Solo 2200
Forum: Laptops
Topic: Solo 2200
started by: colonelpenguin
Posted by colonelpenguin on Nov. 02 2005,22:39
I have recently installed DSL on a Gateway Solo 2200. I was very impressed with how quickly the system installed and now runs on this very old laptop. However, I have been unable to get my sound working. It also is not detecting my Cisco Aironet 340 network card. I am kind of a novice in the linux arena. I started looking for something like DSL for this laptop when I realized Fedora was entirely too large to install on a 2gb hard drive. I have never compiled a kernel myself, and I am not sure I am ready for such a task quite yet. Can anyone offer me some help. If you need any more info, please ask. Thanks!
Posted by tempestuous on Nov. 03 2005,06:16
If your audio chipset is Creative Ectiva EV1398 (you should check this) it is supported by the OSS es1371 module, so -modprobe es1371
You should also run "modinfo es1371" to check options.
The Cisco Aironet 340 is supported by the airo_cs module, so -
modprobe airo_cs
I'm not sure if iwconfig is used to set up this module, you will need to find out. If it is, do this -
iwconfig eth0 essid MY_ESSID key 1234567890 mode managed
pump -i eth0 # (for automatic IP)
Posted by colonelpenguin on Nov. 03 2005,22:07
Thank you very much for your quick reply. I am going to try your suggestions in a few hours. Can you tell me how I could find out exactly what chipset the Solo2200 uses? I went to gateway's site, but could find nothing that detailed. They only get as far as replacement ram and processor speed.
Posted by tempestuous on Nov. 03 2005,23:46
Check the output messages after running -lspci -v
cat /proc/interrupts (usually sound card is listed at IRQ5)
dmesg
Posted by colonelpenguin on Nov. 04 2005,05:11
Ok, I am going to try and type all of this out. The only way since my laptop doesn't have a floppy drive 
.After typing: "lspci -v" I am prompted as follows.
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 430MX - 82437MX Mob. System Ctrlr (MTSC) & 82438MX Data Path (MTDP) (rev 02)
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32
0000:00:01.0 Bridge: Intel Corp. 430MX - 82371MX Mobile PCI I/O IDE Xcelerator (MPIIX) (rev 03)
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0
0000:00:0d.0 PCMCIA bridge: Cirrus Logic CL 6729 (rev ee)
Flags: stepping, slow devsel
I/O ports at fcfc [disabled] [size=4]
0000:00:14.0 VGA compatible controller: Chips and Technologies F65554 (rev c2) (prog-if 00 [VGA])
Flags: stepping, medium devsel
Memory at 3e000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=16M]
Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=256K]
I got an error about that contained init_module: No such device after "modprobe es1371"
I also got an error after "modprobe airo_cs" that contained this init_module: Operation not allowed.
It appears that maybe my PCMCIA bridge is not working. Any idea from the above info? I guess I would like to get the network card working first so I don't have to type out the error messages
. Thanks again for your willingness to help!
Posted by Magnus_Carter on Nov. 04 2005,20:23
I'm having a similar problem, that is the Cirrus Logic Bridge is not working. Simple explanation to this - it's not supported in the kernel PCMCIA Drivers.
Cut from
< http://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2005/01/msg00108.html >
> More info... I sent a message to the author of the i82365 module, David
> Hinds, and here is what he said:
> -- begin quote --
> This is sort of a historical accident. Prior to 2.4 kernels, there
> were only the pcmcia-cs driver modules. With 2.4, PCMCIA drivers
> became part of the kernel tree but they were not 100% the same as the
> pcmcia-cs drivers. One of the differences was that the CL 6729 bridge
> was not supported by the kernel drivers. There is a CL 6729 driver
> for the current 2.6 kernels but I think it is recent enough that it
> probably is not in most current Linux distributions.
>
> It is possible to use the pcmcia-cs drivers with 2.4 (but not 2.6)
> kernels. You would need to remove the kernel PCMCIA driver modules,
> and then compile the pcmcia-cs package.
>
> -- Dave
Not sure on where to go from here, still trying to follow the instructions through. It looks like it's possible if you compile the external pcmcia-cs drivers and deactivate the ones in the kernel. However this requires source for the kernel and pcmcia-cs which I can see could be a problem, with no network connection ;-(
So - not really much help, but may stop you banging your head against it too much
Posted by tempestuous on Nov. 06 2005,10:06
The fixes Magnus_Carter outlined are possible, but complex. A recompiled kernel and additional modules could be used straight away in a hard drive installation, but a liveCD would need remastering.Perhaps you could ask Robert and John nicely in the "Release Candidates" thread for these changes to be included in the mainstream release of DSL2.0?
