 Introducing
the Victim:
The Toshiba T3600CT is a laptop based on a Intel 80486 processor.
It dates back to the early Neanderthal period, when Intel engineers
clad only in rough animal skins chiselled machine code into limestone
tablets. As a result, it is exceptionally hard to find out any information
about it on the web. You can't, for example, get hold of a manual
without sending £25 to Toshiba. Curiously enough, though,
I did find
a page which related pretty directly to what I was trying
to do.
Here are some other pages relevant to the T3600CT - BIOS
update (sorry - I can't link directly, but click on this link,
then select 'archive' from the drop down box, then old t-series>t36xx>t3600ct
- alternatively, try this
direct link but I can't guarantee it will work. By the way,
I found the instructions in the zip file didn't seem to apply to
the T3600CT, but you can force it to install by booting from a windows
bootdisk (I used the Windows
95 disk from here and typing CHGBIOS at the command line, and
then entering BOOTBIOS.COM at the prompt. That seems to do the job
nicely : : : Video
driver for Windows 3.1: : : Update the BIOS to be Y2K compatible
using the tosh.exe
file (You have to scroll down to get to the appropriate section
and you can download the upgrade there too) : : : How to install
new memory modules on the laptop. If you want to check the BIOS
setup, you use [ESC] not [DEL], as is more common. Press F1 when
it tells you to and you're there.
 I
found the machine on E-Bay. I'd had a couple of goes at buying machines
from there until I discovered the secret: Don't bid until 10 minutes
before the auction ends. That way you avoid getting into a bidding
war.
It took quite a long time to arrive because of the Christmas post,
but on the 27th, shortly after visiting th'parents in th'frozen
north, we had a visit from one of the neighbours, who said the postie
had left it with her.
Adventures in Linuxland.
Most people now have heard of Linux. It has a reputation, and
there are plenty of myths out there.
Briefly stated, Linux is an operating system closely associated
with the mother of all operating systems, Unix, which was invented
at Bell Labs in the 70s. When AT&T made Unix
into a proprietary system, taking away what was once a free OS,
the reaction of one engineer, Richard
Stallman, was to begin work on his own UNIX clone, GNU (stands
for 'GNU's Not UNIX). This was embedded in a notion of 'Free Software',
which means the code itself was free from restrictions, and the
right to use and adapt it was written into a code called 'copyleft'.
What the system lacked was a kernel and that's where Linus
Torvalds comes into the story, plugging the gap at the start
of the '90's. Linux is named in his honour, although it is more
correctly known as GNU-Linux.
So far, so T171, but what's happening now?
Well, Linux hasn't split into two like Windows with its NT/2000/XP
pro, vs. 9x/Me/XP home.
Oh No! It's split into dozens of little distros, from the shockingly
ugly but reputedly very user-friendly RedHat
to the tiny SmallLinux.
I imagine a PC with Small Linux to be like a 747 flying on the power
from a penlight battery. Then there's SuSe,
Mandrake (now known as mandriva for no good reason), Debian
and on and on and on...There's a distro to suit every system, but
which is the best?
Say what you like about Windows, but there's something comforting
about buying a computer with an OK-ish system installed and not
having to worry about whether it's going to work. Windows is Windows.
You know where you are with Windows. It'll work with pretty much
anything. Not very well, but it will work!
The Penguin has Landed!
27th December. The box arrived.
It's a slab of plastic.
Windows 95 crammed into it like an elephant in ballet shoes.
It has no manual
The battery doesn't work too well, and the switch locking the on/off
button doesn't work at all.
There's a bit of tin stuck in what looks like a plug socket. I
decide this is a broken end of a lead and decide, when I have time,
to yank it out with a pair of pliers.
Good plan, techno-boy! I later find out it is a PCMCIA card. PCMCIA
apparently stands for 'people can't memorise computer industry abbreviations'.
It's a kind of modem. Even when I find this out, I spend hours (really,
hours!) trying to figure out how to get the phone jack to go into
the funny-shaped socket. Told you I wasn't a techie!
I spend a few days doing some research. A full day spent trying
to get hold of a manual just because I want to know what the sockets
do. I crack open the device manager and find there are a few device
conflicts. It seems the PCMCIA card has two drivers installed and
one of them conflicts with the other and also with the hard drive
controller. That explains all the BIOS beeps I get when the machine
starts up. I've read about IRQ conflicts. What happens is that all
the various devices attached to a computer have certain permissions
(IRQs,=Interrupt Requests) to access the processor. If two are assigned
to the same number then they get in each other's way. I've no idea
what to do about this, so I ask the OU tech cafe, get two responses,
secretly don't dare to try either, despite my suspicion that the
problem will disappear under Linux anyway. (Will it though?...tch!)
While I'm studying the hardware, I'm finding out about the software
too. A quick study of 'Linux Format' and 'Linux Magazine' show that
Linux users have what might be called 'a certain defensiveness'
towards a certain other well-known operating system. Take this editorial,
for example:
'Unlike Windows users, I awoke this morning, full of the joys of
spring. It was a beautiful (Unlike Windows) day. And the birds (Unlike
the hapless fools who dwell in the shadow of Microsoft) were singing
merrily. As is my wont of a Thursday, I began by typing the command:
'/wrong/iffy/gzgzgz/penguin/targz/l/pants/--gz-f-f-f-f-f-f-' into
my super-powerful Linux box to bring up the latest KDE GUI. Unlike
crappy old Windows, it has been reasonably stable since progressing
to version 2.2. It booted up in less than 16 minutes and...'
You get the picture...Linux also boasts a huge variety of software:
There's OpenOffice, or... ummm... Oh, and the latest news was that
there is now a game which could be played on Linux. John Johnson,
top banana of the Linux allotment collective said: "In the
past, Microsoft has always dominated the games market through evil
monopolistic practices, such as, errr, providing driver support
for video cards and, ummm, making users click on an icon instead
of allowing them the choice of typing a long string of three-letter
abbreviations in response to a command prompt. But all that will
change once users see the full power of Linux running Miss Pac Man
in all its unrestrained technicolor glory." In reply, Bill
Williams, the head of electronic arts was quoted as saying "Yes,
and we hope it'll shut you up for a couple of months so we can get
on with developing the next 20 games for Windows."
Excitement, adventure... a Linux user craves not these things.
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