Last Update (UTC) $Date: 2002/11/26 03:33:14 $
Standard Disclaimer: I have found the installation and configuration information described on this page (and any other on this server in the directory "linux-tp") to work for my particular machine. I do not know if it will work on yours, and make no claim that it will. You mimic my setup at your own risk -- I'm not responsible if you wreck your notebook.
A couple of years later, I became interested enough in Linux to go out and buy Red Hat's distribution and install it on my desktop computer (a new 8 Gigabyte hard drive helped pique my interest). After gaining some experience with Linux and reading of its incredible flexibility, I returned to the question of using an older notebook for e-mail, this time using Linux. The problems with lack of usable Internet applications for DOS or Windows 3.1 weren't there, since Linux had TCP/IP networking built in and a plethora of software. In fact, with Linux, I could even get away without using a GUI at all. And the problem of mail synchronization was solved (partially) by IMAP and fetchmail.
I managed to get an IBM ThinkPad 755C from eBay after a bit of bidding on New Year's Eve 1998.
The 755C was a "power notebook" for its day. My particular model retailed for almost US$4000 when it was introduced, way back in late 1994. It came with a Intel 486DX2 or DX4, from 4 to 36 MB of memory, an active matrix color screen, and a pair of PCMCIA (known as PC Card these days) slots.
The specs on my machine:
I received the computer with a third party replacement AC adapter and battery from a company called Xtend Micro Products. Battery life seems to be between 2 and 4 hours, running X, although I haven't been very scientific about measuring it.
Since I had neither a CD-ROM drive nor network card available when the notebook arrived, I needed to use a distribution that could be installed from floppies alone, which automatically eliminated Red Hat, among others. I settled on Debian due to its inclusion of a package manager, and the ability to download additional packages via FTP once the base system was installed.
I ordered a $2 Debian 2.0 CD from CheapBytes, but the order was delayed, and the goodies did not arrive until about a week after the computer did. Impatient as I am, I couldn't wait that long, so I downloaded all the install disk images and a bunch of other packages from the Internet. So, with a box of 25 floppy disks in hand, I started installing. I kept an installation diary to keep track of what I did and when.
From what I hear, the latest version of Debian (2.2r2) now requires something like 15 floppies for the base package (as opposed to 7 for 2.0), so a first-time installation from floppies may be quite harder now.
This was perhaps the most tedious part of the entire installation. The general algorithm was: choose packages, note dependencies, copy packages to floppies, copy packages to notebook, install. After installing the "base" system with the disk images I downloaded (the images are also provided on the CD-ROM), I put together a set of packages for the GNU development tools and X, and other things that I knew I wanted to install (e.g. VIM and the ever-important xfishtank). This was done with the help of the Package Listing on the Debian web site, which allowed me to manually sort out dependencies. Once the list of packages was determined, I used tar cvMf /dev/fd0 [files] to make a nice multivolume archive to unpack on the notebook (tar xvMf /dev/fd0).
I did have one floppy disk fail (even though I was working with a set of new disks), which added to the tedium.
Nowadays, I have a Linksys PCMCIA network card to connect to my desktop box. It's certainly much easier.
The APM driver was not included in the stock Debian kernel, so I had to get the sources. Not completely satsified with getting Debian's kernel-sources package (which I believe was only 2.0.34 at the time), I went to kernel.org and got the "official" 2.0.36 tarball. Despite initial reservations, I found that compiling my own kernel was fairly easy (albeit slow on the 486), and installation was (almost) as simple as "make zlilo".
In Debian 2.2, APM is available by passing "apm-on" to the kernel (i.e. "linux apm=on" at the LILO prompt).
With APM, I am able to suspend and resume with software commands, but I am unable to discharge the battery (although I can accomplish this by booting a DOS floppy containing the PS2 program). I have hibernation disabled, as it requires a FAT partition to store the hibernation file. Controlling APM features through hardware does not always work as expected. Suspending by closing the display and/or Fn+F4 works only when there is no PCMCIA card loaded. I'm not sure why this is. It may be due to the age of the machine, or it may be due to some configuration parameter of apmd or the APM driver that I'm not aware of.
I managed to get X up and running, with 640x480 resolution and 256 colors, but it required a little bit of tweaking (setting the monitor sync frequencies to what the X server asked for). The mouse worked without much trouble, using the PS/2 protocol (note: the kernel must have psaux support, this is probably the default for most distributions). Look here for my configuration file, but heed the disclaimer above.
I've been told the 755C uses proprietary sound hardware, and cannot be supported by the Linux kernel. The default SoundBlaster driver does not recognize it. I've read that it could work if you load DOS, then IBM's driver, and then Linux via loadlin, but I have no intention of trying this, since I do not have a DOS partition on the drive.
I've had this laptop for more than two years now, and it's served me quite well. Even though it can't run modern things like KDE or GNOME, I'm still able to use it for e-mail (pine), "word processing" (using Emacs, LaTeX and LyX), and viewing PostScript and PDF files (with gv) and web surfing (it will run Netscape if it has to, but it's better to use Lynx). Not bad for a computer that's nearly 7 years old!
In September 2000 I upgraded the ThinkPad to the Debian 2.1 ("slink")
distribution, without even having a CD. I used the FTP method in dselect,
and did it over the modem overnight. The upgrades to Debian 2.2 ("potato")
and 2.2r2 were done with "apt-get dist-upgrade" over the network (this is,
I believe, the best feature of Debian, and part of why I now run it on my
desktop box as well).
In July 2002, after months of letting it languish in the closet, I brought
the ThinkPad to a municipal electronics recycling collection. It had
a good run, but it was starting to die. The last time I used it, it
was beginning to have strange Signal 11 errors, and there were odd blue lines
running down the screen. Although it was still usable, it seemed rather
pointless to keep it since I almost never use it anymore (space is at a premium
in my house).