[Gllug] help! :) ibm lappy install problem

[Ian Northeast]

James wrote:
> Hi all , just found your fantastic community here at gllug !

> I have an old ibm 240 thinkpad which i'm trying to get linux on.
> 
> I have mannaged to get debian base on it  by using floppys as i dont 
> have a usb or other cdr.
> 
> The problem is i cant get my pcmcia slot working

I have a 365 which was a complete pig. The *only* thing I could get on 
was Slackware (7 I think). Debian would probably have worked using 
floppies, I didn't try, but the installer couldn't find the PCMCIA NIC 
or indeed the PCMCIA bus at all IIRC. Slackware was fine, installed over 
the network no problems. It was slightly tricky to get DHCP working on a 
PCMCIA NIC, I had to fiddle with the scripts a bit. This is probably 
fixed in later versions. I gave it a static IP for the installation. 
I've also heard that X has problems with the video adapter on these, but 
for my purpose I don't need X so it's not even installed.

So you might like to try Slackware.

Newer Thinkpads are much, much better. Since IBM started getting 
interested in Linux their hardware has worked with it. You say yours is 
only 5 years old (mine is more like 12, at least they build them well:). 
I'm not familiar with the model 240. Perhaps it's only just too old.

As well as sundry Linux distros I also tried both Open and NetBSD. These 
found the NIC OK and installed, but the damned thing refused to boot 
them. There is a known restriction that this thing will only boot off a 
hard drive if it has exactly one primary partition, but it must have 
some other restriction too as this was the case - both these OSs put 
their own "partitions" within a single disk partition so there was just 
the one. I could boot both by booting a floppy and telling the BSD boot 
loader to boot off the hard drive. Not very convenient.

Regards, Ian

-- 
Gllug mailing list  -  Gllug at gllug.org.uk
http://lists.gllug.org.uk/mailman/listinfo/gllug