Laptop Compatibility for FreeBSD

Last modified: Fri Oct 12 22:47:35 PDT 2001

This document is meant to serve as a resource for identifying successes and difficulties running various versions of FreeBSD on laptop computers. This is notably different from the PAO survey in that we are interested in laptops not necessarily running PAO. This page is manually maintained and new entries are no longered being accepted.

Other related sites include:

• PAO -- mobile patches for FreeBSD
• PAO Laptop Survey
• Laptop Video and PCMCIA Survey
• Laptop XFree86 Config Archive
• Linux Laptop
• Mobile Unix

Compatibility List

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Detailed Discussions

DELL Latitude CPt zillion, Mar 2001

I just got this network connection up and running. I have many 
problems and i'm sure i have got plenty to fix ;) At first i tried
to install FreeBSD 4.2 but i was not able to boot the CD as it
hanged every time.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Dell Inspiron 5000e Brandon S. Allbery KF8NH, Mar 2001

A BIOS bug (it makes a real-mode call from a protected mode
entrypoint) makes APM not work; if you run apmd the kernel
will panic.  Other features work, including (if you cvsup
ports from -RELEASE and install XFree86 4.0.2) 1600x1200
on the LCD.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Tecra 700CT Alan Evans, Mar 2001

Machine has 48MB RAM, 6GB disk, 3com 3c589 PCMCIA card, ATAPI
CDROM, 1.44 floppy, and ESS 1688 sound. Everything works.
The balance on the sound doesn't seem to work right, though,
I wouldn't be surprised if it was the hardware.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Satellite 1710CDS Matej Martini, Mar 2001

pcmcia works out of the box with my 3C574BT (connected to a
cablemodem) as long i don't choose IRQ10, which is already
shared by AGP/USB. for X i tried ati rage mobility, 4MB VR,
SVGA-server and adjusted the monitor-frequencies to 31.7-
40.0 and 58-62. it runs up to 800*600*24, but needs some
tuning yet. working on sound and APM. the lucent winmodem
is already running under linux, so there may be hope ...

XF86Config

 

IBM ThinkPad 600/600E Dag-Erling Smorgrav, Mar 2001

PC-Card works in 4.x and 5.0 (tested with 3Com 3c589), 
Cardbus works in 5.0 (tested with IBM EtherJet). APM works 
fine if you have a newer BIOS (INET31WW works). Sound works 
fine (CS4236); if you want both sound and Cardbus at the 
same time, you need to disable the csa driver by applying 
the following patch:

Index: files
===================================================================
RCS file: /home/ncvs/src/sys/conf/files,v
retrieving revision 1.491
diff -u -r1.491 files
--- files       2001/02/27 16:41:28     1.491
+++ files       2001/03/01 11:32:50
@@ -474,9 +474,8 @@
 dev/sound/pci/cmi.c    optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/cs4281.c optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/csa.c    optional csa pci
-dev/sound/pci/csa.c    optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/csamidi.c        optional midi csa
-dev/sound/pci/csapcm.c optional pcm pci
+dev/sound/pci/csapcm.c optional csa pci
 dev/sound/pci/ds1.c    optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/emu10k1.c        optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/es137x.c optional pcm pci

Just add 'device pcm' to your kernel config and you'll 
have sound.

In 4.x, GENERIC should work fine, though you'll want to 
enable APM, and assign IRQ 10 to the PCIC to avoid running 
it in polling mode.

In 5.0, if you don't know how to config your kernel you 
have no business running -CURRENT :)

XF86Config

 

Compaq Armada m700 Kevin, Mar 2001

It has onboard intel 10/100 nic (fxp0), which works great.  pointing device is psm0.

XF86Config

 

Toshiba Satellite 330CDS Otter, Mar 2001

OPL-3Ax sound supported directly by the pcm driver. 10/100 ethernet kicking butt using a Megahertz (3com) 574, also supported by the default pccard.conf. Xfree86 4.02 runs much smoother than XFree86 3.3.6 on this machine. No need for beefy CPU, just add RAM. Adding a 64MB module to the onboard 32MB, for a total of 96MB, made it bearable. Good luck with APM. I gave up on it. I'd like to keep the hair I have left.

 

Sony Vaio PCG-F807K Simon Dick, Mar 2001

The only parts of this laptop which I haven't gotten to work
yet are the WinModem (obviously) and the FireWire interface
(as there are currently no drivers for FireWire under
FreeBSD). The trick of getting the ATI Rage Mobility 1
working under X is to use the SVGA drives rather than any
of the ATI ones.

Hope this helps someone!

 

Sony VAIO PCG C1XS Brian Reichert, Mar 2001

Got XFree86 4.0.1 working (8, 16, 24bpp), audio working.  No serial port, no printer port, only an IRDA port.
Got an external DVD drive working like a champ.

 

Compaq Presario 17XL265 Olof Johansson, Mar 2001

Everything works fairly smoothly. Never used the sound, so I
can't tell for sure whether it works or not.

I haven't been able to get my Addtron AWP-100 wirless network
card to work yet, but the state of support for those cars
is sort of unknown anyway.

I haven't fiddled anyting with ACPI either, so I don't know if
it works or not on this machine.

 

Fujitsu Lifebook 600TX Bill Trost, Mar 1999

I had checked out the 635T, and bought the TX because it has
a bigger disk.  Much to my horror, I discovered that the TX
uses a Neomagic 128ZV or whatever.  XFree86 now more or less
supports the 128, though, so that is not a problem.

I switched the BIOS to use PCMCIA compatibility mode,
although I am not sure I needed to.

Upgrading the memory on the machine was a snap (a rather
loud snap, at that).

According to some PC magazine I read in Fall '98, Fujitsu
laptops have the worst record as far as reliability is
concerned.  I haven't had any serious problems, though.

 

IBM Thinkpad 390 2626-700 Eric Masson, Mar 2001

Suspend to disk/ram works
Sound works
Usb works
x11 works
A little slow now, it's only a PII266, but quite reliable

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Sony Vaio PCG-F160 Scott Hazen Mueller, Mar 2001

FreeBSD's been quite stable since I got the partitioning
worked out.  The XF86 Neomagic drivers were released around
the time I got this system, so X has been working from Day 1.
You need to be on 4-STABLE or higher in order for audio to
work, using the newpcm drivers.  I tried OSS a couple of
times, but it didn't support the Neomagic audio functions
under FreeBSD, only Linux.  I regularly use a Lucent Turbo
WaveLAN (Orinoco) Gold with no trouble; wired networking is
via a 3COM 3C589D (Etherlink III) card.  The internal modem
is a winmodem, so I've used an external serial modem and
now a PCMCIA modem - Actiontek Datalink, which required
'reset 1000' to be added to the pccard.conf entry for that
modem.  I don't have a hibernation partition on this system,
so the only use I have for APM is battery monitoring and
poweroff (shutdown -p).  The only other system problem I've
had with it is that vmware doesn't want to see the floppy
drive, which may or may not be related to the hardware
somehow.

 

M-Tech/N30W David Wolfskill, Mar 2001

Lots more detail at http://www.catwhisker.org/FreeBSD/laptop.html.

Machine seems to be equivalent to Dell Inspiron 5000e; is
actually made by Compal (who refer to it as the N38W2).

APM needs revised BIOS; floppy image available at the above
site.

Touchpad tap acts like button 1; no apparent way to distinguish
it from button 1, though, so there are only 2 mouse buttons.

Needed to run XFree86-4, installed from ports OK.  No
graphical config interface.  Default config was nearly OK.
I don't (yet) have an XF86 config that allows an external
projector to do anything useful yet, though.