Posted by colonelpenguin on Dec. 29 2005,20:53
I can follow directions very well, but I am not really sure were to start when recompliling the kernel with new modules. Can you give or point me to some concise directions on how to do this? Sorry for the big lapse in time here. I can download and burn the necessary files to a disk to transfer them to the laptop. I just want to make sure I get the right files. I am not hesitant to try new things here. There is not much I can do to hurt it afterall . It has lived this long.
Posted by tempestuous on Dec. 30 2005,02:48
I just checked DSL's kernel configuration (2.4.31) and I see that PCMCIA support is built as modules, not within the kernel ... so fortunately you shouldn't need to rebuild the kernel image itself, just the new modules.1. Install DSL to hard drive.
2. Install gnu-utils.dsl.
From < http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub....sources > download linux-2.4.31.tar.gz (full kernel source), knoppix-kernel.patch, and dsl.config.
3. Uncompress the kernel source, and apply the knoppix-kernel.patch.
Make sure the symlink /usr/src/linux points to linux-2.4.31
4. Shift the dsl.config file into /usr/src/linux-2.4.31 and rename it ".config"
5. Open this .config file in Beaver. The PCMCIA/CardBus section needs to be modified to look like this -
#
# PCMCIA/CardBus support
#
# CONFIG_PCMCIA is not set
6. Download pcmcia-cs-3.2.8.tar.gz from < http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/ftp/ > and uncompress it.
The build process will ONLY work if it finds the kernel configuration file with PCMCIA disabled as described above. These are the commands -
make config
make all
make install
If these modules fail to compile, we need to go back a step ...
5a. compile the kernel and modules -
cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.31
make bzImage
make modules
(it should not be necessary to install the compiled kernel and modules)
Now step 6 should definitely work, and you will have new PCMCIA modules in /lib/modules/2.4.31/...
The important one for you is i82365.o, and it should have overwritten the old version.
Hopefully you can now boot DSL with your PCMCIA bridge functional.
Posted by doublezz on Jan. 07 2006,22:06
Has anyone had any experience getting a PSMCIA Cirrus Logic Bridge 6729 with the i82365 kernel module driver to function with DSL? On a Laptop? With a HD install? Unless I am mistaken, as a previous post indicates this combination is virtually impossible, even with a remastered CD ... ?What about getting it to work with a 2.6 Linux Kernel found on other LiveCDs like Knoppix which uses a completely new system for PCMCIA card configuration?
I had taken an interest in DSL recently as a possible alternative OS for my aging Compaq Presario 1075. Unfortunately after spending most of a day working on researching the Cirrus Logic 6729 PCMCIA Bridge that refused to work when the i82365 module refused to load (seemingly due to a lack of ioport and iomem info from a the resource database) I finally stumbled on the original post mentioned above in which the author of the pcmcia-cs i82365 driver explained that the modifications ported to the original stand alone i82365 driver to the kernal module version omitted support for the CL 6729 PCMCIA Bridge for the 2.14 Linux Kernel. That 'historic accident' rendered DSL unusable for my Compaq Pressario 1075 since other than the unusuable Winmodem built it, the other modem I have is a PCMCIA card modem. Short of buying another external serial port 56K modem for this computer valued at perhaps $20-$25, DSL seems unsuited to the task. I do not blame DSL as it is quite innocent in this problem, and we can't expect DSL to fit every required solution. But then again ... maybe an external serial port modem is not such a bad investment if it solves the problem of simple Internet connection (albeit not very fast).
Doublezz
Posted by AwPhuch on Jan. 08 2006,09:43
K I might suggest something...I hope I dont get beaten with a nerfbat nowgive < Puppy Linux >
It might have a patch or something in the kernel that allows you to use that particular laptop...
otherwise I dont know what you should do
Brian
AwPhuch
Posted by colonelpenguin on Jan. 28 2006,01:58
Tempestuous... I am a little stuck. First of all, when I got to the files on my machine I realized I couldn't patch the kernal. Then I think I was able to do it on my FC4 desktop and transfer files again via CD. Then I saw your comment about checking the symlink, and I am not quite sure how to do that. Also, it seems that I don't have the make command on my computer. Can you explain how I might fix this. Again... I really appreciate your help. I haven't had much time to work on this lately, but I may get time over the next couple of days. Thanks!!
