Toshiba P25 Users Check in!

zaphod84 · Posted: Thu Dec 04, 2003 6:44 am Post subject: Toshiba P25 Users Check in!

Just looking for anyone else using a Toshina P25 laptop who would like to share their linux experiences. Main issues are bootsplash and the wireless card. I have also been tossing around the idea of writing a driver for the multimedia buttons and remote control, but havn't really been able to find much information on them. Toshiba will now release anything (suprise suprise) and i've pretty much determined they do not work as a character device sending control keys because i have been unable to hook any kinds of unusual keys. I know it works only under windows XP with a proprietary drive in windows.

Doomwookie · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2003 5:57 am Post subject:

I've had a P25-S607 for a couple of weeks and finally have time to install linux on it. (Actually starting an install from stage2 on it as I type this.) Have you tried Mythtv or freevo on it yet? I was wondering if the TVtuner and hardware MPEG2 encoder that came with the laptop worked in linux. It seems to be made by Emuzed and run off the USB bus, but I have no idea what chipset it uses or whether it is supported by Video4linux.

Lirc seems to be what is used to talk to infrared remotes in linux. In windows the remote seems to run off a generic driver that is call "Microsoft eHome". I have no idea if anybody has come up with config for it since it seems pretty hard to find any info on the lirc.org page on what is supported.
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Doomwookie
Toshiba Satellite P25-S607
Gentoo/Windows MCE Dualboot

zaphod84 · Posted: Sun Dec 07, 2003 7:34 am Post subject:

I actually havn't gotten around to getting the remote yet, i was just messing around with the buttons on the machine.

I've got an s507 so i wouldn't know anything about the TV Tuner.

ric_man

This is my first post from my freshly installed Gentoo machine on a Toshiba P20 from Stage1 off the 2004.0 universal CD. I've finally gotten X up and running with the nVidia drivers, and have just installed Mozilla - but haven't gotten around to installing a WM (I was just eager to get to the Gentoo Forums).

The Toshiba P20 is a similar "beast" to the P25, but comes with a few different setups / hardware options. It's named P20 in Australia (and possibly Canada, as well as some other countries). It is still a 17" monitor on a Intel P4 +HT CPU, with a nVidia GeForceFX Go5200 graphics card. It comes pre-installed with WinXP Pro, and the box it came in had a EULA sticker on it saying if you break the sticker, you're happy with the pre-installed OS (

Is that a story by itself??). I don't have WiFi (maybe one day), but do have Bluetooth (no devices to test on), DVD-R/RW, and the remote (WTF is that for??).

I've previously attempted to install Linux on this machine, but was not impressed at the lack of answers from Toshiba about their dial-up modem. I asked their support division here in Australia, and the person I got didn't know what model the modem was, didn't know what hardware specifications it had (ie. did it have a UART on it or not), and definately did not want to continue the conversation when I told him I intended to install Linux onto it. Not his fault I guess, just following the company line. Mandrake and Redhat / Fedora didn't do it for me with all the pre-installed applications. Knoppix was fun, and gave me hope that Linux was going to be great on this box.

Gentoo GRP was good, but I didn't feel like I was taking full advantage of the Intel P4 3.0GHz CPU. I did most of the system install yesterday, and I think it took about 9.5 to 11 hours from putting the CD in to getting the kernel compiled correctly, and booting up for the first time to the command line. Still not everything is 100% but it's getting there. Oh yeah, I also got cable, which is what got me through, as I couldn't get the modem working at all (and this lead to me not being able to download the portage tree, correct nVidia kernels, other applications, etc). I wasn't at the PC for the entire time, as most of the Stage1 to Stage2 to Stage3 is basically just doing a few config files, and then letting the scripts take care of the rest. I was possibly interactive with the PC for about 3 hours in total (maybe not even that). Today I think I've clocked in about 4 hours to get X and nVidia and Mozilla on it, with a lot of examining / tweaking the make.conf file, as well as reading the documentation on the install and desktop of Gentoo.

Overall, I thought it was great experience, and would highly reccomend it to anyone wanting to give it a go. I wouldn't recommend it to corporates as it does take a long time to get the system set up, but I guess once it is set up, maintenance is a breeze. I'll be documenting what I've done (from memory) on my geocities page over the next few weeks.

Besides documenting what I've done I also intent to continue to get a full 1440x900 desktop running (some forum posters have been extremely helpful in this by sending me their XF86config files), as well as much of the hardware features on this machine as possible.