And yes, I am running both -STABLE & -CURRENT on it.  APM
doesn't work in -CURRENT (no /dev/apm{,tcl} with DEVFS).  X
in -CURRENT needs a symlink created in /dev (via /etc/rc.devfs)
named "/dev/mouse" that ponts to /dev/sysmouse.  It claims
to support ACIPA, but I don't (yet) have the -CURRENT
patches to support that.

Other trivia:  Each battery is purported to last for 3.3 hrs.;
center slot can hold a 2nd battery or a CD/DVD/CD-RW drive.

I have not tried the MODEM, or either the IR or USB ports.
The "port replicator" has a normal Ethernet NIC (fxp, I
think) in it.  The "car lighter adapter" is *not* specific
to this laptop, but is a generic 12 VDC -> 120 VAC inverter,
so using it will engender significant inefficiency.

M-Tech says "no OS" is the default, so I didn't get charged
for that, but when I first powered it up, some sort of
Microsoft page came up, so I wiped the disk before it got
very far.  I've set up a "suspend to disk partition", but
I haven't yet tried to use it; the supplied program for
initializing same apparently only runs under a Microsoft
environment.

 

Toshiba Satellite 2805-S201 Scott Lambert, Mar 2001

Requires XFree86 4.0.2 with Savage support.  XF86 3.x will
lockup the console on exit from X.

Sound works.  MPCI fxp card works.  Haven't been able to 
find the MPCI 56Kbps modem.  

Has no serial port.

 

Toshiba Satellite 2670DVD Vladimir Cambur, Mar 2001

nothing extraordinal. XFree86 from version 3.3.6 to 4.0.2 works perfectly good. the only thing one should remeber to
set PCMCIA/Cardbus controller to Auto-Selected or PCIC compatible mode because FreeBSD 4.x does not work with cardbus.

 

Hewlett Packard N3190 Pavilion Jay Dorens, Mar 2001

For initial install off CD, disable all serial and parallel ports in the kernel, or else the system will hang.  Once installed, recompile kernel and enable only those hardware devices that you specifically have, or else system hangs on boot.

 

Sony VAIO Z600RE Walter Belgers, Mar 2001

What doesn't work is infrared, sony memorystick.
Limited support for Sony jogdial. Sound is sometimes
a bit flaky. Firewire I haven't tested.

The rest is working just fine: built-in ethernet, USB
(including floppy), PCMCIA (including PCMCIA cdrom).

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

IBM ThinkPad 600E Kevin Oberman, Apr 2001

Includes information from Dag-Erling Smorgrav and David Sharp.

This laptop does not work well with FreeBSD prior to V4. Earlier
vesions exhibit random lockups and will not boot with more
than 64 MB memory without a custom kernel.

Internal modem is a WinModem and will not work. Audio works, but
requires a patch to the OS. The configuration for audio requires
only "device pcm" and "cd /dev && ./MAKEDEV snd0".

Xfree86, CDROM, floppy, APM, PCMCIA (ep0) all happy. Hibernation file requires a DOS partition. :-( 
Config utilities also require DOS.

PC-Card works in 4.x and 5.0 (tested with 3Com 3c589), 
Cardbus works in 5.0 (tested with IBM EtherJet). APM works 
fine if you have a newer BIOS (INET31WW works). Sound works 
fine (CS4236) with the following patch and "device pcm" and
"cd /dev && ./MAKEDEV snd0".

--- files       Sun Mar 18 14:11:55 2001
+++ files.600e  Wed Mar 28 13:15:34 2001
@@ -1114,8 +1114,7 @@
 dev/sound/pci/cmi.c    optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/cs4281.c optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/csa.c    optional csa pci
-dev/sound/pci/csa.c    optional pcm pci
-dev/sound/pci/csapcm.c optional pcm pci
+dev/sound/pci/csapcm.c optional csa pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/ds1.c    optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/emu10k1.c        optional pcm pci
 dev/sound/pci/es137x.c optional pcm pci
Please note that the line numbers differ with each release of
FreeBSD. Search the file for "csa".

In 4.x, GENERIC should work fine, though you'll want to 
enable APM, and assign IRQ 10 to the PCIC to avoid running 
it in polling mode.

The serial port will only work if you enable it in BIOS which
may only be done under DOS. The command is: "ps2 SERA ENABLE"

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

HP Omnibook 6000 Andy Sparrow, Apr 2001

Suspend to RAM/disk works great, except see caveats about ATI Mobility hacks.  WooHoo!

(Suspend disk partition is type 160 - on resume everything re-sets and comes back fine, with the possible exception of the sound driver).

XGA resolution (1024x768x16bit) on internal display works very nicely, display bright, clear etc. I just use the same config I used for my HP 5700CTX.

ATI Rage Mobility will hang entire machine in a strange state on either type of suspend event, unless you do one or other of the below

i)    Switch manually to a text VT before suspending

ii)   use Tony Finch's ZZZ.c as a replacement for 'zzz' and hook into the rc.{suspend|resume} scripts to not use 'apm -z'. Would be nice if 'apm' could deal with it for you.

Internal mini-PCI card has a 3Com xl0 (schweet) and a WinModem (boo, hiss). PC cards work fine, don't have any Cardbus cards to test. USB is probed and recognised, no devices to test with.

Sound is a Maestro3, I use the kldload-able module for this - which I need to unload/reload in 'rc.resume', otherwise sound has never worked when resumed (just silent, usually).  Sound support statically compiled in never survives a suspend/resume for me. I know this is supposed to work..

Both the trackpad and the nipple work fine (both together), and you can hot-plug an external PS/2 mouse (yes, I /know/ this isn't supposed to work, but it does, 100%!) and have them all working. 

IBM PS/2 Y-cables work too (unlike the Compaq I used recently), so you can even use your Happy Hacker keyboard with it as well. :-)

Resolution: 1024x768 (internal) 1600x1200 (external)

 

Dell Lattitude CPi 266 Colin Eric Johnson, Mar 1999

Well, things work well but not great on my Dell Lattitude.

I have a 3Com 3c589d ethernet card that works just
fine with the ep driver and the Psion Gold Card modem 
that works fine on sio3 (irq 9). 

I have an adaptec 1460C that doesn't work because the
aic driver didn't make it on the CAM boat when it left
the dock with 3.0. There is talk that the aic driver may
be in the works. I'm not sure how hopeful I am.

Currently the ppc/ppbus drivers for handling the 
parallel port seem to work but cause any attempt at
a reboot to fail. The machine simply halts when it sends
the reboot signal (power cycle?) the the CPU. shutdown -h
and then a manual power off does work.

The apm code seems to handle suspension quite well but
it will not power down the machine. So halt -p behaves
like a reboot instead of halting the system and then 
shutting the power off.

As of 3.0 the sound works great. I haven't had a single
problem at all.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Hitachi VisonBook Pro 7590 PM Lashley, Apr 2001

Windows will run the LCD at 1024x768x16; but XFree86
will only do 8bpp at 1024x768.  It does do 16bpp at
800x600.  It might just be a config issue.  I think it
will go to 1280x1024x8 on an external monitor; but I
haven't tried it.

The on-board ethernet and modem both work with FreeBSD.

The VisionBook Pro series have the hard drive on a removable
caddy.  This machine actually belongs to my girlfriend, who
runs Windows on it; but she lets me swap in my FreeBSD drive
and take it with me on those rare occasions when I travel.
Since it isn't used often, I haven't bothered to tweak out
the config files.

I originally had 4.1 on this machine; but it had several
problems that seem to have disappeared with the current
releases of FreeBSD and XFree86.  I haven't yet checked
to determine whether I should update the kernel config
file - the old one seems to work.

