This is Harald Milz's original ThinkPad760 Page...with minor link editing(9/23/99).

Linux on the IBM Thinkpad 760

There are many pages concerning running Linux on the IBM Thinkpad in general and the Thinkpad 760 in particular (one of which happens to be my personal workstation at work, replacing a IBM RS/6000 Model 37T). This is meant to be a comprehensive list of pages covering this topic. Contributions and suggestions welcome. Some of the ibm.com pages are only accessible IBM internally so a) don't be too worried you cannot access them and b) be happy so many people inside IBM play/work with Linux!
Please note that although I do work with Linux daily again, I'm no longer owner of a 760 model (I have a 600 now...). Essentially, I am hardly any longer able to support "Linux on Thinkpad 760" questions, and do not longer maintain this page. It will eventually disappear.

Here's some more:

My Machine

My Thinkpad 760EL is merlin.ak.munich.ibm.com (9.23.4.248, IBM internal). The box runs an snmp daemon so you can look what's going on there if you can. CPU is P120, no L2 cache (I really wonder which marketing "expert" is responsible for this nonsense!), 11.3" DSTN display, upgraded 2.1GB disk. DOSEMU runs from /var/local/dosemu, using EMUFS.SYS. There is also a W95 partition (/dev/hda1) on this machine, and both boot from LILO.

Kernel Configuration

I use a stock 2.0.29 kernel with kerneld and modules. The kernel config file which can be used by "make xconfig" is here.

Graphics and LCD

merlin has a TGUI9320LCD chip (800x600 DSTN 11.3 " screen). I upgraded to XFree86 3.3.1 recently, and the SVGA X server is capable of running the external monitor at 1024x768@76Hz (85 MHz) without flicker and 1152x864@70Hz (90 MHz which is the maximum for this chip) with some flicker at higher CPU loads. On the LCD, the 3.3.1 server swaps the left and right halves of the screen... so I stick to 3.2 there. Anyway, here's my XF86Config for


Remark 1: When no external monitor is attached, I need to press Fn - F7 once. Otherwise the LCD screen remains dark after starting X.
Remark 2: Be careful when experimenting with XF86Config modelines. Some higher frequency modes apparently overdrive the driver chip or the LC display, resulting in a dark blue screen carrying two horizontal yellow lines. When these lines appear, dim the LCD immediately. When this happened to me for the first time, I didn't react at once, and the lines remained visible for more than a day. I suspect this is not very healthy for the display.
Please note also that there are TP760EL models with the 1024x768 TFT LCD screen (like the TP760ED). These models have a Trident Cyber9385 chip which has to be handled differently. See the TBoult's IBM thinkpad 760ed linux laptop page for more information or use XFree86 3.3.1 richt away.
Remark 3 This place used to carry a call for donations to support the development of the 9320 X server which is maintained by Alan Hourihane. In the meantime, 9320 based Thinkpads were withdrawn from marketing, and the current models are all 9385 based. This chip in turn cooperates nicely with XFree86 3.3.1 so that this call for donations is kinda obsolete.

PCMCIA

By the way: There is a patch for tcpdump which works fine with the above Token Ring PCMCIA card. Remark: The newer EtherJetPC Card (P/N 72H4041) has preliminary support by a driver written by Danilo Beuche. Since we have a couple of EtherJetPC Cards in the office for which there are no AIX, OS/2 or Windoze drivers, I'll give it a try. Stay tuned.

Memory

Until end of March 1997, I only had 16 MBytes of RAM which lead to severe paging especially when running Xemacs, Netscape and Wabi at the same time (don't do it!). After I had installed another 32 Meg SO-DIMM, the machine started paging only once (when I had opened lots of big applications including Wabi loading a 10 Meg Freelance file. Highly recommended. :-)

Power Supply

The TP760EL comes with a Li-Ion battery which has enough power (using APM in the kernel) for 2.5 hours of uninterrupted work (16 Megs RAM, no CDROM drive). With 48 Megs of RAM, the battery lasts for about 2:15 hours.

Docking Station

I use a Dock I docking station with the internal TMC-950 SCSI chip as described on the Linux on the IBM ThinkPad page and had to make some patches to seagate.c to get the chip detection straight. The module loads and works with the following line in /etc/conf.modules:

options seagate irq=15
The base address (0xca000 in my case) was found with W95 (sigh), and the IRQ can be set with a jumper when opening the bottom of the docking station. With the above patch, the driver itself will find the base address and fail cleanly if no chip is present. The stock seagate driver needs an override for the base_address (signature mismatch) and will hang the machine if the chip isn't at this location!

Other External Attachments

Linux Installation

merlin runs a LST 2.2 installation which is also known as the base for Caldera Open Linux 1.0.

Harald Milz

Last modified: Tue Aug 24 08:26:43 CEST 1999