Installing Linux on a Thinkpad T23

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Drivers: Proprietary

Updated: 17th March 2004

What I had:

  • IBM Thinkpad T23, 14.1" screen
  • Debian Woody (3.0) unstable snap shot, around October 2002
  • Debian Potato 2.2
  • Mandrake 9.0

Background

The Thinkpad T23 was bought because I wanted to either have a dual boot lappy or a completely Linux one. The research I did suggested that people were having less trouble with installing Linux on Thinkpads than other laptops.

The laptop itself was sold with Windows 2000 on it, rather than Windows XP, something I was quite happy with, as I'm a fan of W2k. Seeing it was W2k, the dual boot option was the one to go for.

I haven't had a great deal to do with Linux or computers in general, basically just as a hobby. I've been using a computer regularly for just over 10 years, and just basically taught myself from then.  Regarding Linux, I've been using Red Hat mainly, dual-booting since v5.2, and running a dedicated home server since v7.1. Recently I've been experimenting with Mandrake and Debian. I've been impressed with both, Mandrake v9.0 for it's pretty install, and Debian for it's ease of maintenance.  (I love apt-get!)

Laptop specs

  • Pentium III-M 1.13 GHz
  • 256 M RAM
  • DVD drive, hot swappable with a 3.5" floppy drive
  • Video card: S3 SuperSavage/IXC IBM 16M, OpenGL.
  • Screen: LCD 1024x768 60 Hz
  • Sound: Cirrus Logic WDM??
  • Modem: Lucent Technologies Win Modem 56k on COM 3
  • Ethernet: Intel PRO/100 VE
  • 2 x PCMCIA slots, Texas Instruments PCI-1420
  • IBM Thinkpad Fast Infrared Port

lspci output:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82830 830 Chipset Host Bridge (rev 04)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82830 830 Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 04)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #3) (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801CAM IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM SMBus Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. SuperSavage IX/C SDR (rev 05)
02:00.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1420
02:00.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1420
02:02.0 Communication controller: Lucent Microelectronics WinModem 56k (rev 01)
02:08.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corp. 82801CAM (ICH3) PRO/100 VE (LOM) Ethernet Controller (rev 42)

The Mandrake 9.0 Install

The Mandrake install is a total no-brainer, plug the CDs in, choose to boot from the CD drive, and Bob's your uncle. Smooth install, no problems.

  • X and KDE looked good, Gnome worked well.
  • Sound and video worked well, except that the microphone was turned up full by default, getting a bit of feedback through it.
  • Ethernet connections worked very well.
  • Plugged in an Orinoco based wireless card, and it picked it up no worries.

Untested:

  • Infra red thingo
  • Modem
  • Hot/cold swapping of the DVD and floppy drives
  • Suspending/sleep mode

In retrospect, what I should have done is installed Mandrake and then do an lsmod to see what modules were installed, and this would have helped a lot with the Debian install.

The Debian Potato Install

Potato 2.2 would not even boot from the CD. Nup. Not a sausage. Tried all the boot options, none worked. Don't know why ...

What I didn't try is to use the floppy drive and boot from the floppy boot image.

The Debian Woody Install

Woody installed OK from the CD, but X was a problem though, took me a few times to get it right. I would recommend not using tasksel or dselect for installing stuff, just use apt-get after installing a basic system.

Ethernet:

Choose the eepro100 module. There is a propriety binary-only driver from IBM available according to this link , but I didn't try it. This eepro100 module seems to work well enough for me.

Video:

Modules loaded:

  • agpart

The Debian stable release uses XFree86 4.1.0.1. The s3 driver didn't work. There are some binary only drivers available from S3 , but they didn't work for me. There seem to be no Linux binary drivers for the SuperSavage on that site, but others have reported using the Savage MX-IX (290-298) driver successfully with this lappy.

The Vesa driver did work however, maximum colour depth 16 bit for 1024x768. The screen was configured using the medium complexity setting, choosing 1024x768 LCD screen at 60 Hz.

I couldn't use KDE or Gnome with X, even though I installed kdm and gdm. Not that they don't work, it's just I haven't got the smarts to make them work. IceWM works well enough.

One problem that I need to find a solution for: occasionally the mouse pointer has a fit, moves to the top right of the screen and opens up a window list. Don't know what causes it, investigations are continuing. I'm assuming a shared resource somewhere.

Update: Changed from stable (Woody) to testing (Sid) ( XFree86 4.2.1, up from 4.1.0.1 ) and the pointer is now well behaved. Might be an X thing, then. Or a mouse thing. Ah, who cares, it works now!

An open source driver for S3, which may work, but the coder hasn't been able to get his hands on this video chip, so it is untested. Might try it one day. It also has a Debian package of the source. Update: The author of that site has been getting his hand on a T23, so the driver may work.

Modem:

There is nothing in the vanilla Debian install that will make this work. However, I was able to follow the instructions on this site and add a couple of lines to my sources.list file that would make it possible to apt-get install a modem driver.

A couple of things to note: doing this is probably not the most secure thing to do, it would be better to compile the source from scratch. Also this driver is described as "half open source" so it will taint your installation, if you're into that whole pure and unadulterated open source thing.

I installed the bf-2.4.18 driver, and the modem works very well. Speed is not a problem, and I was able to download and upload at the full rate.

Update: The compiled modem driver at the above site is running a couple of minor versions behind the kernel version in Sid. For example, at the time of the release of the 2.4.25 kernel in Sid, the binaries were only up for the 2.4.22 kernel. This will mean that you will have to compile the ltmodem driver from source, if you're using a late-ish kernel.

Other stuff:

WIRELESS The Orinoco based wireless card was picked up no worries, and works OK. Under heavy activity, eg: downloading a file from the LAN, you tend to get a few transmission errors, possibly due to the card and drivers not being able to keep up with the rate.

SOUND The i810 module was loaded with sound, but as yet the speakers have yet to make a squeak. Other people have reported that ALSA works. Looking into it...

The sleep mode seems to work OK, able to shut things down and start up without anything dropping out. Yet to give it a thorough test though.

PCMCIA The original install for the 2.4.18 kernel, the pcmcia driver to install was the i82365 driver. Moving the kernel to 2.4.25 broke the pcmcia, but it was fixed by changing the pcmcia driver to the Intel yenta driver (yenta_socket). The i82365 driver seems to be compiled into the kernel packages, but is unused.

Untested:

  • Infra red stuff (nothing to test it with)
  • Cold swapping of the DVD and floppy drives (assuming hot-swap not an option) Update: Cold swapping works, the drivers pick up the change well.

In the end ...

Ended up keeping the Debian Woody on the system, as it was a lot more flexible, and upgrading is a breeze. The Vesa driver and IceWM is pretty good, and I don't really need KDE or Gnome. Managed to install all the programs I need, and things are working well.