• My unit came as Pii-333 / 64M / 6.4GB, 14.1" TFT with CDROM and floppy, but has been upgraded (mine was a royal pain) to 128M [SDRAM, EDO doesn't work on this laptop]
• I had some problems getting 8 bit to run, 16 bit for some reason was quite easy, but Peter R. Paluzzi gave me his modification, and you can now look at my current XF86Config setup. I can't run lower resolutions yet, which can be a problem if you have to give a presentation with pre-XGA hardware.
• With some quirks I have now been able to get the external monitor to work. You need to start in VGA, then cycle with Fn-F12 until the external and laptop display at the same time, they switch with ctrl-alt-F7 (or so) back to you X, and it should sync up again. If you are done, cycle bakc to VGA using ctrl-alt-F2 (or so), then cycle with Fn-F12 back to laptop only, and then remove the external cable. If you don't follow this procedure, you might either wind up with badly synced up X display. In this case you need to ctrl-alt-backspace shutdown that X and start it back up, or in worst case you will actually hang you machine and cold boot it.
• Other Trek2 owners:
  • Steve Oncley
  • Clark Ritchie
• Micron
• The Good, the Bad and the Odd...
  • -: no external volume control for speakers, has to all happen in software. I tried the OSS drivers, but had some lockups. Sound does work, with a lot of clicks (3-4 Hz), which is being worked on (May 1999)
  • -: be careful with the Micron bags, if you don't close the lid, and just stick in the laptop, it can very easily fall out if you pick up the bag. Not the best design, but for odd reasons i'm still using it :-)
  • -: no APM control on closing the lid, other than simple screen blanking via a notch that is depressed when the lid is closed.
  • -: no USB in PhoenixBIOS setup, windows claims it's there, but as of yet no hardware to try it out on.
  • +: suspend to disk works fine in linux, in particular the mouse is fairly reliable to hot-swap (although it may take a switch to a virtual console and back to X to activate the new circumstance). I believe Windows98 has some problems recovering with an external mouse :-)
  • +/-: The internal CD (a Toshiba) does/does not (XXX need to figure out) support CD-RWs. Always pleasant when they do. CD-R is never a problem, CD-RW sometimes.
  • -: booting from Windows (DOS) to Linux will not recognize above 64MB (but that might be fixable in LOADLIN.
  • -: if booted, the keyboard beep works fine, once suspended, it won't work anymore.
  • +/-: if you boot with the external mouse connected, the touchpad doesn't activate. However, if you suspend and come back, and alt-ctl-Fn to another virtual console and come back, it will come back.
• For the lucky ATI video card owners:
  • getting X up and running is not easy (newer ATI card based models)
  • I7K Laptops have some similar hardware configurations (sounds, video), so any patches mentioned there could be useful here. Again, this is for the ATI based laptops, not the Trident.
• Related pages:
  • Toshiba 4030, with comparable video and sound card problems.
• What I still need to figure out:
  • X windows Setup for 800x600 or 640x480. I only get black screens in what I've tried. Sometimes these pesky cheap LCD panels only work in lower resolution modes.
  • Sound. The Maestro-2 isn't supported yet, but coming up soon. OSS has beta drivers, but I get the infamous 2-3 Hz tick and i had a suspicious kernel crash. The Maeastro drives in the 2.2.14 and later kernels (see also Zach's development page) still crash on my machine, but I've not warm booted via a maestro.com yet.
    Note: reports have come in that redhat6.2 will detect sound automatically!!!

Last updated: 8-jun-00

Problems, Suggestions, Solutions? Email: teuben@astro.umd.edu