Warning: Anything expressed on these pages is my personal opinion, and there is no guarantee or warranty of any kind. Under no circumstances whatsoever shall I be held liable for any damages you incur because of using information presented herein.

Linux on the Toshiba 4015 CDT

Introduction

When I bought this laptop in April 1999, I also bought a 100MB parallel-port ZIP drive along with it, and I used this drive to transfer my old Linux installation from my desktop to my laptop. Then I modified the installation as was necessary. All in all I can say that I got everything running that I wanted to get running.

One warning though: If you also copy your system from your desktop to your laptop, then you have the same old versions on your laptop as on your desktop (in my case dating back to 1995). Maybe you are better off starting with a fresh installation from a CDROM.

Copying using a ZIP drive

On your desktop, create yourself a boot/root disk with a kernel that can read IDE and ZIP drives. I did that, you can download it from this directory. Boot your desktop from the floppy, and copy your old system onto a few ZIP disks. On the laptop, I assume you have already resized/deleted the Windows98 partition and created the necessary Linux partitions. Now connect the ZIP drive to the laptop, boot from the floppy, and copy everything to the desired places. You notice that I say nothing about mounting drives and so on, I assume that you know all that. The ZIP drive appears on my Toshiba as /dev/sda4.

After you have copied everything over, don't forget to set up your boot parameters. I use lilo, and my Linux root partition is on /dev/hda2, which for now was mounted under /mnt because I booted from the floppy. So I needed to edit the files /mnt/etc/fstab and /mnt/etc/lilo.conf, and then I had to issue the command "lilo -v -r /mnt". If you hit the left Shift key while "LILO" is displayed, then you can choose the operating system. Hit the tab key for a list. After choosing "linux" I get the following boot messages.

Recompiling the kernel

Of course I recompiled the kernel to specifically fit the hardware. What ever you do, make sure you enable module support by the kernel, as you need that for the PCMCIA package, and enable the PS/2 mouse, because you need that for X-windows. Some sections below contain further information on the kernel compilation. Here are various sample /usr/src/linux/.config files, depending on your kernel version: 2.2.12,  2.2.18,  2.4.2.

XFree86

I had to update X windows from my old installation, XFree86 Version 3.3.3.1 works fine. Here are the messages when X boots. This configuration file XF86Config works for me.

PCMCIA

I am running the Linux kernel version 2.2.12. However, I could not get the pcmcia package version 3.0.14 to work with that kernel (pcmcia-3.0.9 had worked well with Linux-2.2.10, but did not work with Linux-2.2.12). I got the beta-version pcmcia-cs.07-Sep-99.tar.gz at ftp://csb.stanford.edu/pub/pcmcia/NEW, and that one worked. Information about the modem can be obtained with the command "cardctl ident" while the information about the cardbus services can be found in the boot messages.
Update:The package is now available at http://sourceforge.net/projects/pcmcia-cs/

Sound

Needs to be set up during the kernel compilation. I said "m" for module to the following (and "n" for no to all the others in the sound section): 
Sound card support (CONFIG_SOUND)
OSS sound modules (CONFIG_SOUND_OSS)
100% Sound Blaster compatibles (SB16/32/64, ESS, Jazz16) support (CONFIG_SOUND_SB)
Generic OPL2/OPL3 FM synthesizer support (CONFIG_SOUND_ADLIB)
MPU-401 support (NOT for SB16) (CONFIG_SOUND_MPU401)
Microsoft Sound System support (CONFIG_SOUND_MSS)
Support for Crystal CS4232 based (PnP) cards (CONFIG_SOUND_CS4232)
Support for Yamaha OPL3-SA2, SA3, and SAx based PnP cards (CONFIG_SOUND_OPL3SA2)
Then various parameters need to be set up in the file /etc/modules.conf, here is the relevant part. Here is the output of "cat/dev/sndstat".

The default volume for playing audio files is much higher with the Soundblaster setup than when using the Yamaha FM Synthesizer setup. Of course you can adjust the volume with a mixer program (you need to adjust the PCM level). The mixer is /dev/mixer0, make sure /dev/mixer is a symbolic link to that. Finally, if you decide to go with the Yamaha FM Synthesizer setup, then you don't need to enable Soundblaster support.

Audio CDs can be played directly without using the sound configuration. However, if you have sound configured, then you can additionally use a mixer program to adjust the volume for CD playing also (you need to adjust the CD level). By the way, the CDROM drive is accessed through /dev/hdc, make sure /dev/cdrom points to this.

The ZIP drive

Needs to be set up during the kernel compilation. I said "m" for module (or "y" for yes if "m" was not an option) to the following (and "n" for no to all the others in the SCSI section): 
SCSI support (CONFIG_SCSI)
SCSI disk support (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_SD)
Probe all LUNs on each SCSI device (CONFIG_SCSI_MULTI_LUN)
IOMEGA parallel port (ppa - older drives) (CONFIG_SCSI_PPA)
Then various parameters need to be set up in the file /etc/modules.conf, here is the relevant part.

The parallel port

The parallel port is accessed through /dev/lp0. Set up the parallel port during the kernel compilation. I said "m" for module (or "y" for yes if "m" was not an option) to the following: 
Parallel printer support (CONFIG_PRINTER)
Support IEEE1284 status readback (CONFIG_PRINTER_READBACK)
Then various parameters need to be set up in the file /etc/modules.conf, here is the relevant part.

The BIOS

Hit the ESC key when you switch on the computer, it gets you into the BIOS setup program. Here you can set up the power savings mode, and you can enable hibernation (no extra disk partition needed). This is a nice feature, just close the lid, and the computer powers down, open the lid, and you are back where you were. The computer draws some power while hibernating, so you cannot leave it forever that way while on battery power. A couple of days were no problem, though.

There are a collection of BIOS access utilities available at http://www.buzzard.org.uk/toshiba. You will need to have Toshiba support enabled in your kernel (starts with version 2.2.17), and the file /etc/modules.conf needs to contain the following entry, the first line of which is automatically created when you install this package. If you recompile the kernel, you also need to recompile this package, because it creates a kernel module. (Actually, it is enough to just recompile the kernel module toshiba.o and to install it by hand, of you know what you are doing.) A minor problem is that this module should be automatically loaded by the kernel when needed, but that does not happen on my system. So I load it upon booting from within /etc/rc./rc.modules, here is the relevant part.

Send comments to mayer@math.utah.edu.

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First posted: Fri Sep 17 13:01:18 MET DST 1999
Last updated: Mon Jan 2 12:20:09 PST 2017