This is the new member of the 1800 series, with the intel Pentium III 1GHz processor.
I had an additional 128 MB memory slot installed when I bought it.
This configuration is similar to other 1800-series Toshiba laptops, and so my attempts to install Linux were based on other pages which refer to older 1800 and 2800-series Toshibas. A look around the Toshiba Laptop homepage might be useful.
I installed the Red Hat 7.1 Linux distribution, in which the 2.4.2 kernel is included. This distribution can be installed without major problems. I had Windows Millenium already installed on my PC. I also advise you to install Windows before installing Linux, because it has been reported that Windows tends to override the LILO installation on the Master Boot Record.
I kept my Windows Me installation with an 8 MB partition so I'm going to describe the steps necessary to do so.
First be sure to have a Windows boot disk, in case anything goes wrong during the installation process (the recovery disk that comes with the Laptop package is enough - you can boot from it by inserting it in the CD-ROM drive, pressing F2 during the boot process and selecting "boot from CD-ROM" in the boot menu.
I had to make a full disk optimization from the Windows defragmentation tool available from the Accessories > System Tools menu. This is important in order that all the data is at the beginning of the disk. If you use Norton SpeedDisk you have to be careful because it usually moves the seldom used files to the end of the disk.
Afterwards you can use the FIPS utility (also included in the CD and ftp archive) to reduce the Windows partition. The size of the Windows partition has to be less than 1024 cylinders long (which corresponds to 8196 MB) so that the first (/boot) Linux partition is accessible by LILO. Otherwise DiskDruid won't let you setup the partitions during the install.
Since I had no access to a CD-ROM recorder I had to download the Red-Hat Linux disk images from a mirror (look in here for the available mirrors) and put them temporarily in the windows partition (store them in a DOS 8.3 directory) which can be accessed during the installation process. Strictly necessary are the disk-1 and disk-2 images. Source and Powertools disks can also be downloaded if you want to have all the packages available, but you will only be able to use them if you burn them into CD-ROMs afterward.
Then you have to create the installation diskettes by using the rawrite utility, included in the installation CDs or in the ftp mirror. In my case (which will probably be yours), I only had to create the basic boot diskette (boot.img). You can now reboot your machine with the newly created disk.
The boot screen presents you with the Installation Method menu. Either hit Enter or type text at the boot prompt (for graphic or text only interface); any of them will work, but the interface will only be better in the graphic option if you are installing from CD-ROM.
In the following menus select boot from Hard-drive and type the Windows path to the CD images on your Hard-disk.
You will then be asked to configure your language and keyboard settings. No comments...
As for configuring the mouse, I selected the generic 3-button PS/2 mouse. It works well and lets you switch to an external PS/2 mouse without having to change the configuration. The only problem is that you have to select the Emulate 3 buttons option if you want to have something like a third button... Apparently there is another mouse configuration which lets you use the 2 extra buttons on the Laptop console (see in here)
The installation method menu offers you three different basic configurations. Supposedly the Laptop option would be the best one, but I haven't tried it out. Choosing the Custom system option seems to me the most appropriate, since you get to choose all the available options.
Partitioning the available space was somehow troublesome... I haven't tried out the automatic partitionning option... I would suggest selecting Manually partition with Disk Druid and create a small partition for the boot images (about 16 MB, mounted on /boot), an appropriate swap partition (based on the Red-Hat installation documentation I sized it to 128 MB) and a user partition with the remaining size.
Note: You will probably have to delete the last (second) partition, which is the empty one that resulted from the FIPS operation on your hard-disk.
In my first 2 tries, I created a smaller user partition (about 8GB) and used the remaining space (3 GB) to create an additional one to be accessed from Windows. Later I discovered this was a bad idea. While using this partition under Windows, the main Linux partition was destroyed - I didn't yet find out why (the information in cfdisk seemed correct to me, there were no overlapping partitions but I wasn't able to verify this with any other partitioning tool - Windows's fdisk hangs after the Large Volume message)...
Format the two new partitions and install LILO on the Master Boot Record (no further options should be needed)
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Red-Hat installation interface will try to configure you display, but this won't work - while trying to test it, it will hang. It is better to skip this step and configure the display after the installation.
