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Path: sserve!newshost.anu.edu.au!munnari.oz.au!mel.dit.csiro.au!its.csiro.au!dmssyd.syd.dms.CSIRO.AU!metro!news.cs.su.oz.au!harbinger.cc.monash.edu.au!yeshua.marcam.com!zip.eecs.umich.edu!newsxfer.itd.umich.edu!gatech!europa.eng.gtefsd.com!emory!cs.utk.edu!cs.utk.edu!moore From: moore@cs.utk.edu (Keith Moore) Newsgroups: comp.unix.bsd Subject: Re: Looking for Linux AND/OR *BSD for Thinkpad 750Ce! Date: 18 Mar 1994 23:34:31 GMT Organization: Univ. of Tenn. Computer Science, Knoxville Lines: 49 Distribution: world Message-ID: <2mddq7INNe36@CS.UTK.EDU> References: <CHETAL.94Mar15161109@gedny29.gedny.ml.com> Reply-To: moore@cs.utk.edu NNTP-Posting-Host: wilma.cs.utk.edu In article <CHETAL.94Mar15161109@gedny29.gedny.ml.com>, chetal@gedny.ml.com (Pradeep Chetal) writes: > > There seems to be a problem with Thinkpad's 2.88MB floppy drives. > Has anyone resolved the problem? > > Thanks. I've gotten the TP750's floppy drive working with both Linux and NetBSD. The things needed to fix it for Linux are different than the things needed for fix it for NetBSD. To get the floppy to run on Linux, I had to a) add entries for a 'type 6' drive to the floppy tables, and fix the probe code to allow such a drive to exist. b) disable the code that checks for a disk change. (apparently the disk change signal doesn't work the same on a thinkpad as on most systems) The patched driver is available from cs.utk.edu:pub/moore/linux/tp750/floppy.c. There are other files in that directory which might be useful also if you want to run Linux. Note that because of the disk change line problems, this driver has problems with getting cached disk buffers corrupted. I tried Linux first on my TP750, but eventually got fed up with the poor networking support and a bug (in the hard disk driver?) that caused the system to get wedged. So I switched to NetBSD. To get the floppy to run on NetBSD, I had to: a) add entries for a type 6 drive to the floppy disk driver b) fix the boot block to deal with the case where the bios thinks there are 36 sectors per track (but the buffer in the boot program isn't big enough). I don't have any patches available yet; I've been too busy trying to get ethernet running. I presently have netbsd 0.9 running on my TP750, including floppy support (but only for 1.44 Mb disks) and (as of last night) pcmcia ether support. My housemate is also using it on his TP750; he says it gets wedged in low speed mode but otherwise it works fine. -- Keith Moore / U.Tenn CS Dept / 107 Ayres Hall / Knoxville TN 37996-1301 Internet: moore@cs.utk.edu BITNET: moore@utkvx Preserve the fourth amendment! Say HELL NO to key escrow!