It does still seem to have a problem with 'reboot'; it
just stops with a blank screen and power on; and needs
to be unplugged to restart.  'halt -p' works fine though.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Tecra 750CDT Dave Gray, Apr 2001

Works OK, mostly. PCMCIA controller apparently has no management interrupt wired to it... This breaks badly w/ certain cards (my Socket ethernet locks the machine on insertion). Also, the ATA driver is broken on this machine - I use WD OK. Given Soren's defensiveness about this, I don't expect this to get fixed, 4.2 will be end of the line for this old warhorse :-(

 

WinBook XLi Robert Schlotterbeck, Apr 2001

I had little problems getting FreeBSD to work on this machine.  (Or NetBSD for that matter)  I came across no special problems.  I use a U.S. Robotics Megahertz 56k PCMICA modem (The onboard modem doesn't even work in Windows) and a LinkSys PCMICA 10base2/10baseT ethernet.	The only think I think people may have problems with is APM, sometimes X doesn't come back properly when using the Save to Disk method.

kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Portege 7220cte Robert Blacquiere, Apr 2001

I had used toshiba laptops for a copple of years now. starting with a 2100M, 210CS, portege 7020 and now 7220cte.
What i like about the Portege is they are light, small but still a 13.x inch display. Also USB is working and sound. APM also works. I use XFree86 4.0.3. the intral ps/2 mouse and usb mouse work together while usb is connected.
Any more info please mail:

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Compaq Armada M300 Steve, Apr 2001

haven't gotten sound to work (ESS)...it looks like this might include a kernel recompile.
X was easy to get up and running...shouldn't have any problems.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

HP Pavilion N5241 Andrew Lawson, Apr 2001

Mostly works ...

I installed FreeBSD 4.0 from a cd and immediately cvsupped 4.3-RC and ports. No problems with the base system. I installed XFree86 3.3.6 and can run 1024x768 either at 16 or 32bpp. As noted by the driver writer for the S3 Savage you get 'crackles' at 32bpp, nothing major but I'm running at 16 until the problem is fixed. I don't do any artwork anyway. I have a no-name ethernet card installed which works as expected. The system will no recognise the internal modem which I was told is not a winmodem but is obviously not supported anyway. Apm info is retreivable but the system will not zzz. So far I havn't noted any particular instability although Opera has frozen the system twice, something I've occasionally seen elsewhere.
     I've yet to try any dvds but the floppy and cd operate perfectly. Finally the sound works fine if you install the correct drivers, which are apparently being commited as I speak.
     All in all, well worth the cash.

 

Compaq Armada M300 Steve, Oct 2001

haven't gotten sound to work (ESS)...it looks like this might include a kernel recompile.
X was easy to get up and running...shouldn't have any problems.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Gateway Solo 9100 Ade Lovett, Mar 1999

Machine configuration etc can all be found at
http://www.lovett.com/~ade/laptop

All in all, it's a good solid laptop for FreeBSD
work.

-aDe

 

HP Pavilion N5241 Andrew Lawson, Oct 2001

Mostly works ...

I installed FreeBSD 4.0 from a cd and immediately cvsupped 4.3-RC and ports. No problems with the base system. I installed XFree86 3.3.6 and can run 1024x768 either at 16 or 32bpp. As noted by the driver writer for the S3 Savage you get 'crackles' at 32bpp, nothing major but I'm running at 16 until the problem is fixed. I don't do any artwork anyway. I have a no-name ethernet card installed which works as expected. The system will no recognise the internal modem which I was told is not a winmodem but is obviously not supported anyway. Apm info is retreivable but the system will not zzz. So far I havn't noted any particular instability although Opera has frozen the system twice, something I've occasionally seen elsewhere.
     I've yet to try any dvds but the floppy and cd operate perfectly. Finally the sound works fine if you install the correct drivers, which are apparently being commited as I speak.
     All in all, well worth the cash.

kernel configuration

 

Sony VAIO PCG-F690 Bryan, Oct 2001

Everything works OK with the exception of the PCMCIA cardbus.  I haven't tried the IR or serial ports as I have no use for them.

kernel configuration

 

Sony Vaio PCG-FX120 Gary Tivey, Oct 2001

Internal network adapter works...(Intel e100.o) Intel sound is supported (EXP) drivers can be located through the FreeBSDvault. To use the 815 graphics, you need to 
get Xfree86 version 4.01 installed, then upgrade to version 4.02.
Netgear pcmcia FA410TX ethernet card works fine. Supports IDE_DMA . Internal modem is a winmodem(boo).
USB works well recognizing a Rio 600. Works well with SusE 7.1 linux 2.4.3.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Dell Inspiron 8000 David Fritz, Oct 2001

Installed 4.2-RELEASE with no problems except that I couldn't get X to work. I had to upgrade to 4.x-STABLE and XF86 4.0.3_3. Used ati rage 128 drivers with the actual rage mobility 32mb 4x agp card. Works fine now! 

Sound: ESS Maestro 2E not yet supported in FreeBSD, too bad for me...

APM: I wish FreeBSD would hurry up and get it working properly, had bad luck with it so far on i8000, will update if I figure something out.

kernel configuration

 

IBM/ThinkPad A21p Prof. Richard E. Hawkins, Oct 2001

Webpage at  

http://www.personal.psu.edu/faculty/r/e/reh18/A21p/A21p.html

No audio; parallell port io must be changed in bios.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Acer NoteLight 370p Jeff Kreis, Oct 2001

Free Unix salvages another cheap laptop.

The blue fn key with F1-F7 keys which provide control over
contrast, brightness, audio volume, etc, were all a pain
to get working. Something in auto-config was stomping on 
those features. After much fun mucking, turned out just 
removing a number of extraneous devices in the kernel 
config  (second floppy, etc) seemed to do the trick.

PCMCIA ethernet card did not start working until I disabled
carbus in BIOS.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Sharp PC9090 andreas, Oct 2001

NE2000-compatible Network Card Compex Linkport Ethernet is recognized as ed1
and works o.k. To prevent FreeBSD from addressing my 33.6K-PCMCIA-Modem as sio4 
(which it tried to do) I replaced sio1 in the kernel.config-file by sio4 (but didn't
change the memory ranges) and recompiled the kernel. The modem is now put to
sio1. Both PCMCIA-slots work together, so I can share my Internet connection
with natd.

kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Satellite Pro 460CDX Tim Moore, Mar 1999

I've been quite happy with this setup and do a lot of
development on it.  It suffers from some hard freeze-ups,
but I think that's due to the smallish amount of memory
(32M) and paging/swap bugs existing in Current in early
December.

 

sony PCG-748 chris, Mar 1999

Have had no problems with X or sound. PAO used mainly for the
apm things like shutting down. 
 3com 3c589C card seen ok without kernel and was used for
install as zp0, works great with PAO ep0 also.
 Notebook multiboots win98/2.2.8S, if the machine isnt 
completely shutdown from win98 (gotta play games), the cardbus
isnt seen when 2.2.8 boots. Other than that have been very
happy with my notebook

 

Keydata Keynote 8800 Oly Oberdorf, Mar 1999

Generally, I think the quality of the laptop is poor.
However, 2.2.8 runs easily on it.  X probably runs
beyond 1024x768, but that's the LCD res.  Runs at
up to 24 bpp fine (again, that's the LCD limit.
DVD drive works for reading CDs, LS-120 works with
floppies.  Actual DVDs and LS-120 MOs not tested.

