Hi guys,

A little question for you. I'm planning to buy a new toshiba laptop and I was thinking about one of those satellite models P200 or A200 with mic and webcam built in.

Now the question is, did any of you successfully installed linux on such a machine and, most important, did you make the webcam work?

I tried to find more details on the webcam manufacturer and so on but all I could dig out was "Integrated 1.3 Megapixel Web Camera for Video over IP" so it would be great to know if I can make the webcam work with linux BEFORE I actually purchase the laptop.

Thanks

I just bought (three weeks ago) a Toshiba Satellite A205-S4577. I have installed Fedora Core 6, Fedora 7 Test 4 and run a host of live distros. I can't get the web cam to work. It seems that it's recognized but I don't think there any drivers available for it. Sound volume is not working. Everything else works, including wireless (IPW3945). It's not important to me that the camera works so it's a non-issue here. To date I'm pretty satisfied with this laptop running Fedora.

Hi,

Thanks for your comments. You probably did, but just in case. Have you tried also installing gspcav drivers?

Thanks

No. Haven't heard of gspcav. I'm looking around via google and see several web pages concerning gspcav but haven't found a list of supported devices. Is this supposed to be generic?

It's not generic. However it supports lots of chipsets. See http://mxhaard.free.fr/spca5xx.html. Look for product and vendor id. Maybe you will get it to work (at least partially).

Here is the main page: http://mxhaard.free.fr/download.html

Not there.

[glenn@localhost ~]$ lsusb | grep "Chicony"
Bus 005 Device 004: ID 04f2:b008 Chicony Electronics Co., Ltd

Hmm, not good. Maybe they'll add support for it... someday. And Google returns only windows drivers.

Well, I guess I've found my answer: I'll buy a vaio. Like always, if you want to use Linux, you have to pick your hardware from HCLs

Anyway, thanks for your help. You saved me from making a bad investment.