For suggestions, improvements or if you just want to talk to somebody, please mail to: Dag Wieërs <dag@wieers.com> IBM Thinkpad 570

Model number: 2644-3AG

List of hardware:

CPU: Intel Mobile Pentium II 366
Chipset: Intel Corporation 440BX - 82443BX
Intel Corporation 82371AB PIIX4
Memory: 128MB RAM, 100 MHz, non-parity, 64-bit SDRAM SO DIMM memory
Hard disk: 6 GB IBM ATA DISK, IBM-DBCA-206480
CD-ROM: CRN-8241B ATAPI CD-ROM
Video: Neomagic Corporation [MagicMedia 256AV], neo2200, 2Mb RAM
Soundcard: Cirrus Logic CS 4614 Chip
PCMCIA: Texas Instruments PCI1450
Internal modem: Lucent Microelectronics WinModem 56k
Screen: 13.3" TFT Display

Installation of Red Hat 7.1 didn't give me any unusual problems. In fact everything worked off the shelf !

Please note that if a graphical installation with your distribution does not work, you can always try to install it text-based if possible. To avoid problems with booting large harddisks, please use a recent version of LILO that supports LBA with large hard drives and that doesn't have the 1024 cilinder limitation for kernel-images. The nice thing about Linux is that you can configure your kernel exactly to fit your hardware and since kernels improve very fast, you can keep up with the latest features of the kernel as soon as they arrive.

The general rule of thumb is to use the latest stable kernel. The 2.4-series work fine and the stock Red Hat kernel has everything you need.

To compile a kernel for your system, you should check the Kernel HOWTO. The configuration of X works automaticaly for several distributions. If you have troubles, remember that the 2Mb of memory on the card only allows you to use 1024x768 with 16bit colors. On these types of thinkpads the key-combination Fn-F7 allows you to switch from your LCD to an external monitor or both. (Three phases) This however leaves your X in the same resolution as on your LCD, which is lower than the capablities of your external monitor. At this time however, you need to restart your X-server to change the resolution. Work is in progress to overcome this problem.

Beware: the BIOS allows you to boot with an external monitor by default. The drivers you need to load are: cs46xx and ac97_codec. See also the /etc/modules.conf below. APM seems to work without problems.

You can suspend your laptop by pressing Fn-F4.

Beware: check your BIOS for additional configuration.

PCMCIA is supported and will most probably work off the shelf with your distribution. But if you have build your own kernel you need the right drivers for your PCMCIA-devices. To get more information about PCMCIA-drivers and how to configure them, check the PCMCIA HOWTO The laptop comes with a Lucent winmodem. Unfortunately, there is no real Open Source driver, the module that does exist uses a binary object containing all the real code to use your winmodem. The wrapper-module (that uses the binary object) can be compiled with all the recent kernel-versions. You can find the module and more information about winmodems on the linmodems website. Not yet. If you used the kernel-config above, you're able to use the VESA framebuffer driver by adding the following lines to your /etc/lilo.conf:

vga=0x316
append="video=vesa:ywrap:mtrr"

Here's a list of different modes:

    | 640x480  800x600  1024x768
----+---------------------------
256 |  0x301    0x303    0x305   
32k |  0x310    0x313    0x316   
64k |  0x311

If you want to use the faster text-mode with smaller fonts (80x60) then you can simply use:

vga=0xf07

If you used the kernel-config mentioned above, just link /dev/mouse to /dev/input/mouse0 and load the following modules usb-uhci, usbmouse and mousedev. I'm using journaling filesystems on most of my systems nowadays. I use ext3 because at this moment I don't trust neither reiserfs and XFS nor JFS or included in the kernel. And Red Hat comes by default with all the tools to use ext3 (although I've build a newer e2fsprogs package myself).

You don't really need a journaling filesystem, but occasionaly you find your machine locked up because it ran out of power or because you were experimenting a bit too much. And then you will enjoy a journaling filesystem more than ever.

Some settings allow to use both your trackpoint and an external mouse at the same time without a problem. And another to have your screen always resized so it uses the whole viewing area. TODO

There is an alternative to configure your BIOS (much like PS2.EXE under DOS) and is called tpctl. TODO IBM released some BIOS updates, unfortunately these updates are distributed as DOS or Windows executables which is a pain for Linux users. It would be nice of IBM to just distribute the images created by these disks so users of other platforms can upgrade their BIOS without needing DOS or Windows.

For your convenience we've put the image online:

• bios-tp-570-v1.16.img (BIOS Version: IDET38WW)

Only update your BIOS if you really need to.

Here's my /etc/modules.conf file,

alias char-major-10-170 thinkpad
alias char-major-62 lt_serial
alias char-major-90 tun
alias char-major-161 ircomm-tty
alias irda0 nsc-ircc
alias parport_lowlevel parport_pc
alias sound-slot-0 cs46xx
alias tty-ldisc-11 irtty
alias usb-controller usb-uhci
options nsc-ircc dongle_id=0x09 io=0x2f8 irq=3 dma=3
#options irport io=0x2f8 irq=3
post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L >/dev/null 2>&1 || :
pre-install mousedev modprobe usb-uhci && modprobe usbmouse
pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S >/dev/null 2>&1 || :

Here are some pointers to more information about these thinkpads and other laptops.

IBM Thinkpad 570 information

• TP 570 - Product Information
• TP 570/E - Device Driver File Matrix
• Linuxcare Labs Standard Certification - IBM ThinkPad 570E

Other useful Thinkpad links