To get X to run, I select CT6555 under xf86config.
Then I add to the card definition:
DacSpeed 80.0
and uncomment the videomem of 4096 and the
software cursor option.  Can get mild screen
artifacts until you cycle the video modes after
startup (haven't tested each available video mode
individually, one may be perfect)

 

Toshiba Satellite T2130CT Andre LeClaire, Mar 1999

I've been running FreeBSD on Toshiba T21xx laptops since
2.2.7-RELEASE with no problems.	PCMCIA cards currently in
use are Megahertz XJ4288 and Linksys EC2T. Since this model
has no CDROM drive, fresh installs are done by PLIP and
laplink cable from an NFS server. Make worlds are kinda slow
(~14 hrs.), as the processor is a 486DX4-75, but other than
that, this system does everything I need.

 

Toshiba Tecra 510CDT Michael Robinson, Mar 1999

PCMCIA support is semi-broken under 3.x, but can be made 
usable with minor hacks (send me mail if you need details).

Sound support under 3.x has minor problems (staticy sounds) that don't
exist under 2.2.x.

Otherwise, everything works great, including X, APM, and ppbus.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

IBM ThinkPad 380D Scott Mitchell, Mar 1999

PC-card stuff worked out of the box, with and without PAO.  I can't get it to
suspend or hibernate mode with PC-cards plugged in, although if you put it
into 'standby' first, then suspend it, that seems to work.  Under 2.2.7, the
machine would hang when waking up from suspend, but this has been fixed in
later releases.

You'll want to keep a DOS partition on the disk with IBM's 'PS2' utility, for
tweaking the IRQ/port assignments, APM timeouts, device enable, etc. settings.

X works fine with the NeoMagic driver.

Sound also works, just make sure you have the driver looking at the same IRQ
as you've set up using 'PS2'.

Monitor Res is 800x600 LCD and 1024x768 external.

 

Dell Latitude LM133 Victor Salaman, Mar 1999

I had to change the PCIC_INDEX_0 entry in /sys/pccard/i82365.h to be 0xfcfc.

 

Toshiba/Portege 650CT David Kulp, Oct 1997

The Portege is a cardbus machine, but you can set it to 16-bit compatibility mode by running the BIOS set-up program tzsetup.exe (available from Toshiba's website) from a DOS boot disk. I got X running by grabbing an XF86Config from the archive. I run a cheapo 10BT ed0 ethernet adapter called 'Tamarack'. Sound is somewhat functional using voxware. The special function keys (Fn-F1 thru Fn-F4) for switching between display devices, sound, etc., do not work at all or properly. I frequently use my laptop for projector presentations. Driving an external monitor is a flaky problem for which I have never found the solution. Sometimes reboot with the second monitor attached works, other times plugging in the monitor after starting X works. But some external monitors fail to sync at all. This laptop tends to generate a lot of heat which makes it uncomfortable for typing. The battery life is quite poor, but can be slightly improved by adjusting the disk spin-down time and the screen intensity in the BIOS setup.

        card "TAMARACK" "Ethernet"
           config 0x21 "ed0" ?
           insert  /etc/pccard_ether ed0
        

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Thinkpad 560E Mark Shepard, Mar 1999

I'm using 3c589d 10bT enet and megahertz 28.8 modem pcmcia cards. Suspend/resume
works reliably but if pcmcia cards are plugged in they may need to be unplugged/replugged
after resuming to be recognized again. The best approach seems to be unplugging cards before
suspending. Sound (ESS688/SB16) works but not after resume:  the error is "dma/irq timeout",
so I suspect the sound chip needs some re-initialization after the resume.

kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Libretto 50ct Gianmarco Giovannelli, Mar 1999

I used Libretto with FreeBSD from 2.2-current to 4.0-current without any problems at all.

I think the external floppy is supported too, but I really don't use it.

Pcmcia cards works fine.
I have tested with :
3com 3c589B, C and  D
USR Courier Pcmcia V.34
Digicom Palladio Twin (for the use with gsm mobile phone).

I have expanded it with 16 more mb of ram and a bigger HD (3.2gb)

 

IBM TP560 Mark Diekhans, Mar 1999

Original PCMCIA version (not cardbus).  Used by lots
of FreeBSD people, so it works very well.  Create
a DOS partation when installing to hold ps2.exe program
and a hibernation file.  ps2.exe is needed to control
most bios features and create the hibernation file.

The latest BIOS (v1.20) breaks power management for FreeBSD.  If you
have this version (if you send it in for repair, IBM will upgrade the
BIOS), download the v1.11 version from the www.pc.ibm.com and flash
downgrade.

 

Toshiba Satellite Pro T-2155CDS Patrick Gardella, Mar 1999

For a 486/75, I've been quite happy with this machine.  I'm running a Linksys 14.4 modem which drives me crazy.  I'm not sure if its the modem or the pcmcia system.  Anytime the screen saver kicks in, and the modem is not in use, it "disables" the modem.  I have to eject it and insert it to make it work.  But it won't do it everytime.  Drives me crazy.
As far as ethernet, I've got a Accton EN2216.  That I know works fine.

 

HP Omnibook 900 Sean O'Connell, Mar 1999

GENERAL:

PCCARD -> TI PCI 1225 (Cardbus)
VIDEO ->  256-bit NeoMagic MagicGraph NM2200 (NMG5)
SOUND ->  YAMAHA chip

NOTES:

1) Net installation failed miserably (had to use cdrom)
2) PCIC always latches onto IRQ 3 (I used 10 for modem)
   even though Win95 uses 10
   a) went with pcic.ko (left controller card0 in kernel
      but commented out device pcic entries)
   b) seems to ignore set machdep.pccard.pcic_irq=X in
      /boot/loader.rc
   c) fixed /etc/rc.pccard
    
    added after if [ 'X$pcc
    
      builtin=`kldstat -v -i 1 | grep pcic | awk '{print $2}'`
      if [ "$builtin" = 'pcic' ]
      then
          echo "Kerne support for pcic builtin"
      else
          kldload pcic.ko
      fi
      in place of lame "if kload pcic; then"
3) Gotten it to recognize a 3Com 3C589D Ethernet card
   (epo irq 11)and a Lynksys Combo EthernetCard EC2T 
   (edo irq 11)  NOTE: irq 11 was all based on my trying
   to force pcic controller to use irq 10 to no avail.
4) APM ... bios and function keys work... the apm command
   will instantly panic the machine
5) Video card seems to work under XF86_SVGA (I haven't
   fully tested it yet)
6) Sound card:
   device pcm0 at isa? tty irq 5 drq 1 flags 0x10


Additional Notes (10 Jun 99):

Sean reports that the panic bug is fixed by upgrading the bios to
version 2.21.

 

Sony PCG-505TX Carol Deihl, Mar 1999

A friend ordered one that had some bad
pixels, and while waiting for the replacement, we tried various
OS installs.

We copied FreeBSD 2.2.8 on to /FreeBSD on the Windows partition
and installed from there with no problems. We built a kernel
with the PCCARD stuff, and it easily talked to the pccard
ethernet (I forget the brand, but some standard one). My
friend had ordered a DVD drive instead of a CD-ROM, and we
couldn't get it to talk to the DVD. XFree86 installed and
ran easily (the easiest X config I ever did!). We didn't try
talking to the internal modem.

We tried installing FreeBSD 3.1 the same way, but the install
couldn't find the files on the Windows partition.

 

IBM Thinkpad 560E Robert Watson, Apr 1999

XFree86 provides poor support; I use XiG's Xaccel notebook
product which appears to work quite well (albeit a little
buggy).  Suspending while on the X virtual console results
in the display not powering on again.  Workaround: go to
a text console before suspending, switch to text console
and suspend and unsuspend if was in

The machine does not appear to soft-power-down on halt,
but otherwise APM works quite well (battery status, etc).

Occasional problems with pccards being recognized on un-
suspend, can be corrected by killing and restarting
pccardd.

