Some of you may be interested to find that I was able to get Debian up and running on a Toshiba Portege' 3015CT laptop (finally). And in deference to my post to debian-user last week regarding this issue, I promised to let everyone know what I found...
First, I found a VERY nice document on the subject by Stephen Foskett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> at the Linux Laptop Volunteer Database... http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/kharker/linux-laptop/ I'd highly recommend anyone installing on a laptop check out this huge resource. First off, Stephen should get MEGA-KUDOS and thank-you's from all of us running the Toshiba Portege's! Great job, Stephen! His instructions are at: http://slf.gweep.net/~sfoskett/linux/p3010.html I used his technique of starting out in Windows/DOS and booting through loadlin.exe, which worked very well. Only error I found in his documentation was that while the method he describes always boots correctly when coming in from DOS, if you try to boot using the standard kernel image for slink on this laptop from LILO, the system goes into a continuous reboot cycle after loading the kernel image. Old bug, I know, but it still bites hard. I downloaded the "tecra" images and renamed them to replace the "standard" images, in Steve's suggested installation directory, and I also downloaded the ltecra kernel image into the install directory. Then I booted from loadlin.exe from DOS, and installed Debian more or less the standard way after that point. PCMCIA works, everything else (that should be) is working, and I'm very happy to have Debian on my laptop system instead of that -- other -- Linux variant I was forced to use in a pinch this weekend. My PCMCIA CD-ROM isn't very happy yet, but I know that's fixed in the 2.2 kernels... so now the decision becomes, do I do it on slink? We'll see... Stephen's method works fine if you're going to always load up DOS/Windows first and then boot to Linux. He mentions in his text that he uses a script in his autoexec.bat to decide which OS to start up. I wanted to use LILO to select the OS (and actually I go back and forth from using LILO to BootMagic, the commercial package, depending on my mood... they both work now...) at boot-time, and the tecra images do the trick using the usual installation diskette menus to set it up. Stephen, again... THANK YOU! Other stuff I tried: I attempted to boot and load from floppy using the tecra rescue disk image, and it WOULD NOT BOOT. It had the same symptoms as if I'd used a bzImage kernel, and the same symptoms as the first time I attempted to get LILO installed after following Stephens instructions in the document without adding the tecra images. Very strange. I also tried the "tecra-safe" rescue disk, but since it's really to fix problems with SYSLINUX and not the kernel image, had no different effect. Neither "tecra" diskette would boot, and yes... I remade them three times each and once in a different machine's floppy drive, just to make sure the disks were okay. If it weren't for Stephen's documentation, I'd have never thought to get things installed in this way. I owe you a beverage of your choice if we ever meet someday! +-----------------------------------+--------------------------------+ | Nate Duehr - [EMAIL PROTECTED] | Support Amateur Radio & Linux! | | Private Pilot, Telephony Engineer | Ham Callsign: N0NTZ | | UNIX Hack, Perl Hack, Tech-Freak | Grid Square: DM79 | | | "May the Source be with you." | +-----------------------------------+--------------------------------+ | HamRadio and Linux mailing lists available for interested parties: | | http://www.natetech.com/mailman/listinfo | +--------------------------------------------------------------------+