Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

learner · 2006-03-15 16:51:07

Hi,
I currently have installed arch 0.71 on my toshiba satellite a70 laptop. It runs fast and is the my most preferred distro so far, but sometimes i encounter some strange problems. Yesterday, when i restart my laptop, it just hangs (no freeze,keyboard still response)a bit in the POST screen for no reason(i am sure that there is no cd is in the drive). and occasionally, i hear a single click sound from the hd, which i never heard of back in windows. So i want to ask if there is a way to detect out what is the problem or is it possible to make the laptop drivers to work ultra-stable with linux. I have already try to look at the installation guides(gentoo ones and ubunutu ones mainly) that is available on the internet for this model.

Also I want to know if any of you who have a toshiba laptop , a70 or not, if possible, could post some of the experience, problem,etc., you have with getting your toshiba laptop to work with linux. replies will be helpful.

myst · 2006-03-15 19:11:08

I have Arch 071 on my Toshiba Satellite M45-S355. Everything works fine, except Marvell Yukon LAN-card. There's sk98lin driver for Marvell cards, but AFAIK it supports only Gigabit Ethernet ones, mine is 100 Mbps.

lanrat · 2006-03-15 22:18:40

I'm using arch on Toshiba Satellite Pro M40X-169. No big problems really as it's pretty standard:
Intel 915 chipset with Intel 915GM video card - max 128 MB shared with RAM, Realtek ALC250 soundcard
Pentium M740 1.73 GHz,
WXGA 1280x800,
ipw2200 and realtek 8139,
cdrw + dvd rom,
1GB RAM = 512 MB builtin + 512 MB additional,
40GB Toshiba SATA HDD 4200 rpm (but works better than many 5400 rpm hard disks)
ALPS touchpad - working with synaptics driver

Everything works. I'm using it with an addtional external Fujitsu Siemens LCD W19-1 (1440x900 16:10 19") in Xinerama mode currently.
It was a little challenge to set up this LCD but finally I'm very pleased (I still can't set it up properly in WinXP though... bah, who cares...).
The only real "hack" is the 915resolution app that changes BIOS video modes for the external LCD and remapping right alt key with the "empty" key on the right of the space key - much easier to use for entering special characters.

The biggest difference between this and other toshiba models is that it has (IIRC) Phoenix BIOS not the original Toshiba BIOS so I can't use special toshiba_acpi module and extra app for Fn keys. But these keys work and I can remap them using standard tools.

In your case I would start with memtest for RAM tests. Next, smartmontools for HD test. Then check the configs (wifi? lan? modules? dmesg? netfs?, ...).

learner · 2006-03-16 02:10:44

Thanks for replying, Myst and lanrat.

Lanrat, I guess i will take your advise and do some testing on it when i have the free time(which may be in a month). but do anyone of you recompile your kernel? and Do any of you guys get it to work on standby? and does any of you have any overheating problem, i sometimes does and it freezes, but most of the time, the fan just kick in automatically, but i have heard that the fanning is done automatically on this model(under the hood), and configurations is not available b/c of the pheonix bios it uses.

by the way, I realize the click happens for windows too. Sorry, I shall be shamed for saying the clicking in the first place.

lanrat · 2006-03-16 09:50:35

I'm using standard arch kernel26. It works fine and has everything I need. Since the introduction of initrd I can customize it much easier and recompiling the kernel would be just waste of time.

What do you mean "work on standby" ? I've never tried hibernate scripts so far but I don't really need it.

I have no overheating problems too. I'm using kernel driven cpufreq with ondemand governor. The CPU works from 800 MHz to 1.73 GHz dynamically and the cpu fan turns on quite seldom. No hot surfaces etc. It works more or less like in Win XP with toshiba tools. There are small number of options in the BIOS (Phoenix) but the fan depends on the cpu freqency really and it seems to work fine with the standard kernel modules.

I know nothing about the hd "clicks". The hd is very quiet plus it's only 4200 rpm so it's also quite cold (I think).