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When you are done with the installation remove the disk from the Floppy Disk drive and let the machine reboot.
Since we have not selected any graphical configuration, the boot process will end up in a text console with a login prompt.
Log-in as root.
Run xconfigurator from the prompt;
From the Graphics Card menu select the Trident CyberBlade (generic) device;
Select Generic Laptop Display Panel 1024x768 from the Monitor Setup menu;
Click the Don't probe button in the Screen Configuration dialog;
Choose 8 MB as the video memory;
Selct the No Clockchip Configuration (recommended) option from the Clockchip menu;
Check the 1024x768 16-bit option in the resolution menu
You will them be asked to test the chosen configuration. Click the Skip button — it hangs the system, and I assure you this configuration works fine!
After leaving xconfigurator you can then test the configuration by typing xinit or startx. Now the system won't hang and you can leave X either by typing exit in the xterm or by selecting Logout on the Gnome menu.
We can now configure the system to initialize in the X environment rather than the text-mode console. You can do this by editing the /etc/inittab script (with pico, for example) and change the first line from:
id:3:initdefault: to
id:5:initdefault:
Save the file and exit the editor.
If you try to boot into Windows Me now you will notice that the computer hangs. This is some problem with the Large Volume disk. To correct this problem you can run cfdisk in the root prompt and change the Windows (first) partition type to Win95 FAT32 (LBA) — type 0C. Don't forget to write the configuration to the Hard-disk. cfdisk will then output a message saying there was a problem rereading the configuration from the disk. I don't really know what this means, but when I tried rebooting Windows it worked.
Note: sometimes, while booting into windows for the first time the computer hangs after showing the Windows Me introduction screen. You have to do a Hardware Boot and select Normal boot from the Windows boot menu.
I tried two different sound configurations. Initially, autoprobe will select the Trident module as the sound driver, but this doesn't work.
A way around this problem is provided by ALI (the Sound Chip manufacturer). In their Homepage they have the source files necessary to compile a new module for the soundcard. Unpack these files (using tar xvfz) and copy them into the kernel source directory (usually this is located in /usr/src/linux-2.4.2-2). The specific files are located inside this directory in the kernel/drivers/sound subdirectory.
The best thing to do now is to recompile the whole kernel (see the kernel documentation located in the documentation subdirectory in the kernel path). You will have to reconfigure your kernel...
However I tried simply doing a make modules with one of the configuration files [...] available in the configurations subdirectory and copying the resulting trident.o into the modules directory (/lib/modules/2.4.2-2/kernel/drivers/sound) and it worked.
Another way is to get the alsa drivers and compile them with OSS support. The appropriate driver is the ALI 5451 sound card.
My modem is not working under Linux. I tried installing the ltmodem-6.00a package from the LinModem project page, but it didn't work.
The modem incorporated in this laptop is not really a modem: it's a software modem, which means that some chips usually included in the modem are replaced by software, and so included in the driver. Ltmodem-6.00a includes drivers for some of these modems manufactured by Lucent Technologies. However, Lucent SCORPIO (the one in Toshiba 1800 series) is not yet supported.
While using the external mouse under X, sometimes the pointer shifts a few (about 100?) pixels to the right, though I can use it on the whole screen. I haven't yet figured out when this occurs. Sometimes it comes back to normal as mysteriously as it had shifted.
The APM function correctly reads the status from the APM bios, but it cannot put the computer to the Standby/Suspend mode. The process seems to be correct while cutting the power, but when I try to revive it there is a text message saying that Resume failed.
Ever since I installed Linux, the windows "Suspend" function (which usually writes all the memory contents to the disk and actually turns off the power) stopped working. The computer display turns black, there is some action on the disk for a few seconds and then the display comes back again.
I will try it in a few days, but in other 1800-series toshibas it seems to be working fine
Tried reading data DVDs, and it works OK. Haven't yet tried to view movies on Linux.
For the moment, parallel, serial and video out ports are completely unexplored. USB seems to be working fine, I use it with a Silicom USB to Ethernet adapter.