Feel free to discuss any aspect with me.
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Running Gentoo as a desktop on a Toshiba Satellite P20 (P25 to some of you). Learning heaps!

hacmac · n00b Joined: 19 Jan 2004 Posts: 27 Location: Vienna

i also have a toshiba p20 but i think it works really fast. compiling openoffice takes about 3 or 4 hours i think that is really fast. i know some desktops with same or better processors which need more time. the things i didnt get to work are the multimediabuttons and the remotecontrol.

ric_man · Posted: Tue May 11, 2004 2:51 pm Post subject: BIOS for a Toshiba P20

I've just noticed that the BIOS upgrade from the Toshiba Australia web site is now version 1.7.

http://203.56.127.6/driver_download/Public/p2_all/P20170.exe

(Although at the time of writing the link works... I don't think you can directly download from the link, but you may have to click it, and then let it resolve to download the file for you.)

Does anyone know what features the upgrade brings? I'm hesitant to contact Toshiba until I hear about what other P20 / P25 users (running Linux) have got. I am currently running BIOS 1.6 (I think it's Pheonix).

And the second question I have is if you don't have access to a Windows / DOS PC, how do you use it? Does something like DOSEMU let you write it to a floppy (that didn't come as standard with my machine).

Any experiences?
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Running Gentoo as a desktop on a Toshiba Satellite P20 (P25 to some of you). Learning heaps!

yuza · Posted: Tue May 18, 2004 8:31 am Post subject:

I have a satellite P10 and I'm experiencing a little problem (I think). I often hear a little noise from the hard disk (like when it accesses data, but a bit louder) and while the hard disk is glitching the comp quite freezes for less than a second... you know it seems like is loading something or whatever, it lasts less than a second but it happens quite often. I thought it might be something kernel or bios related... any idea? (the bios is phoenix and kernel-2.4.25).

zerokill · Posted: Wed Jun 23, 2004 8:14 am Post subject:

I have a P15, and I like how gentoo works well with it. I'm sure you know the differences between p15 and p25 w/ the smaller screen on mine. I get people telling me how big of laptop I own, I tell em there's bigger. The only thing that i cant configure or install in the wireless card. Have you set yours up?
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college -- sleep, study, party :: pick two

ixion · l33t Joined: 16 Dec 2002 Posts: 708

ric_man · Posted: Thu Jul 22, 2004 8:00 am Post subject:

ilovegentoo · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:38 pm Post subject:

Hey all, just found a link to this forum thread via Ric's Toshiba P20 page:

http://www.geocities.com/ric_on_the_go/linux_with_toshiba_p20/

I own a Toshiba Satellite P25-S509. General system specs:

2.8 GHz P4 with Hyperthreading Technology
512 Megs RAM
80 Gig Hard Drive
17" 1440X900 Widescreen

I successfully installed Gentoo on a desktop PC yesterday and got KDE up and running so my confidence is booming. This being my first successfuly installation (after 7 failures) I'm feeling a bit potent.

Soooo, given that I've familiarized myself with OOo, Firefox and a few other apps in Windows that have Linux equivalents, I'm gonna take the tumble and try to get Gentoo/Gnome installed on my Toshi.

I don't believe in going halfway on anything, therefore I'm gonna take over the ENTIRE hard drive for Gentoo. YAY!

Ok, silliness aside, it's time for me to get to work and see what damage, er, success I can have.

ilovegentoo · Posted: Sun Sep 19, 2004 11:46 pm Post subject:

o0the_llama0o · Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 12:58 am Post subject:

im thinking of buying a toshiba satellite p25-526 laptop and am wondering how compatible it is with linux.
http://www.newegg.com/app/viewProductDesc.asp?description=34-114-095&catalog=23&manufactory=BROWSE

things im worried about
1)gfx card (good cuz its nVidia)
2)wlan (i haven't found out what chip it is, but im hoping it'll work)
3)fast ethernet (this better work, i don't know what chip it is either)
4)processor core, is it a northwood or a prescott?? in know its trivial, but northwoods are performing better =-)

ilovegentoo · Posted: Thu Oct 21, 2004 8:49 am Post subject:

o0the_llama0o · Posted: Fri Oct 22, 2004 2:22 am Post subject:

thank you very much, this was very helpful
i think ill convince my mom to get it =-), i hope the card reader magically works, but if it doesn't, thats ok.

cros13 · n00b Joined: 26 Oct 2004 Posts: 2 Location: Ireland

Hi Guys!
I've been running Gentoo and Fedora on my P20-S203 since Aug. 2003.
I seem to have worked out quite a few of the kinks:
The wireless is usually an atheros: use the madwifi driver from Http://www.sourceforge.net/projects/madwifi/ for help with that(dosent work well with the 2.6 kernel i'm afraid)
The quick buttons can be made work using dallas's one-wire bus driver in the latest kernel + some configs.
X works AAA with the proper modelines in your configs(I'll post them soon, i got both XFree and xorg confs)
The SD controller works with kernel 2.6 drivers(its a toshiba america systems typA controller)
The remote, i forgot about, lying down the back of a couch somewhere.