One thing you should check too is lsmod. I had problems with udev autoloading wrong acpi/cpufreq modules and I had to tweak my rc.conf to avoid it. Not a big problem though. I have only 1 problem that I still have to investigate but it's not a big problem: during boot I have irq 20 disabled message which I believe is connected with some usb modules/hardware. Everything works fine so bzflag game wins so far with my will to investigate this problem :-)

learner · 2006-03-16 17:09:29

Sorry for the bad grammer, i just mean if you could set your laptop into standby state(or suspend to ram). Since you haven't try the hibernate script, don't bother with the question. and please just ignore the hd click. and Once again, thanks for the advices. I would check the lsmod later today, and try differenet governors for the cpu scaling, i suspect that there might be a wrong module that is loaded, and preventing me from loading p4-clockmod.

noise_ · 2006-03-27 06:32:24

I am using Arch on my Toshiba Satellite M30X without any probrlems...

just the multimedia keys doesn't work because of the non-toshiba bios.

edit: ok, the multimedia keys are working now with the omnibook kernel module. the lcd brightness can also be set (echo -n VALUE >> /proc/omnibook/lcd)
http://sourceforge.net/projects/omke/

lanrat · 2006-03-27 11:11:56

Tnx for the omnibook info. I'll try that on my laptop too. I didn't know about this project.

The keys (multimedia and fn keys) can be also configured with the standard linux utils (you just need to assign keycodes to scancodes etc. - at least that's what dmesg output suggests) though having a specialized module might be helpful.

I also solved the "disabling irq 20" message during boot by adding irqpoll to kernel boot parameters in the grub config (that was probably broken acpi bios info). With the latest xorg and kernel from current I also had to add intel_agp i915 - in this order - to the MODULES array (apart from enabling autoloading) in /etc/rc.conf. This way I got rid of the drm initialization error during boot and it also enabled dri in xorg (not a big performance gain though - without dri I had about 600 fps in glxgears and with dri I have ~800 fps). Xinerama works very nice too with the external LCD (no dri in xinerama mode but that's normal).

lanrat · 2006-03-28 11:39:56

Unfortunatelly omnibook works but doesn't recognize my notebook model. Oh, well...

EDIT (FYI): I read the README file and was finally able to start it and display some useful info.

You have to start the module with

modprobe omnibook ectype=12

(which forces it to pretend other notebook model, in this case M35X I guess - see the readme for other modes descritpion and more parameters) and check /proc/omnibook for available info. Now I finally know CPU temp which is around 52C in idle. I seems to work fine now :-)
There is one minor problem: if you load and unload the module, the second time you load it there is nothing in /proc/omnibook but there is no error in dmesg.

venky80 · 2007-09-27 15:43:32

a205-S4577 compiz fusion and HD intel audio ALC268 realtek chipset doesn't work
I am using kernel26

Damnshock · 2007-09-27 21:30:43

Toshiba m30-801 --- everything works

Toshiba u200 ---- card reader doesn't work (haven't check it deeper) and it can't suspend to ram correctly. There's a patch for kernel 2.6.22 but it's unstalbe

Basu · 2007-09-28 14:27:27

are any of you dual booting vista and arch on a toshiba laptop. Is there anything special I should know about before I get started?? Do the atheros wireless chipsets work fine?

venky80 · 2007-09-28 15:59:48

FIXED sound issues on toshiba a205-s4577 with ALSA 1.0.15 rc3 even the MIC works:D

venky80 · 2007-10-03 03:15:54

I dont know if this is the best place to post this issue or not,
I was wondering how to get my volume button to work with Arch? It used to work in ubuntu gutsy, is there some module which I have to load.
Also I have no setting to adjust brightness of my Laptop display. I have pm_utils package but my kpowersave has no brightness control.
None of my fn keys work either.

Damnshock · 2007-10-03 08:55:18

venky80 wrote:

I dont know if this is the best place to post this issue or not,
I was wondering how to get my volume button to work with Arch? It used to work in ubuntu gutsy, is there some module which I have to load.
Also I have no setting to adjust brightness of my Laptop display. I have pm_utils package but my kpowersave has no brightness control.
None of my fn keys work either.

