1130 PCI-CARDBUS (2) 32-Bit CardBus slots | |
| DRIVES | 2.1 GB Hard Disk (Hot Swap) 1.44MB Floppy (Hot Swap) 10x CDROM |
OTHER | Touchpad Pointing Device Infra-Red Port 7.0 LBS (5.84 w/o Battery) 11.9"x9.5"x2.25" | |
| OS | Red Hat 6.1 Linux 2.2.14 |
Installation:
The last distribution that I installed on this machine, was an updated version of Red Hat 6.1. This version was created by merging all of the updated packages with the standard distribution. This is rather easy to do, if you follow the HOWTO on burning your own updated version of Red Hat.
After creating my installation CD, I used Partition Magic to adjust all of my partitions:
| hda1 | 300 MB | Windows | ||
| hda2 | 200 MB | / | ||
| hda3 | Extended | |||
| hda5 | 64 MB | Swap | ||
| hda6 | 610 MB | /home | ||
| hda7 | 890 MB | /usr |
I allowed LILO to be installed in the MBR, and in no time at all I was running Linux.
Display:
The Video Card is a "Chips and Technologies 65550" card with 2 MB of video ram. Considering that the screen is designed for 800x600, this is an ample amount of video memory. I am using the XFree86_SVGA video server, which was correctly selected by Xconfigurator. There are a large number of extra options and flags that one can play with in the XF86Config file. You can read about all of these interesting options in the C&T documentation at XFree86.org. I am currently running 16bpp with the following modeline:
# 800x600 @ 56 Hz, 35.15 kHz hsync ModeLine "800x600" 36 800 824 896 1024 600 601 603 625
PCMCIA:
Currently, I'm using a Xircom 10/100 Ethernet PC Card, #CE3B-100BTX. They have information about Linux support on their website, which is always a good sign. I am using the following options in my PCMCIA configuration file:
/etc/sysconfig/pcmcia PCMCIA=yes PCIC=i82365 PCIC_OPTS="irq_mask=0xefff" CORE_OPTS= CARDMGR_OPTS=
In my network configuration (using netcfg), I have indicated that eth0 should not be started on boot. This appears to be the correct thing to do, since the card manager will start the network when the network card is inserted.
Sound:
I had no trouble configuring the sound card using the sndconfig utility. Considering how small the internal speaker are, and how old this laptop is, the sound quality is rather good. It's even better if you use external speakers or headphones. I am using the following options in my conf.modules file:
/etc/conf.modules options parport_pc io=0x378 irq=7 alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc pre-install pcmcia_core /etc/rc.d/init.d/pcmcia start alias sound sb pre-install sound insmod sound dmabuf=1 alias midi opl3 options opl3 io=0x388 options sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 mpu_io=0x330
The first two entries are for configuring the parallel port. I have successfully used several devices through the parallel port, including PLIP and an HP Laserjet printer (obviously not both at the exact same time). The last five entries were inserted by the sndconfig utility.
Advanced Power Management:
I have had mixed success in this area, and in fact this is the only thing that is really causing any problems at the moment. With APM enabled, I can put the computer in Standby Mode and there is no problem with Linux shutting the computer off on halt. However, if I do a "Save to Disk" or "Suspend", I get a nice Oops message with a Segmentation Fault when the computer "Resumes". This is normally not that much of a problem, but there are these hot keys on the computer which execute these different APM functions. If you press Ctrl-Alt-F2 for example, it does a "Save to Disk" instead of sending you to Console2. You can get around this by switching first to Console5, then using Alt-F2 to switch to Console2. I often forget and have to spend some time doing a filesystem check on the next reboot, since the computer freezes and the partitions can't be properly unmounted. Also, if you close the lid on the notebook, it automatically performs a "Standby" which once again unrecoverably locks up the machine. If I disable APM, then I can close the lid without any change to the powerstate of the computer. In fact it looks like the LCD doesn't even go blank. If anyone has any information about how to solve this problem, please let me know. Feel free to read the decoded Oops Message from the kernel. I had to copy it by hand, since the machine was locked up.
Summary:
With the exception of the strange lockups during "Resume", the TI Extensa 670CDT is completely compatible with Linux. I routinely run applications such as Matlab, Mathematica, and StarOffice without any trouble. If I can just get the APM working flawlessly, I will be completely satisfied.
Links:
Linux on Laptops
LiLAC - Linux with Laptop Computers
Add your link here!
Page Maintained By: chrisjohnson@glay.org
Last Updated On: 15-Apr-2001