 

Sony Vaio 505TX Randy Bush, Apr 1999

i am keeping details at http://psg.com/~randy/vaio

 

Toshiba/Satellite 4010CDS Eric I. Arnoth, 12 Feb 1999

Split hard-drive to retain pre-installed Windows98 (not by choice, who said MS wasn't a monopoly?) using FIPS. Install completed within 30 minutes via 10BaseT line, installed all 150+ ports used in previous system over the course of 3 hours. XFree86 needed to be configured via xsetup, after some tinkering, the proper 800x600 display was set. Kernel was reconfigured to support sound, apm, pccards and additional swap space. Wmmixer doesn't seem to work right (config issues?), and the CD will not open while empty when wmcdplay is running, but the drive has a button to over-ride software locks. Hot plugging *seems* to work, but there appear to be some issues at present when X is running. Waiting for IR support. (Toshiba released the specs! :) Battery life is excellent.

 

Toshiba Portege 7020CT Steve Passe, Apr 1999

for config files, etc, see:

  http://www.freebsd.org/~fsmp/fbsdportege/

Exact OS version: 4.0-19990306-SNAP

 

Toshiba Satellite 210CS Borja Marcos, Jun 1999

The installation had no problems. The only PCMCIA
card I have used is a 3Com PCMCIA Etherlink III and
it worked. In fact, I installed the system mounting
the CDROM with NFS.
APM works well, even with X. I can suspend the system
and it wakes up without problems. I have only one
minor problem with X: when exiting X, text mode is
a bit "compressed". I think the X config needs a little
more work.
One word of caution: Make sure you have disabled the "auto display off"
option in the BIOS. Otherwise, if the computer turns it
off under X it won't come up again.
I have configured sound in the kernel but haven't
actually tried it.
I use X in 16 bit mode.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Dell Latitude CPi 266 Greg Lehey, Jun 1999

Experience with Dell Latitude CPi 266:

Almost no problems.  I installed the base system and X in a matter of
minutes.  I'm still not sure that things are working right with APM,
but I need to investigate that.  Suspend mode seems to work OK, but it
leaves the PCMCIA boards inaccessible--possibly because of the
problems described below.

PCMCIA: I have a 3C589C and no-name Modem cards.  Both required
changes to /etc/pccard.conf, and I had difficulty getting both cards
to work at the same time.  It seems that there are only two interrupts
available on this machine (3 and 9), and the pccard interface requires
one for the pcic controller and one for each card.  I currently have
the pcic controller set at irq 5, the modem set at 3 (sio1), and the
Ethernet card set at 9.  Both cards work, but if I pull one, I hang
the system, presumably because the interrupt to pcic doesn't get
through.  I've sent an enquiry off to Dell to find out what I can do
about it.

Also, this is a dual boot machine.  After running Microsoft and
rebooting, the PCMCIA subsystem doesn't work at all, reporting no CIS
from either card.  I need to power cycle before I can use FreeBSD.

 

Digital HiNote Ultra 2000 Gary Jennejohn, Jul 1999

The Ultra 2000 has a C&T ct655554 in it. You have to use the
	Option "use_vclk1"
in order to get 1024x768 (with 8 bit color) to work.

 

Oris Minuet Kyle Buttress, Jul 1999

Still testing some things i.e sound. 
PAO 3.1-RELEASE boot.flp (English version, 1999/05/07)

 

Toshiba Tecra 740CDT John Sellens, Jul 1999

This is an old machine now (1997) and not light, but I
really like it, and FreeBSD works like a charm.	

The sound needs some sort of reset after a sleep, but
doing "mixer cd 0; mixer vol 0; mixer cd 100; mixer vol 100"
does the trick.

Good screen, solid machine, not really fast, but I've used
it as my primary machine for the past two years, and I'm
not complaining (about this anyway).

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Libretto 50ct yace, Aug 1999

fits perfectly

 

Dell Inspiron 7000 M. L. Dodson, Aug 1999

Could not get XF86 3.3.3.1 (patched) or 3.3.4 to work. XIG
Laptop X server worked fine after applying the 5000.001
patch from their web site.  Moused is run in two instances, 
the first for psm0 for the touchpad (out of rc.conf), the
other for ums0 out of rc.local.  Both work simultaneously,
man 8 moused.  usbdi.c had to be patched for the USB 
Logitech wheeled mouse to work without panicing the machine
on shutdown. I can furnish the patch (from the BSD-USB list).
Linksys "Combo PCMCIA Ethernet Card" required PAO3. 
A little bit of work, but it is a screamer.

kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Libretto 50ct Seth, Aug 1999

Works great!  External floppy drive works, sound works (using Luigi's sound driver, the device pcm0... line).  However, sound didn't work until I upgraded to the latest BIOS version (6.6)

 

SONY VAIO 505 Dirk-Willem van Gulik, Mar 1999

Requires special dos program to initialise
suspend to disk partition after install. (phdisk.exe)

Can drive 800x600 LCD and 1024x768 external.

Needs newer version of fipd.exe than comes on the
freebsd < 2.2.6 cds.

External/LCD not easily switchable.

Neomagic chipset support limited in XFree86, 
Used a special one from Xig (FreeBSD 2.2.5)

Modem and soung card work just fine, as long
as the bios settings match the kernel settings.

Use the 'sleep-hack' bit in the wdc config flag
(see lint) to avoid excessive warnings.

Needed patch to talk to FAT32 dos partition (FreeBSD 2.2.5)

http://www.webweaving.org/vaio contains the kernel conf file and other info.

 

IBM ThinkPad 1451 i Chris Davis, Sep 1999

installing off of a dos partition is easy with the PAO kern and mfsroot disks.
Be sure and put untar the PAO.tgz in the RELEASE-3.2 directory.
Choose the default for the first screen and the second option
(irq5) on the second screen of the sysinstall.
I still havn't gotten sound to work.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Fujitsu B112 Bill, Sep 1999

PCCard (OK) 
NetWork ,Modem , CDRom ,ATA Flash, USB    (OK) .
Mouse, X Window (OK)
I(800x600 -16) Ext (1024*768 -16)
Sound card (OK)

 

IBM Thinkpad 600E David Sharp, Sep 1999

ThinkPad 600E (2645 4BU) PII 400MHz, 192MB, 10G 12ms
                         13.3" TFT, 24X CDROM

3.2 and 3.3-RELEASE would lock up randomly with more than
the base 32MB RAM installed.  Also locked on pnp probe.
4.0-current seems to be fine with both pnp and more RAM.
Internal modem (MWAVE?) does not/will not work.  Audio
playback with voxware drivers is good.  Have not tried
record.  Xfree86, CDROM, floppy, APM, PCMCIA (ep0) all
happy. Hibernation file requires a DOS partition. :-( 
Config utilities also require DOS.

Good laptop.  Good laptop for FreeBSD if you are willing
to run -current. Compared to my previous laptop (Toshiba
Tecra 730CDT) this one is a dream.  Lighter, thiner, longer
lasting battery (3+hrs), shorter recharge times and
10X the speed.

 

Hitachi Visionbook Pro 7560 Joon, Oct 1999

1. need patch to /usr/src/sys/i386/isa/wd.c to remove long delay while scanning for non-existant slave device on wdc1.
2. need to change the ModeLine in /etc/XF86Config to get 16bit color at 1024x768
3. X(SVGA) on CT65554 video, ESS1868 audio (pcm0), APM 1.2, USR MODEM, AMD PC-net PCI II Ethernet (lnc0) all work quite nicely.
no PAO used.

