In article <1992Nov2.162544.9239@news.uit.no>, johnm@stud.cs.uit.no (John
Markus Bjoerndalen) wrote:

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> Thierry Priol (priol@irisa.fr) wrote:

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> > I am looking for a PC notebook that is able to run Linux and X11R5 ?

I've got a Compudyne 486DX/33 (8/120) that does this nicely.  This machine
is basically the Twinhead SlimNote that is sold by a bunch of different
companies these days.  You mostly get to pick the company you like and the
color of the case ;-) ....  The 486 DX notebook category is growing though,
and there may be even more powerful, better machines these days.

I can use Xmono at 640 x 480 with a virtual desktop of 800 x 600.  I have
not tried to do anything with the external video, either in mono or color. 
Has anyone done this with a notebook?  Anything to report...?

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> Installed linux with X11R5 on my Compaq contura 3/25 notebook. 
> ("clean" 386, 25 MHZ, 120 MB HD, 4 Meg Ram). 

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> Installing went smooth. No real problems, except that I couldn't get
> the trackball to work in X.  (Using a microsoft mouse on the serial
> port worked fine though :) )

I too had problems with the trackball at first.  Linux 0.98.3 solved all my
troubles though.  (I feel I should mention that because lots of people have
been reporting that all of a sudden their X and/or their mouse and/or their
serial ports broke when going to 0.98.3, but that it *was* a *big*
improvement in these areas for some others of us....)

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> Note: The trackball is acting as a PS/2 mouse, so the only thing you
> should need to do, is getting one of the PS/2 mouse patches, or wait
> for 0.98.3 to be stable. (It correctly detected my trackball, and I
> was able to get data from it. So the only problem now is to find out
> what kind of mousetype I should tell X that it is. )

The inbuilt trackball on the Compudyne is also PS/2-like.  Methinks that
you should probably do what I did and try out 0.98.3 (plus the two little
emergency patches).  (I'm not sure from the previous paragraph -- maybe you
*are* using 0.98.3 already, in which case ignore that last sentence.)

You must have a suitable /dev/psaux (do "mknod /dev/psaux c 10 1") and
/dev/mouse (or /dev/trackball if you want to hook up an external mouse and
call it /dev/mouse) (do "mkfifo -m 666 /dev/trackball").  You should copy
Xconfig.mono to Xconfig and edit that as you experiment.  Your trackball
should be the microsoft type and it is at either /dev/trackball or
/dev/mouse as you decided above.  I just deleted the vga256 section
altogether.

You say your trackball was detected and that you can get data from it.  I
presume you mean that you can get data from it with the little "mouse"
program in the tst directory.  If you look closely you will note that the
data you get from it doesn't make much sense.  Check out the dx, dy, and
button values you get when you move the trackball or click the buttons. 
Yeah, they're pretty screwy....

Now you need the little mconv program that Johan Myreen posted here a
couple of weeks ago.  It should be findable on an ftp site.  You will need
to start up mconv with "mconv /dev/psaux /dev/trackball &".  Now test the
mouse program.  The values should look more reasonable (i.e., the y axis
seems upside-down, but the rest makes sense...).  Now you can try startx,
and hopefully everything will be ok.

You should probably put the mconv command in your /etc/rc.local or
something like that.  *If you do, BE SURE NOT TO FORGET THE &!!!*  This is
pretty easy to forget, as Johan noted that he did at first, and I did too
at first (yes, despite his warning).  Oops....

Best of luck...!  Anxious to hear reports of other notebook Linux users!

Conrad C. Nobili  N1LPM  Conrad_Nobili@Harvard.EDU  Harvard University OIT