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> I'm trying to install linux via an external scsi cd-rom and a dock 1 > on my 755cx. Ah, the Dock I and Linux. I've spent some time over the last week trying to get this combination to work. The quick summary: yes, it works, but not without some work, and I couldn't get it to work reliably in 1.2.13. > I tell Linux to look for the 8-bit Future Domain host adapter > (is that right?) and the boot message indicates the adapter is Yes, the Dock I uses a Future Domain TMC-950 chip, which is indeed 8-bit. > The Dock 1 manual doesn't have any instructions about turning > the scsi bios (if there is one) on and off and it's even confusing > about scsi bus termination. For example it mentions an internal > active terminator but says nothing about how to turn it on or off. > And the dock is normally shipped with no external terminator. At least you have a manual :-) > Finally I tried re-installing the Thinkpad sw from the recovery > pack and that lost too, saying IBMCD.SYS missing or something > like that. This was using the boot floppy that came with the pack, > but I messed up the first attempt and had to try again; and the > aborted first attempt apparently changed some files on the floppy > which I restored from a copy I had previously made on my HD. I have no experience with the recovery pack, I'm afraid. > The Dock 1 is looking like a bigger and bigger kludge to me all > the time. I bought the thing because I expected no trouble finding > a low profile (1" high) CD drive to install in it, but these doesn't > seem to exist any more (except the very expensive 2x model from IBM) > so I had to resort to an external drive. I'm also disappointed > that it has an 8 bit scsi controller since it will give lower speed > than a PC card adapter would. Agreed, the Dock I SCSI is pretty poor. I was disappointed in its capabilities. > Anyone know if there's any problems using an Adaptec 1542CF in the > Dock 1's ISA slot? I know some other vendors' docks have trouble > with bus mastering cards. The 1542CF works fine in the Dock 1. Anyway, here are the gory details on my Linux experiences. I was going to write them up and send them to the Linux-on-ThinkPad page maintainer, but I'm still doing some experiments with the prelease 2.0 kernels. First of all, I did my initial Linux install (a 1.2.13 kernel from a Slackware-based distribution) from a borrowed Adaptec 1542CF installed in the Dock I's slot (at the time, I didn't have the appropriate external cable for the Dock I's SCSI). Eventually I got a cable, and was able to get the dock's internal SCSI adapter recognized, using the bootstring of the form "tmc8xx=<addr>,<irq>" However, the adapter returned junk from the device identification bus probe at bootup, and none of the attached devices worked. After hacking around, I found that removing the compile-time "ARBITRATION" option from the tmc8xx driver allowed things to mostly work OK, and I was able to access an attached external 3x CD-ROM. So, I attached an an additional external SCSI hard drive as well, and built a filesystem, etc. However, that didn't work so well -- in particular, I'd observe bus hangs and file corruption on the SCSI hard disk when writing large files (16mb or so). Next, I investigated some of the development kernels. I noticed the changes summary for 1.3.50 mentioned some fixes for the seagate driver. (The Seagate ST0x and Future Domain TMC-950-based boards, which is what's in the Dock I, are almost identical, and are both implemented in the kernel source module "drivers/scsi/seagate.c".) So, I repeated my experiments with 1.3.85. I still had to remove the "ARBITRATION" option, but I didn't experience any bus hangs or file corruption, after working the SCSI devices fairly hard. I was also successful in attaching and using an external DAT drive (I didn't try that with 1.2.13 at all). Final summary: - I needed to remove the "ARBITRATION" option in all cases. - the driver in 1.2.13 is flakey under load, but seems solid under 1.3.85 (I picked 1.3.85 more-or-less at random, by the way; my guess is that it's solid in anything above 1.3.50). - performance is fairly poor; the hardware really isn't very capable. - you're very unlikely to be able to do an installation from the Dock 1 SCSI. Hope this helps somebody. BTW, all this was with a ThinkPad 360Cs with 20 megs of memory. -- Tim Tyhurst tim@excelsior.com