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Installing Slackware Linux 9.1(10.0) on California Access D280S

Last updated: 1st of August, 2004

General hardware specifications of California Access D280S:

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.7, but I've also tested earlier 2.6.x Kernels and 2.4.22 up to 2.4.26. All of them worked well:^)

Basic installation of Slackware Linux

• I've successfully installed Slackware Linux 9.1 and 10.0 distributions, but I'm sure there would be no problems with installing and running any other (modern) distro on this laptop. Installation process is very simple, so I won't write about that. If You've managed to install Slack on desktop PC, You won't find any difficulties with installing it on California, because there are no extra parameters for the installer, when it comes to laptops. Setup detects network card and in fact that's the only hardware which is automatically detected and configured during installation. Video and audio cards needs to be setup manually.

Setting up additional features for California Access D280S

• First thing I've done after setup, was recompilling Kernel, so as to get rid of unneeded modules and drivers. Having done that I've noticed that ACPI support didn't work correctly, because there were no entries in /proc/acpi/battery/ directory. I've searched the net and have found that there's some bug in Kernel, I don't know if it's only concerned with this particular laptop, but You have to edit 'drivers/acpi/ec.c' file in Kernel sources directory and replace:
  #define ACPI_EC_UDELAY_COUNT 1000
  with:
  #define ACPI_EC_UDELAY_COUNT 10000. After this correction I've found proper files in /proc/acpi/battery/BAT0/ with all the information about battery state.

• I compiled Kernel 2.6.7 with 'Software Suspend' option, and then added:
  append="resume=/dev/hda6"
  to my lilo.conf. This way of suspending works quite fine, although sometimes computer hangs if I try to suspend while X session is running (suspending from text console always works).

• To get touchpad and PS/2 mouse work I only had to compile Kernel with "Provide /dev/psaux device", "ct82c710 Aux port controller" and PS/2 mouse support in 'Input device support' menu.

Video card

• While using Slackware 9.1, I tried to configure X Window with xf86config but X server crashed all the time I wanted to start it. Slack 9.1 uses XFree86-4.3.0 and although it supports SiS650 chipset, I couldn't get it work. Only after I've replaced standard SiS driver (/usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/sis_drv.o),which comes together with XFree, with driver from www.winischhofer.net, everything started to work fine. There's also very useful program on this page, written especially for this SiS driver, which allows to switch between different video modes during X session. After installing this program, You have to insert such line in device section, in XF86Config file:
  Option "EnableSisCtrl" "true"
  Slackware 10.0 uses Xorg, and It works without any problems with SiS driver.

• I've also compiled Kernel with SiS driver support for the framebuffer device, but all I got on my LCD was one big mess, so I stayed with 640x480 console on VESA driver.