 

IBM ThinkPad 1451 i Chris Davis, Oct 1999

kscd doesn't work but xcdplayer does if you assign it a device.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Sony VAIO PCG-C1 Annelise Anderson, Nov 1999

Distro is "Current" as of June 27, 1999.
Sound works; modem (not a Winmodem) works; no known way to get the camera to work.
I used a Partition Magic to reduce the size of Win98, installed a boot manager (System Commander)
and used a cdrom drive under Win98 to get the files for an
install of FreeBSD 3.2 from dos.  I then cvsupped and tried
to "make buildworld" to -stable and then -current, but got
various errors.  So I downloaded distributions to the dos/win partition and
used the install.sh scripts (the bin distro overwrites /etc).
After that I could build -current from source, but more recent sources
for -current (as of late October) have problems with the ed0 driver that my ethernet card uses.
Although the XF86Config files use 1024x480, 1024x960 for virtual also
works, offering twice the screen space.  Entrega's USB hub works, but not the ethernet
port that comes on some of these hubs.  The VAIO floppy drive will boot both the FreeBSD installation disks.

 

Sony/Vaio PCG-Z505RX Takayuki Kaiso, Nov 1999

FreeBSD 3.3 installation procedure for Sony Vaia PCG-Z505RX 
1. On another machine, download PAO from www.jp.freebsd.org/PAO/
     - kern.flp, mfsroof.flp, paodist.tar
2. Make two floppies  ( option )
     - dd if=kern.flp of=/dev/rfd0
     - dd if=mfsroof.flp of=/dev/rfd0
3. Start Vaio Z505, the hit "F2" immediately to setup BIOS
     disable "memory stick" --> otherwise, the installer will hung up
                                while probing devices
4.  execute either 4A or 4B  ( I did 4B. )
 4A. Start Vaio using installation CD #1
 4B. Start Vaio again using "kern.flp" of PAO version (created in step 2.)
     - select "configure" to select the target drivers
         (otherwise, IRQ 11 for PC card driver conflicts later )
     - remove all network drivers
         (the ethernet driver is "fxp0" which is found in "PCI" ) 
5. Proceed the installation procedure
6. XF86Setup
     - graphics : NeoMagic MagicMedia 256AV : chipset=NM2200
7. Complete the installation
8. Custermize the kernel to recognize PC card controller
     - get "paodist.tar" via FTP/NFS  ("paodist.tar" in step 1.)
     - copy "paodist.tar"file to /usr/src/
     - untar "paodist.tar"
     - cd PAO3
     - read "README.install" and proceed the steps to custermize kernel

Restriction : 
 - the internel modem (Rockwell HCF 56K SpeakPhone PCI modem) is believed to be a winmodem, thus it can't not work with FreeBSD

 

SONY Vaio PCG-XG9 Dr. K J Dryllerakis, Dec 1999

-Built-in modem (win-modem) does not work under FreeBSD.
-Sound card (possibly Soundblaster compatible) not configured yet

 

Sony VAIO PCG-XG9 Charles Ying, Dec 1999

A standard 3Com 589E pc modem worked just fine, you must
disable the IrDA port on the laptop first, however.

Suspend to disk requires creating a suspend-to-disk
partition using PHDISK (located on the first system recovery
CD) in the middle of the 18Gig drive (since Phoenix
thinks the last cylinder is 1024, this is created in the
middle.)

Standard NeoMagic Chipset, the modem is a Winmodem, so
you'll need to get one of those.

 

Toshiba/Tecra 8000 Stephen Spencer, Jan 2000

getting the WSS sounds to go was kind of painful.  The BIOS 
needs to be hardset to pcmcia compatible.

The only resolution this machine operates in is 1024/768
or it will "stretch" lower resolutions to fill the screen
or just give you a large border on a smaller screen.

After installing with the PAO tarball, my D-Link 650 came 
up easily enough.

Good little box; however, the CPU (PII-333) greatly outpaces
the Tecra's i/o system.

 

CTX Scott V. Kamp, Mar 1999

needed to set sio1 irq9, sio2 irq3, lpt1 irq4, crystal sound irq5,
pcmcia bus controller irq11, Bay NetGear FA410TX card to irq 7, under
2.2.8 PAO, also under 2.2.8 the cdrom refused to work under 3.1 it now
works fine without locking up the system, but now my pcmcia card
doesnt, this thing is loaded, 2 usb, 2 Irda, 2 pcmcia, int. modem,
int. sound, 2nd serial port, ext parallel its a nice 1100.00 system

kernel configuration

 

Dell Inspiron 3700 C433GT Jose M. Alcaide, Jan 2000

FreeBSD 3.4-RELEASE was installed from CD-ROM without any
problems, and very fast.

3.4R includes XFree86 3.3.5, which does not officialy
support the ATI Rage Mobility M1 graphics adapter. However,
there is a patched version available at http://oneway.com/jay/stuff/XF86_Mach64_FreeBSD-3.2.gz.
XFree86 3.3.6 does support the ATI Rage Mobility chipsets, but it
disables APM for the LCD. I am working on a patch for this problem.
Both the patched XF86 3.3.5 and the stock XF86 3.3.6 Mach64 servers
are capable of doing 1024x768 at 32bpp, using the Modeline included
in my XF86Config file.

Audio does not work. The ESS-Maestro/2E is not supported. I tried the
commercial 4-front OSS driver, and it does not work well.

APM: this machine has a "broken statclock". Then, I had to add
"flags 0x20" to the "device apm0" line of the kernel configuration file.
Once done, I can suspend and resume the system without problems,
even with a PCMCIA card inserted.

Suspend-to-Disk also works, but it is **very** dangerous if you
use the Boot Manager: you suspend to disk, then boot from the S2D
partition (so it is recorded as the last boot partition by the
Boot Manager), and the system resumes OK. But, when you do the next
boot (or reboot), and it is unattended, the system boots from the
S2D partition again, and this will destroy your file systems.
Solution: don't install the Boot Manager; leave the standard MBR and
set the FreeBSD partition as "active".

Mouse: I had some "psmintr: out of sync" problems while using X11,
so I added "flags 0x100" to the "device psm0" line in the kernel
config file.

PCMCIA cards: I am using a Xircom RealPort RE-100BTX, and it
works fine. It can do 1.2-1.3 MBytes/sec when attached to a
100 Mbps half-duplex port. It is listed in pccard.conf.sample.

Apart from the mentioned problems, this laptop flies with FreeBSD.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Satellite 4030CDT Gary E. Rafe, Feb 2000

Refer to http://www.pitt.edu/~gerst4/hw4030cdt.html
for additional (up-to-date?!) information.

 

IBM Thinkpad 240 Robert Bowen, Feb 2000

Everything that I have configured works great. The video was no problem and neither was FTP installation via PCMCIA ethernet card. I cannot seem to get the sound to work at all, but I have never been an expert at the FreeBSD sound drivers. The commercial oss crashes the system, so I can't use that. Suspend and hibernate to disk work great. I didn't remove dos as much as I would have liked to because of the hibernate to disk file. All in all it works great and everything but the sound does what it is supposed to. The winmodem doesn't work but I may try to get the Linux binary driver to work.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

IBM Thinkpad 240 Robert Bowen, Feb 2000

The with more than default RAM, hibernation utility will wipe out your MBR. Sound only with OSS. APM works perfectly, so does PCMCIA and X. Installed from Dos partition, or do it FTP.

 

Toshiba Portege 3110CT Chia-liang Kao, Feb 2000

The sound system(ESS Maestro) and the internal modem
do not work. Both drivers are available under Linux, though.
The fxp on the dock expansion and apm work well.
No trouble encountered while installing. Just hope I
could make the sound system work and see the irda driver
ported from linux.

 

PCG-F390 Jesse, Apr 2000

I could not get the pcm driver to work for the yamaha sound card, I havent tested the modem, but the touch pad, screen, and PCMCIA ethernet card work.  Suspending functions as well.

