Ruggedized Itronix laptop HOWTO

From: Leon Barrett (lrbarret_at_artsci.wustl.edu)
Date: 01/17/04 

Date: Sat, 17 Jan 2004 21:03:20 GMT

I bought a cheap ruggedized laptop and got Slackware Linux working on it.
I've written up a little HOWTO about it and I thought some people from the
community might want to comment on it. Is there anything else I should
include? Anything I should leave out?

Leon

Itronix-HOWTO:

  Itronix XC-6250 Laptop HOWTO
  Leon Barrett <lrbarret -at- artsci.wustl.edu>
  v0.1, 17 January 2004

1 INTRODUCTION

Itronix is a company that makes "ruggedized" laptops. At the time of
writing, their newest, ruggedest laptops are in the "GoBook Max" line.
For $175, I purchased an elderly XC 6250, which boasts a 200 MHz
Pentium 1, 32 MB of memory, and a 3 GB hard drive. It has 2 PCMCIA
slots, a parallel port, a serial port, a VGA port, and a
built-in-modem. However, it has no drives with removable media (e.g.
CDROM drives, floppy drives). I have gotten GNU/Linux to boot on it
and gotten the PCMCIA system working (which did not work with the
driver distributed with the kernel). This resource is for those who
lack the time to mess around with the system until it works.

I am not making this as a full howto. I assume you have installed
Linux on a machine before. If not, you may want to read about the
standard process before actually wiping out anything on your laptop.
This is only intended to be a secondary aid to let you transfer that
general knowledge to this specific laptop.

2 PRELIMINARY NETWORKING

If you have a cheaper or older model that has no removable media,
getting data (your new Linux-based OS) onto the system can be a
problem. Instead of using traditional CD-ROM media, you will have to
use some sort of networking. I bought a 16-bit PCMCIA ethernet card
from Netgear to do this. However, Windows 95 did not have the
drivers, and without drives or a connection, there was no way to get
them. Therefore, I used a parallel-port direct-connect cable and the
Windows "Direct Connect" tool to link to a Windows computer that was
able to acquire the drivers. I then copied the drivers over.

For networking, I then used the ethernet card rather than the parallel
cable because ethernet is so much faster. This network connection
allowed me to transfer the necessary installation data to the laptop.

3 BASIC PRECAUTIONS

If your laptop has a bootable drive with removable media (e.g. a
CD-ROM drive), then this will not be an issue for you. However, if
you lack this, know that messing up the operating system can render
your machine unbootable. In this case, you will have to purchase a
PCMCIA CD-ROM drive or floppy drive. These cost on the order of
$100-$200, which may be more than you paid for the laptop. Therefore,
if possible, be careful to always maintain one bootable system. I
have two Linux installations, so if I manage to screw one up, I can
boot from the second one and fix the first.

4 DISK PARTITIONING

Note: I am talking about this a little in advance. The actual
partitioning will not take place until the installation process.
However, it is wise to think about this issue before you actually do
it.

I was lucky enough that my hard drive was already partitioned into two
1.5 GB partitions. Therefore, I was able to remove one and have both
Linux and Windows installed simultaneously, leaving me a safety net
(see Sec. 3, BASIC PRECAUTIONS). If your computer has only one
partition and you have no bootable media, make sure that you have your
network working under Linux before installing Linux onto a partition
previously occupied by Windows. Preferrably, you would use a
partition editor (e.g. parted) to shrink the single Windows partition
to leave enough empty space (100-200 MB) to install Linux.

5 SOURCE MEDIA

You have to have some copy of a Linux system to install it. Usually,
this will come on a CD-ROM. You must have some way of accessing this
source from the installer in order to install. If you have multiple
partitions on your hard drive, you might be able to keep a copy of the
source on one partition and install to the other, as I did. If you
lack this, you will have to get networking working from your
installation boot of Linux to access the source media over the
network. This is a bit of a hassle; read below for instructions on
the PCMCIA system. Fortunately, I was in the first category, so I
didn't have to worry about the PCMCIA stuff until later.

6 BOOTING TO AN INSTALLER

The primary issue with installing is the lack of bootable devices. As
a result, it is necessary to use some other method to boot. I used
loadlin, a DOS program that re-initializes the system and loads a
Linux kernel and ramdisk. If these terms are unfamiliar, you may want
to read about them now. For a kernel and initial ramdisk image, I
used the kernel and initrd that came with the distribution I was using
(Slackware, http://www.slackware.com/).

7 PCMCIA AND NETWORKING

I don't know how much of this applies to your laptop, but it certainly
affected me. The kernel has PCMCIA support, and it even has a driver
for the PCMCIA bridge used in my laptop. This bridge is the "Cirrus
Logic CL 6729". The appropriate driver is the i82365 module. This
module is available in the kernel, but the kernel driver DOES NOT WORK
WITH THIS HARDWARE. The module loads (the logs all look right), but
any PCMCIA cards inserted are recognized as "anonymous memory".

However, the standalone PCMCIA drivers (available at
http://pcmcia-cs.sourceforge.net/) do indeed work. All you have to do
is unzip the kernel sources, unzip the pcmcia-cs package, and compile
it according to the pcmcia-cs instructions. I compiled on a second
system because of limited space and processing power on the laptop. I
then copied the modules over (replacing the kernel driver files) and
loaded the i82365 module via modprobe. After that, my network card
was recognized properly. For configuration of PCMCIA cards, see your
distribution's documentation.

8 THINGS THAT STILL DON'T WORK

Some things still don't work. I cannot activate the backlight under
Linux. During lilo and while the kernel is loading, it can still be
turned on, but as soon as the kernel loads, it fails. I assume this
is because the kernel is grabbing some interrupt, but I am not
entirely sure how to determine what interrupt or get the kernel to let
it pass by.

Also, apm always reports the battery charge from when the apm module
was loaded, which is a bug. There may be some simple configuration
option to fix it, but I don't know it.

I broke my touchscreen, so I can't get it working. Here's a hint;
test any power supply before you use it, as 15 volts (instead of the
standard 12) will burn out your touchscreen. My VGA-out also doesn't
work, but that may have been burned out too.

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