New install - few issues on ancient Toshiba 440CDX laptop

[a8ksh4]

I'm blown away that I have a responsive graphical linux system with modern kernel running on this old laptop. It has an original Pentium CPU and 80MB of RAM.  I swapped a 32GB CF card in for the HDD, so I think that helps disk stuff to be faster. It does not have a working floppy drive or cdrom, so I needed to pre-load the os on the HDD using another system.

I previously had Debian 4 installed on this laptop, but didn't spend too much time on it and never got usb or network working.  I've been trying different distros the last week to see what would run on it and TC is the first that is modern and installs/boots!  It's currently a fresh out of the box install of Tiny Core 15.  This is what I'm currently trying to figure out:

USB is unstable - I kind of think this is an issue with compatibility with the two USB Ethernet adapters I've tried.  I can plug in a USB hub with mouse and keyboard.  If I add an Ethernet adapter, it'll detect as eth0 for a short while, even get and ip and be able to ping stuff, and then all of the usb devices will disconnect.  I don't think I've seen the issue with just mouse and keyboard.  Dmesg output in attached image. I started wondering if I was running out of memory with any NW stuff enabled, but enabling 1GB swap didn't help.

PCMCIA 802.11 cards not working... I need Ethernet to install the packages for lspci to see what's going on.  he devices under /proc/bus/pci/00/ don't change with/without the cards.  I have two cards.  Maybe they're too new for this laptop...
* Linksys WPC11 ver. 4 802.11b
* Linksys WPC54G ver. 3.1 802.11g

Wrong display resolution - I think the laptop display is 800x600.  I see the desktop, and can interact with open windows, but the bottom and right side are cut off.
* I've tried changing the resolution via the ControlPanel -> Xvesa menu, but it doesn't have any effect.
* Also setting vga=771 in the /mnt/sda1/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf APPEND line does not help.

If I could get wifi working that would help a lot.  I'll have to plug the hdd into another machine to load packages until I get the network sorted out.  Any advice folks can offer here is appreciated, and I'll update as I work through stuff and get more info.

[Rich]

Hi a8ksh4
Welcome to the forum.

... USB is unstable - I kind of think this is an issue with compatibility with the two USB Ethernet adapters I've tried.  I can plug in a USB hub with mouse and keyboard.  If I add an Ethernet adapter, ...

It sounds like the USB port might be slightly overloaded. See if using
a powered hub works any better.

[gadget42]

check out this older forum thread:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25098.0.html

and note different comments on ram amounts(here is one):
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,25098.msg160150.html#msg160150

also searched the forum for "toshiba 440" and found one previous thread:
https://forum.tinycorelinux.net/index.php/topic,7410.0.html

keep us posted on your progress

[Rich]

Hi a8ksh4

Hi a8ksh4
 ... It sounds like the USB port might be slightly overloaded. ...

By the way, this can easily determined if the laptops keyboard
is functional. Unplug the hub and plug the Ethernet adapter
directly into the USB port.

[CentralWare]

It sounds like the USB port might be slightly overloaded. See if using a powered hub works any better.

Agreed. The power supply on these things was a common short-coming as the machine itself drew ~2.55A from a 3A power supply (the screen's backlight would dim when the CD would spin-up!) and these power bricks were constantly being replaced.

Click here for typical specs

If memory serves, USB was just an infant during the years this laptop was released and power management was all but non-existent. A powered, and preferably isolated USB hub would be the recommended direction as the VERY best devices of that time were implied to maintain the 1/2 Amp shared power cap and this many years later, if you consider dirt and oxidation, that cap is VERY easy to reach.  (Clean the USB contacts thoroughly! Imagine someone's teeth not being brushed for 20-30 years... gold electroplated copper isn't AS bad visually, but tends to leave a debris that could easily cause USB, PS2, VGA and other ports to "come and go" with connectivity. If you have experience with game cards for the Nintendo Entertainment System and how "all of a sudden games wouldn't work without cleaning contacts, blowing air into the cartridges, etc." this is the beginning stages of the same oxidation.)

Secondly, you'll want to look into the PCMCIA extension assuming it's still being compiled.  Install pci utilities and usb utilities while you're at it to assist in looking closer under the hood.

Lastly, this machine is going to be from the ISA era and I'll be honest, I cannot remember how much of the ISA bus protocol is still being compiled into the kernel, how much in modules and how much is no longer being dealt with in the 21st century.  @Paul_123, @Rich or @Curaga can you shed a little light there?

Oh, and just for giggles, your video "card" isn't listed by name in the above spec sheet, but just for kicks, install the firmware-video extension and see if that helps you obtain resolution.  According to the spec sheet, you should max out at 1280@256 colors, but your cleanest res looks to be 800x600@16M assuming the kernel sees your actual card details which I'm hoping firmware-video helps with.

The TFT screen has a back-light using cold cathode tubes (think fluorescent light bulbs...  less than 1/4" thick) which can be very fragile; use caution when closing the lid!
IF memory serves, the mouse is serial based, but usually locks in with PS/2 3-Button settings. HDD and CD were both ATA-Mini (IDE) and if you have the docking station, which once upon a time blew up laptops due to shorted ports, plug the power supply into the dock WITHOUT the laptop connected first.  If it smokes, you lose a power supply.  If the laptop is connected, you lose both.