 

Sony Vaio PCG-N505VX Chap Lovejoy, Apr 2000

FreeBSD runs very well on this machine.  The only problems
I encountered were some difficulty with the pcmcia setup
(the settings that finally worked are in the kernel config file
which I uploaded), the modem appears to be a winmodem, and I
have yet to get the IRDA port to work.  I have not tried to use
the floppy or cdrom, so I can't report on those (though the install
disks had no problem with the floppy).

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Gateway Solo 2500 Matthew Litwin, May 2000

In general, the Gateway Solo 2500 works well.

The 3Com 3CCFE575BT PCMCIA card that came with it is a 
cardbus card, and not yet supported.

A Linksys Combo PCMCI Ethernet Card (EC2T) works fine after
choosing the proper irq in pccard.conf:
card "Linksys" "Combo PCMCIA EthernetCard (EC2T)"
	config  0x1 "ed0" 11
worked for me.

Closing the lid doesn't seem to fully suspend: just the
screen turns off. The svga server resets to a blank screen
when the lid is opened. A console window works just fine, 
and so does apm -z.

Aside from these problems, everything runs smoothly for
me

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Sony PCG-F370 Bill Fink, May 2000

Everything works like a charm! ('Cept, it doesn't like the Yamaha Sound ChipSet.)

Working right out of the box, (from the CDs included with the FreeBSD reference manual) and TOO, works like a charm with Xircom RealPort. 10/100MB/56KModem.

Am looking to get it to work with the WaveLAN Turbo 11Mbs Wireless Card. (Appears to work - gets the card's attention, but no network traffic using that PCMCIA card. - Lastly too, I'm fudging trying to get the WaveLAN working with the Apple AIRPORT - which the card DOES INDEED work like a charm with the other OS's.)

 

HP Omnibook 800CS Poul-Henning Kamp, Mar 1999

Nice machine, has the "pop-out" mouse which is the greatest
thing since sliced cheese.  I use it with an ancient National/IBM
ne4100 Ethernet card and it works fine.  PCIC is TI1131.

Apm works.	

Graphics chipset is Neomagic.

 

Gateway2000 Handbook 486 Samuel Blinn, May 2000

The folk at PAO made things pretty easy. Installed from their boot floppy, which detected my PCMCIA no problem, and so I installed over the network with a PCMCIA ethernet card, recompiled the kernel, and viola. I can hot-swap out PCMCIA cards, etc. However power management is a problem with this laptop, as its APM BIOS is not exactly what you would expect. There are workarounds for Linux, so I would assume that the same could be done for FreeBSD, but I've been content to use my laptop as a server, which it does VERY well: apache+mysql+php fly, runs ssh pretty well too.

 

Umax Actionbook 330T Pirate Jenny, Jun 2000

This machine had Debian Gnu/Linux on it for ~1.5 years and 
much to the confusion of myself and my local LUG sound would
not work except with OSS. I had sound running under FreeBSD
about an hour after I finished my install. (Ensoniq 1781 
compatible I believe...mp3's are critical to get me through 
those coding all-nighters!)

 

Sony VAIO Z505-RX Pekka Nikander, Jun 2000

Installation from a DOS partition worked without any
problems.  Booting from the standard 4.0-RELEASE boot
floppies worked fine with the included USB disk drive. 
With 4.0-RELEASE, the build in Ethernet (fxp0) would 
not work, but upgrading to 4.0-STABLE fixed that.
The following devices also seem to work OK: Sony Xpressa
USB CRX100/X2, Aironet PC4800 11Mbps wireless PC-Card 
(an0), and Lucent WaveLAN Silver 11 Mbps PC-Card (wi0).
The Memory Stick seems to work fine also; it is available
as /dev/ad2s1, and you can mount it as an MSDOS file system.
Suspend works with 'zzz', and you can hibernate the system
through Fn-F12; however, I haven't yet found out how to
initiate hibernation programmatically.
The modem is believed to be a winmodem; I haven't tried
to use it.  I haven't tried to use FireWire either;
somebody said there should be drivers somewhere, but
I don't know anything more about that.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Satellite 1625CDT Jason Thaxter, Jun 2000

To install 4.0-R, you MUST disable pcic0 or the machine will freeze.
pcic0 and pcic1 in 4-stable GENERIC have IRQ 11, which conflicts with
the graphics board on this computer: just use 
pcic0 at isa?
in your kernel config and it should work.  

ep0 didn't work in 3.4-R (non-PAO), and
ed0 is known to work in 4.0-stable.

X is a breeze to set up.

The sound driver works at /dev/pcaudio with pcm/pca0 straight out
of LINT, but does 
	device_probe_and_attach: csa0 attach returned 6
on startup.

Apm still is weird (prob another IRQ issue); apm -Z works, 
 zzz will freeze the machine in X; outside of X, it works once, and 
then keeps waking back up, so I'll have to look at IRQ problem;
there's lots of interesting hints in freebsd-mobile...

XF86Config

 

Dell Latitude CPxJ650GT Sander van Zoest, Jul 2000

I am not 100% satisfied, but I am running FreeBSD 4.0-RELEASE/CURRENT
with perl 5.6.0, XFree86 4.0.1, no sound and APM yet. Please
checkout my website at http://www.vanZoest.com/sander/ with
more updated information.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Compaq Armada1750 Nick Evans, Jul 2000

Bit of a pain to configure, but it works and it works
nicely...

ftp://ftp.syphen.net/pub/configs/chronicle.tar.gz contains a kernel config,
pccard.conf, XF86Config file and a small bit of documentation.

 

IBM TP390 2626-700 Eric Masson, Jul 2000

This is a pretty good machine, but a little old now (2 years).

The sound chipset (Neomagic 256AV) seems to be a little odd on
this box. It worked with pcm driver (mss mode) in 3-STABLE and
locks solid while probed by newpcm in 4-STABLE.

XF86Config for XFree86 4.0.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Fujitsu Lifebook C6310 Martijn Pronk, Jul 2000

X works only with Xfree86 4.0 (ATI Mobility),
Sound (Yamaha DS-XG) and internal modem (Fujtsu/Lucent Winmodem...) does not work
APM is OK

 

Compaq Presario 1200 Jon Hamilton, Jul 2000

Configured fairly easily.  BIOS is extremely primitive and 
the machine has a built in winmodem which is not supported
and which cannot be disabled in BIOS.  Touchpad mouse "just
works" without any configuration (within X, anyway).

 

SIEMENS/Scenic 350 Martin Nilsson, Mar 1999

O2Micro 6833 Cardbus controller doesn't work without hacking pcic_p.c

I hacked the above file to recognize the O2Micro 6833 as a Cirrus 6833 
and it seems to work with a DE-660 (NE2000 clone).
APM and sleep mode works as expected.
XF86 3.3.3 works with the Neomagic 128ZX chip

 

Sharp A800 Mark C. Langston, Jul 2000

Working well with Lucent WaveLAN Gold 802.11b wireless Ethernet PCMCIA card.
USB working as well, but required HP Omnibook hack to current USB driver code to enable.
Sound works fine.

 

HP Omnibook 4150 Michael Class, Jul 2000

The OmniBook is a real nice laptop (even though I really
had not that big of a choice, as you can guess by my
e-mail address ...)

This is the first Version of the OB4150 (with the Neomagic
graphics-Chip), there is a 4150B-Version with an ATI
Graphics-Chip which I have not tested!

