Fedora Core 4 (fc4) on a Toshiba A75-S1253

Feb 3, 2006

Happy to announce I have our Toshiba A75 S1253 mostly working on Fedora Core4 without any special hacks. General summary: Intel 3.2GHz Mobility HT, 256Mb (added another 512Mb), 60GB disk, CDRW/DVD-R, 802.11a/b/g wireless. Only thing missing is successfully rebooting with an init 6 (that still seems to get wedged at reset). I have read in several places the wierdness regarding Toshiba APCI funk.

INSTALLATION

use "linux vga=771". This will set the video to a suitable working mode during the install.

WIRELESS

You'll need to get the regular wired LAN working for this, but that is autodetected and works fine. Once it's up, add the madwifi rpms from livna repos. Make sure the manual external switch on the side is set to enable wifi. Once on, I just used the good old Fedora configuration tools. My current kernel is 2.6.14-1.1653_FC4smp

AUDIO

Using the GUI alsa mixer, I enabled "external amplifier" in the switches tab. If you don't see it, you need to flip it on in the preferences too. Also make sure the manual volume control on the outside of your system is turned up.

CPU SPEED

Put the following in /etc/cpuspeed.conf. This sets the right cpu driver, and sets minimum speed to 1.2GHz.

DRIVER="p4_clockmod"

OPTS="$OPTS -m 1024000 -n"

Don't forget to add the "CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor" to your tool bar :-).

soupmaster