My Thinkpad A30 has this configuration: *
- 933MHz CPU
- 128MB memory (standard) + 128MB (upgrade) = 256MB (total)
- 20GB hard disk
- 24x-10x CD-ROM drive
- 2 USB ports
- 14.1 XGA(1024x768) TFT color display
Note that the A30 does not have a floppy drive.
Basic Install
This laptop had previously been configured as dual-boot with Windows XP, but this time the laptop was completely re-installed - Windows was completely removed. No IR devices to play with, so we have no idea if IR support is working. USB was detected and support was loaded by Linux. Works fine with a USB mouse.
Other notes are below:
Sound
The sound card was detected by the installer. It's an i810 sound card. The grey volume buttons on the laptop do work. Just tap the grey buttons to set the volume.
Network
The internal network card was detected. It's an Intel EEPro100 network card. Support is loaded using the e100 driver. However, it's a laptop, so you may as well go wireless. We have an ORiNOCO Gold PCMCIA card. But cardmgr doesn't recognize the PCMCIA socket on the laptop! It evidently has a kernel bug but is fixed by:
/sbin/modprobe yenta_socket /etc/init.d/pcmcia restart
After that, to add the ORiNOCO Gold card, just put the card in the PCMCIA slot, then start the 'Network Configuration' app, then 'Add' a new network interface. Choose 'Wireless'. Select the ORiNOCO card from the list, set it to DHCP, and enable the interface.
Modem
This laptop has an AMR modem, which has not been supported until recently. I haven't tried it, but if you need to get the modem working, you might look into slmdm. Latest version is something like 2.7.16 or newer. Web site is smlink.com.
My modem is identified by lspci -vv like this:
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem (rev 01) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
Subsystem: IBM ThinkPad A/T/X Series
Control: I/O+ Mem- BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
Status: Cap- 66Mhz- UDF- FastB2B+ ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
Interrupt: pin B routed to IRQ 11
Region 0: I/O ports at 2400 [size=256]
Region 1: I/O ports at 2000 [size=128]
and by lspci -n -s 00:1f.6 like this:
00:1f.6 Class 0703: 8086:2486 (rev 01)
That means I have a Lucent AMR modem assembled by Intel. *
X Windows
The video card was correctly probed by the installer. It's an ATI Radeon Mobility M6 video card. During install, the display was actually listed as "Unidentified" but is easy to change to "Generic laptop display 1024x768".
Software
I used the standard components for a "Workstation" installation, meaning the generic install, including software development, office software (like OpenOffice.org), and tools. It's great!