Hardware and relevant drivers:
TI firewire controller: ohci1394
Realtek 8139 Ethernet : 8139too
Toshiba PCMCIA: yenta_socket
Trackpad : ALPS Glidepoint
Intel AC97 Sound: snd-intel8x0
Intel AC97 Modem: snd-intel8x0m
USB2 controllers: ehci_hcd and uhci_hcd
DVD-RAM: you need dvd-record and it'll work fine
The ACPI stuff needs to be stuck in your kernel there's a value for toshiba extras in there.

I'll post a .config soon for an optimised kernel for the beast(inc. all the cool stuff like suspend and ethernet networking at 400 mbits over that wonderful little firewire plug).

Heres some stuff to get your IDE controller working fully:
open a terminal
type su
enter root passwd
hdparm -c3 /dev/hda
hdparm -u1 /dev/hda
hdparm -k1 /dev/hda
And sit back enjoying 200-300% increased hard drive performance

BTW: tried FreeBSD and NetBSD: works great.

Good luck fellow travellers,
cros13

ric_man · Posted: Tue Nov 02, 2004 1:45 pm Post subject:

Firstly, thanks for the reference to the page I put up on my experiences with GNU/Linux and the Toshiba P20. It's good to see it is of some benefit to others.

bzdee · n00b Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 4

Hi,
I finally got Gentoo installed on my P25. (I'm a noob, just learning)

I cannot get my wireless card installed, and honestly, I'm lost.
I tried the suggestion:
ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="~x86" emerge madwifi-driver (reboot just to be safe (that's what I did))
emerge hotplug && rc-update add hotplug default && /etc/init.d/hotplug start
emerge wireless-tools
iwconfig ath0 key <your key here>
iwconfig ath0 key on
dhcpcd ath0

-----
However, this did not work for me. I don't know if I should be using the madwifi-driver in the first place. When I check my wireless card info in WinXP, it is listed as "Toshiba Wireless LAN Mini PCI Card".

AFter I ran the setup described above, and tried to iwconfig, i got "ath0 No Such device"

Many thanks to any help I can get. These forums are awesome :lol:

ixion · l33t Joined: 16 Dec 2002 Posts: 708

I am having this same problem all of a sudden 'ath0: No such device', but it was working flawlessly for months before I did an 'emerge -U world'. I have re-emerged madwifi-tools numerous times, nogo. Restarted hotplug, nogo. For some reason the device just isn't detected anymore.. anyone else having this problem?

lspci -v:

bzdee · n00b Joined: 13 Dec 2004 Posts: 4

Hi, I was just wondering if anybody has their laptop's wireless working with the "Toshiba Wireless LAN Mini PCI Card".

I have been trying for a couple weeks, on and off, to no avail. When I lspci, the card is not detected. Maybe somebody who has this same card set up can offer assistance. I appreciate it!

ixion · l33t Joined: 16 Dec 2002 Posts: 708

I just found that there are updated madwifi-drivers and madwifi-tools in portage. I would emerge both of them, but separately. At the end of the the madwifi-drivers emerge it will give you directions on getting ath0 up and running again.

Basically, you need to load the following modules:

jkroon · Posted: Fri Feb 04, 2005 10:36 pm Post subject:

For the BIOS updates without Windows, the following link may prove usefull:

http://www.kroon.co.za/howto.php?howto=bios_update

It boils down to you get the floppy disc upgrade version, and then you create a bootable cd from that instead of dd'ing it to a floppy. Obviously you then boot the CD.
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world,
those who understand binary and who don't

pvphaneuf · n00b Joined: 12 May 2005 Posts: 17

well, I've had a Toshiba P20 for about a year and I've been trying out most of the n00b distros of linux on it; there have been many times where it needed a small hint to get properly configured, but she worked cleanly with Debian based distros and most others. I decided to install gentoo over the weekend... and failed, but I haven't given up. I followed Ric's webpage and the installing handbook off the gentoo site, but Ric's page compared to the handbook seemed to have some steps out of order. If there are any other resources on installing gentoo on a P20, could ya'll send me a link.

thnx

jkroon · Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 5:51 pm Post subject:

Depending on how close it is to the P10 http://www.kroon.co.za/howto.php?howto=toshiba_p10 might be usefull. If other distro's have just installed, so should Gentoo. If you are having acpi trouble, do not boot with acpi=off, first try using "i8042.nomux=1 usb-handoff". I still need to update my page but that eventually solved my problem. The P20 has a nVidia card right?
_________________
There are 10 kinds of people in the world,
those who understand binary and who don't

pvphaneuf · n00b Joined: 12 May 2005 Posts: 17

the two systems compare pretty close... thanks for the tips!!! Maybe this weekend I can get things up and going.