Toshiba Tecra 730xcdt
 

I have the above laptop (144 ram, 2.1gb hd have ordered a 20gb one) (150mHz processor)
oriiginally w95, then installed 98se with no probs.
have now removed 98 & installed Suse8.2 personal

problem: can't get gui to work
the suse website says my graphics card is supported
when I type startx I get:

CHIPS(0): virtual height (0) is too small for the hardware (min128)
screen(s) found, but none have a usable configuration

Fatal server error:
no screens found


I have seen that others have got linux working with this laptop, am I too hopeful trying 8.2 with this computer?

If this is difficult to fix I'll wait until the new hd arrives,
could it be because of something with the old hd being corrupted etc etc
(98se works fine, with wireless internet & home network)
or is it to d with the xf86 config

any ideas??

ok, have managed to get a graphical screen by fiddling with xf86config

resolution is terrible and doesn't use all the screen!

however it is v pleasing to have got this far......

any ideas??

reinstalled on 20gb hd
the screen seems to be working now, so that problem is solved.

HOWEVER,the os runs really slowly. I presume this is because the computer is slow (it has never been fast), and using a v.modern o.s (originally sold with options of w95/w3.11)

How can I speed it up? I'm probably expecting too much from this trusty old beast

1)install an older version of linux (i.e from 2 - 3 years ago)
or
2) remove some components of the o.s.

I don't want to run demanding applications, mainly web browsing via ethernet, offfice stuff, statistics, data aquisiton
Although I don't know much, I have lots of time to learn as I have broken my arm and can't go to work

thanks, hopefully someone will reply

Hi, I too own a tecra 730XCDT
I would recommend debian 3.0 stable (woody) for the linux distribution. Its a bit more complicated to install than suse or redhat or whatever, but the trick is to avoid installing KDE or Gnome and whatever bloats suse or redhat.
Install the base system, set up apt, then apt-get wmaker wmcpu wmnet menu apm wmbattery etc. and what apps you want. apt-get synaptic for a graphical installer once you got X running. For a small but efficient browser i would recommend dillo, but use apt-pinning to install it from the testing distribution or from backports. Dont expect koffice or openoffice to run bearable, but abiword <2 and siag-office, ted, emacs, lyx works reasonable.
I've seen that the problem with full resolution is in the dotclock, which should be set to 53 MHz in the modeline for 1024x768 in the device section, (this modeline must be inserted by hand. this seems only to be the reason for 15 and 16 bit. Sometimes X want to use the CRT which must be cycled to the LCD with Fn-F5.
To get sound working I installed the 2.4 kernel and used sndconfig for cs423x. Check IRQ etc in Bios. Unfortunately this broke the PCMCIA support, which means that I'm off network right now:-( Yesterday I got it working but today it wont. There seem to be a conflict in the sound><pcmcia irq, which I probably need to change in the bios or at module loadtime.

Check out http://www.astro.umd.edu/~teuben/lin.../tecra710.html for some great info about hardware etc.
http://www.bouissou.net/linux-portables.html is in some foreign language for me, but hdparm -A1c1m16k1 /dev/hda speed up harddisk app. 25%

Good luck

Esben

thanks, I'll give that a try.....