Linux on a Transmonde Vibrant

NOTE: I am far from a Linux expert, so I do not even pretend to claim that any tips or suggestions here are the best way to do things. If you have better solutions, please email me. Also, the usual standard disclaimers apply: These solutions worked on my computer, but they may not work on yours. Although I doubt they will, I accept no responsibility if any tips given here do something bad to your computer.

Installation

I ran into problems partitioning my hard disk, because it seems that Transmonde formats its hard drives as FAT32, which is not supported by FIPS, the only freeware non-destructive hard disk partitioner that I know of. You can either repartition your hard drive using Win95's FDISK program and lose all your data (although you can then reinstall Windows 95 and all the drivers using the CD-ROM and diskettes that shipped with your computer, if you so desire) or purchase a commercial program. I got PowerQuest's PartitionMagic for about $60 and it worked great.

The main installation hitch I ran into was that Linux's PCMCIA package, pcmcia-cs, has trouble recognizing Transmonde's PCMCIA hardware. I think this is because Transmonde's PCMCIA slots support CardBus cards, which pcmcia-cs versions earlier than 2.9 do not support at all and which later versions have only experimental support for. This means that the installation program for RedHat versions 4.1 and earlier cannot recognize PCMCIA slots. RedHat version 4.2 was able to recognize my PCMCIA slots, but for some reason RedHat 5.0 could not, although it ships with pcmcia-cs 2.9.12, which does support CardBus sockets.

This is not a huge problem, because as I'll show you below, you can get pcmcia-cs working once you have Linux installed on your computer. But if you were counting on installing Linux via a method that needs a PC card (for example, an NFS or FTP install over a PCMCIA network card), you'll probably want to find another method. I settled on purchasing a CD-ROM from Cheap*Bytes. It was only about $7 including shipping and worked perfectly. (The installation program has no problems recognizing the CD-ROM drive.)

Getting pcmcia-cs working

1. You'll need to install the kernel sources before installing the pcmcia-cs package, although you don't need to recompile your kernel to use pcmcia-cs.
2. Also, you can remove the pcmcia-cs RPM by typing rpm -e pcmcia-cs. (You can ignore the message "Package pcmcia-cs is not installed" if you get it.)
3. Get the original distribution from hyper.stanford.edu: /pub/pcmcia
4. Put the .tar.gz file that you've downloaded somewhere on your hard disk. I put it in /usr/src
5. Unpack the file by typing tar -xvfz [file name].
6. cd into the directory created by tar. (It will be called pcmcia-cs-x.x.x, where x.x.x is the version number, e.g. 3.0.0)
7. Type make config. You can probably accept the defaults given for all the options if you don't know what you're doing.
8. Type make all, then make install.
9. Reboot your computer.

More post-installation configuration

• Mounting your Windows partition: In order to mount your FAT32 partition under Linux, you'll need to be running kernel 2.0.34 or higher.
• CD-ROM drive: It should be all set up once installation has completed. Mine is device /dev/hdb (on the Vivante, it is /dev/hdc) and the RedHat installation program automatically makes a link to /dev/cdrom.
• Floppy drive: It's device /dev/fd0. If you have the CD-ROM drive in the drive bay, you can plug and unplug the floppy drive from the external drive port while Linux is running without any problems (but make sure you unmount the floppy before unplugging it).
• Touchpad: Configure it as a PS/2 mouse for GPM or for X Windows. A lot of the special touchpad settings from Windows 95 (such as tapping the touchpad to click) also work in Linux. There's also a special Synaptics touchpad configuration program available if you want to fiddle some more with your touchpad settings: http://sunsite.unc.edu/pub/Linux/distributions/redhat/contrib/i386/synaptics-0.1.1-1.i386.rpm
• Parallel port: Although I'd expect my parallel port to be /dev/lp0, it's actually /dev/lp1. If you're setting up a printer or something and /dev/lp0 doesn't work, try /dev/lp1.
• Modem: I don't have an internal modem in my computer, so I can't help you with that. If you're using a PCMCIA modem, the PCMCIA utilities should automatically set up a link from the device to /dev/modem.
• XFree86 video settings: The Vibrant has a Chips & Technology 65550 video card with 2 MB of video memory. The Vivante has a a C & T 65555 video card, also with 2 MB of video memory. Both are supported by XFree's SVGA X server. I use the Extended Super VGA horizontal sync rate (800x600 at 60 Hz) and a vertical sync rate of 50-70. These may not be the best settings, but they don't blow out my LCD screen, and they let me run X at 800x600 with 16-bit color. RedHat set up X so it runs in 8-bit color by default; running startx -- -bpp 16 will let you run in 16-bit color. If you decide you like it, you can create a file called .xserverrc in your home directory and put the following in it:

exec X :0 -bpp 16
Then X will always start up in 16-bit color.
• Sound card configuration: I was able to get 8-bit sound working by saying that the sound card was a SoundBlaster Pro. From what I've heard, it's impossible to get 16-bit sound because so-called "SoundBlaster compatible" cards like the ESS one in the Vibrant are actually only SoundBlaster Pro (8-bit) compatible, not SoundBlaster 16 (16-bit) compatible. If anyone does get 16-bit sound working, please email me and I'll put the solution up here.

To get sound working, you first need to compile SoundBlaster sound support into your kernel. See the Kernel-HOWTO for information on how to do this if you don't know -- it's not terribly difficult. I personally compiled the driver as a module. Once I had the driver in the kernel, I used RedHat's sndconfig program that ships with RedHat 5.0 to configure my sound card. I'm not sure how it would work on other distributions, but if it helps, here are the sound lines from my /etc/conf.modules:

# SoundBlaster support
options -k sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1
# MIDI support
options -k opl3 io=0x388

Of course, you'll need to put your own settings in there if you've changed them. I/O 0x220, IRQ 5, and DMA 1 are the default settings that my computer shipped with. You can find the settings used by your computer by going into Setup (by hitting F8 as your computer boots) and going into Advanced Configuration under one of the headings. Ignore the second DMA channel; that's the 16-bit DMA channel, which obviously isn't necessary if you're only running in 8-bit mode.
• Advanced Power Management (APM) configuration: Last I heard, Vibrants have a BIOS bug that means that they don't support APM under Linux. You can try configuring it into the kernel if you'd like, but make sure you keep a backup kernel on hand, since the way the bug manifests itself is that it hangs the computer on boot up.

Other questions?

• Kasper Peeters' page on the Vivante
• A post by Owen Magee to comp.sys.laptops on setting up Linux on the Vivante