HCL/Laptops/HP/tc4200

From openSUSE

Installation and powermanagement on SuSE 10.0

SuSE 10.0 is not working out of the box on the tc4200.

Best is to use acpi=off during install. Of course, there are lots of typical problems without ACPI, but installation should work. You might encounter one big show stopper: Plugging in an Ethernet cable leads to system lock up, when the other end of the cable is connected. I haven't tested it during installation, but it should make it impossible to install via network... I installed my tc4200 with "Safe Settings", but acpi=off should be enough. Best is to first test acpi=off and then, if this fails, use "Safe Setting". After the installation you have to update to a newer kernel. The most recent kernel you can get via YOU should work, or get ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/people/trenn/10_0_kernel_reboot_fix/kernel-default-2.6.13-2.i586.rpm and install it with "rpm -i --force". Now you can change the kernel parameter acpi=off to pci=noacpi. Enabling ACPI completely (without pci=noacpi) will not work!

suspend-to-ram and suspend-to-disk are not working! If you want to get around this problem use a 2.6.12 kernel. At least suspend-to-disk is working with that kernel branch. Of course you have to boot it without pci=noacpi. But you will find some other drawbacks. For me hotplugging and coldplugging was not working. Therefore lots of devices are not working...

One more problem you will encounter is, that the machine will not do a full reboot. The real hardware reboot is not working. You have to use the kernel parameter reboot=b. As with ACPI, with kernel 2.6.12 reboot is working perfectly.

Installation and powermanagement on openSUSE 10.2

Nearly everything is working out of the box on openSUSE 10.2.

But there are problems with ACPI: Fan control and battery status have different problems related to whether the power supply is plugged in during booting the kernel or not. You can fix this by installing a recent KOTD from ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/projects/kernel/kotd/HEAD/ . kernel-default-2.6.22.1-20070808155802.i586.rpm fixed it for me.

Further notes that might be of interest

• To get the SD Card Reader working you have to use:

/sbin/setpci -s 02:06.3 4c.b=02:02

• Once, after a missconfigures cpufreq, my thermal management was broken and the cpu overheated! Nevertheless I was lucky, because an emergency shutdown was started by acpid.

• Booting a 2.6.13 without pci=noacpi seems to scramble the ACPI-BIOS somehow. Even with pci=noacpi the kernel hangs afterwards shortly after booting starts. The only way to fix it for sure seems to be to boot Windows ..... Afterwards 2.6.13 is running again (with pci=noacpi).

Links

For more information (want to rotate your screen or use your pen?) there is a web site related to the tc4200 and Linux:
http://tc4200.chan.geekcamp.org/
There is also a forum on this web site:
http://chan.geekcamp.org/cgi-bin/tc4200forum/simpleforum.cgi