Beyond that, good luck and keep us apprised!

[CNK]

PCMCIA 802.11 cards not working... I need Ethernet to install the packages for lspci to see what's going on.  he devices under /proc/bus/pci/00/ don't change with/without the cards.  I have two cards.  Maybe they're too new for this laptop...
* Linksys WPC11 ver. 4 802.11b
* Linksys WPC54G ver. 3.1 802.11g

I'm pretty certain those will be cardbus cards, which a Pentium 1 era laptop won't support. Cardbus cards have a golden metal strip above the connector while on standard PCMCIA cards this is just regular grey metal.

I've used an original PCMCIA Ethernet adapter in a i486 laptop running relatively recent versions of TC, so the drivers still work, but Cardbus won't with that hardware. There were non-Cardbus PCMCIA WiFi cards, such as early Proxim Orinoco cards, though I'm not sure of the current driver status in Linux (they used to work well).

Wrong display resolution - I think the laptop display is 800x600.  I see the desktop, and can interact with open windows, but the bottom and right side are cut off.
* I've tried changing the resolution via the ControlPanel -> Xvesa menu, but it doesn't have any effect.
* Also setting vga=771 in the /mnt/sda1/boot/extlinux/extlinux.conf APPEND line does not help.

I saw that on my Pentium 1 desktop PC too, though there I think I can just adjust the display positioning with the monitor's controls. I never bothered figuring it out, but I think "xvesa -listmodes" will list available VESA modes, then you can try one with "xvesa -mode [number]" (Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to exit the X server). There's also Xfbdev.

[a8ksh4]

Thanks all for the ideas here!  I'll update later in the week as I have time to play with stuff.  I did get lspci and lsusb working.

I looked briefly for a PCMCIA package and don't see it in the last few releases, but I do see PCI hotplug.   I was assuming PCMCIA devices would all show in lspci, but as cnk mentions, some are cardbus.... PCMCIA -> 16 bit ISA bus; cardbus -> 32 bit PCI bus. lspci sees PCI bus.  O_O.  I'll look for an Orinco card! 

Couple links discussing this stuff:
https://arstechnica.com/civis/threads/pcmcia-pc-card-cardbus-and-pci.711611/
https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-299280-start-0.html

The Gentoo post mentions (e)isapnp.... there are lots of hits on the forums here for this.  Anyway, it's probably wasted cycles reading about it until I have a compatible card to try.

I've been using the USB keyboard because I prefer Colemak DHm layout, so that's on my list of stuff to get working.  I am getting better typing qwerty again since working on this. lol.

[curaga]

The specs for that laptop say it does support cardbus. IIRC the socket would also block the cards from entering if it didn't.

[CNK]

OK that's good if the laptop supports Cardbus after all. Then if cards aren't showing up you'd better check that one or more of the PCMCIA drivers shown with this command:

Code: [Select]

ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/pcmcia
is listed when you run "lsmod". Also check "dmesg" for related errors.

Note that old WiFi cards don't always work with newer WiFi encryption in my experience. Ethernet will probably be easier.

[a8ksh4]

Code: [Select]

ls /lib/modules/`uname -r`/kernel/drivers/pcmcia
is listed when you run "lsmod". Also check "dmesg" for related errors.

After adding laptop to the boot options, I see one of those modules loaded and lspcmcia/pccardctl now report the laptop's two card slots.  Can't see either of my wifi cards yet though.  The WPC11b version 4 = Realtek 8180, and tbd on the other one.  In both cases I lots of old forum posts about using ndiswrapper with the old windows drivers.  More research needed. 

The tiny core book talks about needing to switch to Xfbdev instead of Xvesa for some old systems. Might try that tomorrow to see if I can fix the desktop resolution. 

In other news, I got dedicated home, opt, and swap partitions configured and turned off the zram swap stuff since I only have 80MB of ram, per the book's recommendation for really old systems. 

The video device in this thing is a "Chips and Technologies F65554 (rev c2) (prog-if 00 [VGA controller]).  I have it in my head that with windows this thing would support an early version of opengl, so I wonder if it's possible to build drivers in linux to make it perform well enough to play quake...  Or maybe at least doom...  Need to see if sound works too.

[curaga]

No, Chips gpus were quite badly supported under Linux. No 3d and poor 2d. Doom is a software game though, the ports that use sw rendering should run.

[gadget42]

this website has additional information on your unit that might be helpful:

https://support.dynabook.com/support/home

just enter your model number "440cdx" to see which documents are available

[a8ksh4]

I got an orinco 802.11 pcmcia card and it's detected!  I ran the wifi tool and it sees my home network, but can't connect because it probably only does wep.   So I'm gonna set up a web wifi bridge to use with it. So exciting!

[a8ksh4]

Oh yeah, wifi is working great.  I installed Xfbdev and removed Xvesa and now the desktop resolution is correct.  I need to figure out how to set only window borders to show while dragging though.

getTime.sh is working to set the system time, so I can do some pip install stuff without ssl errors. Pretty cool.   Running pip install anything, I really feel the pain of how slow an old pentium cpu is.  I might need to write stuff in c...

[CNK]

Great work getting WiFi going. Yes Python is terrible on slow hardware. MicroPython might be better, I don't know. C would be best of course, but try shell scripts if you're doing relatively simple things.