Posted by tempestuous on Jan. 28 2006,10:11
- Look at /usr/src/linux in emelfm. "File Info" should indicate that it is a link to /usr/src/linux-2.4.31 (your uncompressed kernel source).If not, delete or rename it. Then create the correct link like this;
cd /usr/src
ln -s linux-2.4.31 linux
- Regarding the patch, save it into /usr/src. I get a little confused about p0 versus p1, so it could be either of these;
cd /usr/src/linux-2.4.31
patch -p1 < /usr/src/knoppix-kernel.patch
or if that doesn't work:
cd /usr/src
patch -p0 < knoppix-kernel.patch
- If "make" doesn't work, you may not have installed gnu-utils.dsl ... but now I come to think of it, you need gcc1.dsl as well. Sorry, it's here < http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub....cc1.dsl >
... and just something to consider - DSL has just reverted to the 2.4.26 kernel. You might want to consider rebuilding this kernel instead ... but I believe its kernel source needs to be obtained from the Knoppix website - < http://developer.linuxtag.net/sources > and this site is often down.
Posted by Jimmy The Clown on Feb. 22 2006,01:27
I have a laptop with the evil PCMCIA bridge as well. I am trying to grab all the packages and stuff I need. I have the source and headers for the kernel from the myDSL repos, also nabbed the gnu-utils and gcc1. The problem is that it doesn't seem to think I have a cc command installed. There must be an easy way to tell it to use gcc instead of cc...Any ideas?
Thanks.
-JTC
Posted by Jimmy The Clown on Feb. 22 2006,03:56
Alright got past that step.| Code Sample |
| ln -s /usr/bin/gcc /usr/bin/cc |
That will get "make config" to use gcc by making a link from cc to gcc. Now I got to find the full source for the kernel cause it doesn't seem to like the kernelsource.dsl package.
-JTC
Posted by tcb on May 24 2007,14:46
I have got PCMCIA working for the 6729 on a Micron Millennia Transport and a 16-bit Belkin ethernet card. I didn't exactly follow the method above. Instead, I downloaded the kernelsource.dsl, extracted it, took the .config file (from dsl 2.4.26 kernelsource\usr\src\linux-2.4.26\) and modified the PCMCIA section as described above. Then I downloaded the 2.4.26 kernel and recompiled it using the modified .config file. The pcmcia-cs package can be used to install the i82365 module after that.A couple of extras I had to do (all mentioned above): to recompile, you need to install gnu-utils and gcc-with-libs; and since the pcmcia-cs package wants cc, I had to make cc a symbolic link to gcc. Be sure to configure the pcmcia config file per the PCMCIA HowTo. The options I used were "irq_mode=1 fast_pci=1".
My CD drive has not worked for years, so I had to buy an IDE 3.5 inch adapter and connect my HD to my desktop to get all this stuff on there. I performed a HD install from another partition using Grub to boot to Isolinux with the lowram option parameters, but that is the topic of another post in Tips.
Posted by tcb on May 24 2007,14:51
Also...I had to modprobe i82365 a couple of times to get it working. There was a dependent module (I can't remember which) that I had to stop (rmmod) and then re-start beforehand. I also had to manually start the PCMCIA script that the pcmcia-cs package installs (/etc/init.d/pcmcia start). This script references a config file which is /etc/default/pcmcia, so you need to change the script to look for this path (under the Debian heading) and change the config file with the options above. I changed DHCP to "y" in the /etc/pcmcia/network.opts file, and in the /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file, I added the lines specific to my ethernet card (Google your card and linux configuration) and changed the IRQ exclusions to 5 and 9. Finally, make sure you start the DHCP from the DSL control panel. If all is working, then use the backup tool to save your settings so that cardmgr will start automatically and find an IP address at the next start-up.
Posted by dwmcqueen on April 06 2009,01:49
Hello,I know this topic is old, but I ran into this issue on my Gateway 2100. Is it correct that all our begging to make this driver part of the mainstream release failed and I need to go through the above procedure to get my PCMCIA cards to work?