Installing Slackware on a ThinkPad 750P

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This is a working document

I am writing this as I attempt installation.

Overview

I plan to make my 750P an SMB file and print server.

With this document, I plan to tell you how to install Slackware 10.1 on your 750.

Obstacles

The 750 has only 4MB RAM built-in. Linux really likes more than that. Thankfully, you can add a 32MB RAM card to the 750. 36MB should be enough for a few tasks.

The 750 has no CD drive, and I don't have a PCMCIA CD drive, so I have to boot from floppy and install over a network. Slackware supports installing over NFS.

The NIC I'm using is the LinkSys PCMPC100, which mostly works. It doesn't seem to like NFS, so I'm using the fizban FTP method. Fizban's page. By the way, if your system locks up with no messages, please try using the FTP method. If you get "still trying" messages with NFS, try FTP. If you get "next frame inconsistency" messages, it's probably a hardware issue. (I had a very bad network cable that caused this error. Now I get a few, but just re-seating the network cable makes it go fine for a while.)

If you get NFS installation working, please edit this page.

The 750 BIOS will recognize hard drives up to 8GB, so ensure your boot partition is entirely under that limit. I have a 12GB drive in my 750P, and Linux will use the entire drive once the kernel loads, as it does not use the BIOS to access the hard disk.

The Steps

Preparation

Download these standard Slackware floppies: bare.i, install.1, install.2, pcmcia and network. If using fizban, download his modified network and install.2 instead.

Choose an IP address. Get your IP gateway and netmask.

On another machine, set up an NFS or FTP server with the contents of the Slackware CD's.

Getting ready to run Setup

Boot the 750 with the bare.i disk. The following line of parameters will suit our needs.

ramdisk floppy=thinkpad idebus=33 noacpi noscsi nousb nopci

floppy=thinkpad is needed for old ThinkPads that have the drive sense signal polarity inverted. The 750 does. idebus=33 tells the kernel that the ide bus runs at 33MHz. (Surprise!) noxxx means the kernel should not even look for that kind of device, because it's not present on the 750.

Insert install.1 when it asks for the root disk. Continue with the fizban modified install.2 when prompted.

Login as root. If you have a 750 or 750P (and its grayscale screen), you can type "TERM=vt100" to get menus with higher contrast, but I think the color menus are nicer even on the grayscale screen. Insert your NIC if not done already. Type pcmcia. Put in the pcmcia floppy when asked. It should find and enable your NIC. If your card has blinky lights, some of them should be on at this point.

Type network and insert the modified network diskette when asked. It will display a menu and prompt you. Switch to another console (Alt-F2), hit enter to log in, and type modprobe ftpfs. Switch back to the first console (Alt-F1) and type q to skip looking for your network card (since the pcmcia card already did it). Hit enter to unmount the diskette.

Now you are ready to partition your disk.

Partitioning your disk

Make partitions on your disk. Remember to ensure your /boot partition is in the first 1024 cylinders or 8GB. Use mke2fs to format them. Here's what I did after partitioning:

mke2fs /dev/hda3
mke2fs -j /dev/hda6

Your partition numbers will be different. I have two FAT partitions as /dev/hda1 and /dev/hda2.

Enable FTP Installation

Type network and insert the modified network diskette when asked. Let it skip identifying your card, as it is already working. Once it quits, type modprobe ftpfs.

Running Setup

setup

Use that to start installation. The normal installtion procedure should work pretty well from here. (But crossing your fingers won't hurt.)