You need to set them by yourself using acpi *and* patch the kernel as for now the default arch kernel does not include the toshiba-acpi patch anymore.

It's kind of a bit complicated, but i don't have time to write all the settings you'll need to adjust. Maybe this weekend...

venky80 · 2007-10-03 15:26:45

That will be awesome if you could help me.
I have Ubuntu installed in the same laptop but different partition and, all my funtion keys work in ubuntu.
I am a new arch user and I love the fact that it lets you learn linux and you have control over the stuff which is installed.
Meanwhile I love ubuntu too, I tried Arch after getting dismayed by Kubuntu which is not as poslished as ubuntu.
I tried xbindkeys to set my function keys but it really didn't work.(or I could not make it work, is there any module for that?)

Thanks for all the help.

Damnshock · 2007-10-03 16:00:46

As I said, you need to patch your kernel because your Fn keys are recognized as acpi events only understood with that patch. I might be able to help you with more time in a couple of days (meanwhile, anyone can help you too! )

venky80 · 2007-10-03 21:55:58

yes that is always there ..;)

terreiro · 2007-11-19 12:25:36

Damnshock wrote:

Toshiba m30-801 --- everything works
Toshiba u200 ---- card reader doesn't work (haven't check it deeper) and it can't suspend to ram correctly. There's a patch for kernel 2.6.22 but it's unstalbe

Estimado Damnshock,

I have a Toshiba Satellite M30-801 too, but I can not get the multimedia keys to work. Can you please show us how you did it?

--
Gracias,
José Terreiro

Damnshock · 2007-11-19 17:36:09

Not much to do, just installing fnfx http://fnfx.sourceforge.net/

It's an old app, but it worked well for me ( I haven't used this laptop for half a year though)

yangcy · 2007-11-20 10:06:32

Toshiba P100-217
Everything seems to work except GPU fan (temperatures 100+ degrees Celsius). Modified DSDT from 2.40 (3.30, 3.80, 4.0 as well - not used 4.10 but I guess it won't check anything). Overheating GPU keeps bugging me but it's possible to use the computer. I do not play 3D games.

byte · 2007-11-20 14:11:16

> Overheating GPU keeps bugging me but it's possible to use the computer.

Eh? Even if the sensor is way off and it's 'only' 80°C, that would be enough for me to shut the thing down immediately and fix it once and for all.

yangcy · 2007-11-20 16:07:41

>> Overheating GPU keeps bugging me but it's possible to use the computer.

> Eh? Even if the sensor is way off and it's 'only' 80°C, that would be enough for me to shut the thing down immediately and fix it once and for all.

Any suggestions? I've got no idea what to do about it 'cause I've tried everything. I'll take this machine to the local ASP, maybe they will give some advices or maybe the radiator needs cleaning?

Arch Linux

#1 2006-03-15 16:51:07

Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#2 2006-03-15 19:11:08

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#3 2006-03-15 22:18:40

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#4 2006-03-16 02:10:44

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#5 2006-03-16 09:50:35

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#6 2006-03-16 17:09:29

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#7 2006-03-27 06:32:24

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#8 2006-03-27 11:11:56

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#9 2006-03-28 11:39:56

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#10 2007-09-27 15:43:32

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#11 2007-09-27 21:30:43

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#12 2007-09-28 14:27:27

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#13 2007-09-28 15:59:48

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#14 2007-10-03 03:15:54

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#15 2007-10-03 08:55:18

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#16 2007-10-03 15:26:45

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#17 2007-10-03 16:00:46

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#18 2007-10-03 21:55:58

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#19 2007-11-19 12:25:36

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#20 2007-11-19 17:36:09

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#21 2007-11-20 10:06:32

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#22 2007-11-20 14:11:16

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

#23 2007-11-20 16:07:41

Re: Toshiba Laptops Compatibility, please list or help

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