As Networking-Card I am using the LinkSys PC-Card:
EtherFast 10/100 PC Card (PCMPC100)
which works reasonable (100Mbit is slow (approx.1,2MB/sec),
but that seems to be due to the fact of the PC-Card (as
opposed to PC-CardBus, which is not supported on FreeBSD
in the time of writing)

The Modem is a:
MICROCOM, Inc." "TRAVELCARD 28.8P DATA/FAX MODEM


Everything works great (XFree86 3.3.6, Suspend, 
Suspend to Disk)

Generally spoken I am a happy camper.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Dell Inspiron 7500 Matthew Litwin, Jul 2000

This is the Inspiron with the SXGA+ display.

XFree86 3.3.6 works execept that it will freeze the machine 
on suspend/resume. There are some patches lurking on the net:
http://x56.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=555052949&CONTEXT=963767792.10806

However, under XFree86 4.0.1, suspend/resume just works.
There are some security concerns with 4.0.1, but they don't
seem to be remote vulnerabilities. Since I'm the only local
user, this is not a show-stopper. Seems not to like more
than 24 bit color depth.

The sound card, an ESS Technology Maestro 2E, is not yet
supported.

For PCMCIA I'm using a Linksys Combo PCMCIA EthernetCard
(model EC2T on box), which I looted from my Gateway.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Satellite Pro 490 CDT Paul Newman, Jul 2000

Networking works successfully with 3com 3c589D.
If you have configured sound or USB, please
email me your kernel config!
Good Linux information for this PC exists 
on Linux-laptops site

XF86Config

 

Sony Vaio PCG-Z505R Dane Foster, Aug 2000

i have everything working on this model, except for the memory stick port, and the firewire port (no devices to test with here).
working devices are:
Integrated Intel Pro 10/100 NIC
Integrated NeoMagic 256 A/V Sound Card.
Integrated USB Controller with these devices:
    USB Keyboard 
    USB Trackman+
Sony Vaio PCGA-CD51 pcmcia cd-rom drive
Sony Vaio PCGA-UFD5 USB interface floppy drive
Novatel Merlin Type II Wireless IP Modem
Viking SmartMedia->PCMCIA Adapter

 

ctx953e Daemon, Aug 2000

pcmcia card can work well in 3.3r-3.5r when using pao
.
the following attachment is 4.0r, 

my pccard.conf:


# KINGMAX 10Mbps Ethernet Card KEN0012-TF
card "PCMCIA" "Ethernet Card"
        config  auto "ed" 10
        insert  logger -t pccard:$device -s KINGMAX 10Mbps Ethernet Card KEN0012
-TF insert
        insert  /etc/pccard_ether $device
        remove  logger -t pccard:$device -s KINGMAX 10Mbps Ethernet Card KEN0012
-TF remove
        remove  /sbin/ifconfig $device delete


card "PCMCIA_CARD_56KFaxModem" "FM56C-NF "
        config  0x23 "sio" ?
        insert  logger -t pccard:$device -s KINGNET 56K Modem Card insert
        remove  logger -t pccard:$device -s KINGNET 56k Modem Card remove

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Acer 602TER Rob Lytle, Sep 2000

GENERIC Kernel install will give everything but sound.

X at 1024x768 works well with Ma64 server.  Other resolutions seem to hang X server.  I stick with 16bpp for Afterstep.

Sound works with 4-Front Oss ESS-Solo driver ($50).  There are no freeware sound drivers that I know of.  The Oss driver doesn't seem to work with /dev/dsp0.  Use /dev/dsp1.  This may be due to video card and ethernet being on same IRQ 5.  I have a support email into 4-Front about this. 

Ethernet works great using Intel Etherexpress driver.

CDRW drive:  burncd command is communicating with drive, don't know if it works yet 

I will send more info as I learn more.  Rob.

Addendum Mar 2001: burncd works well on its CDRW and audio is fine
with new pcm driver

 

IBM ThinkPad 380Z , Sep 2000

I have a dualboot notebook, 11GB disk and 96M RAM. The first 6GB holds win98 (installed first), the rest is for FreeBSD.

Installing FreeBSD 4.0-R from cdrom was really easy.
Sound works ok, but remember to enable PNPBIOS support.
I also use a Xircom Realport REM56 100Mbit Ethernet/56k modem combo pccard. The driver wasn't working in the default install, but when the system was cvsupped to FreeBSD 4.0-Stable, it works fine.

kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Satellite 2215XCDS Roberto Carlos Ramirez Perez, Sep 2000

Everything seems to work ok, but the audio card is not working, i am happy because i love freebsd, pccard work's with a SMC EZCard-10-PCMCIA Ethernet 10mbps card, i am working with APM now so i hope it works

 

Ast Ascentia J50 Peter Murphy, Sep 2000

Installed/boot from floppy - FTP install. No problems 
configuring X - KDE. Sluggish performance but tolerable 
considering only 16MB main memory. ESS sound chip works with
pcm and bridge driver sbc0. Pccard nic is the 3c589c(ep0),
works great. I haven't worked with the APM features or the 
embedded modem yet so no comments. As far as any bugginess,
when I have an external mouse installed the kb mouse is not
deactivated (not a FreeBSD problem), while using the ext.
mouse under X, moving and cut/paste I will get a sync error.
On two occasions the machine locked up hard requiring power
cycle. Floppy and HD operation has been flawless, sound on
events in KDE work great. I hoped to get more memory 
eventually to run X in greater than 8bit graphics.

 

Dell/Inspiron 3500 Adon, Mar 1999

Had to upgrade to XFree86 3.3.3 to get neomagic support.
Linksys Combo PCMCIA 10BT/10B2 card works great with ed0.	
No cardbus support.

 

Sony vaio harold barker, Sep 2000

For details see http://www.dsms.com/users/hvb/freeBSD/freebsdSetup.html

 

Sony VAIO Z505-JS Michael C. Wu, Sep 2000

XFree86 3.3.6 Does not support the NeoMagic 256
video card.  You have to use the XF86Config that
I included to make it detect and be able to use X.
(It will only use 2mb of the 6mb of the video ram)
XFree86-Current supports the video card completely.
Sounds works perfectly. fxp0 works perfectly.
Suspend-to-disk,mem work perfectly.
Canno change VGA out easily.  The memory stick slot
detects as a da0 via ums0.  Everything works except
the jogdial.

XF86Config

 

Gateway Solo 1100 Rick Hamell, Oct 2000

Video only has 2 megs, so can't go much higher on resolution. Internal Winmodem and Sound card don't seem to work of course.

 

Digital Ultra II Rod Person, Oct 2000

This was a breeze to setup, nothing like the hell I had setting up video on
a compaq 2000 desktop.

Ran into no problems at all.

 

Toshiba Portege 3440 Gianmarco Giovannelli, Oct 2000

Here is some hints by Mr.Lee, Shuhei and me (Gianmarco).

1)
Xfree 3.3.6 works (Oct-2000), but it is better to compile 
the source provided by Tim Roberts at this URL:
http://www.probo.com/timr/savagemx.html. 
It still has some problems. But if you don't do DGA, 
switching virtual terminals, or suspend the machine, 
it generally runs fine. Xig (www.xig.com) LX5.0.3 
works too.
The 4 buttons mouse works great in X windows using the 4,5 buttons for Z movement (up and down).

2)
Pccards work out of the box, and it works like a charm 
the internal Intel ethernet card (fxp0).
It's a pity that for using it you have to connect 
the external port replicator.

3)
Sound card is not supported. 
It's an Intel AC97 Audio Controller 
(vendor=0x8086, dev=0x7195). 
Toshiba says its a YAMAHA YMF752.
Perhaps it is supported by OSS (www.opensound.com).

4)
Modem is an AT&T LT Winmodem 56k (vendor=0x11c1, dev=0x0441)
No support for it.

5)
Toshiba FIR Port Type-DO (vendor=0x1179, dev=0x0d01) is also
not recognized.

6)
USB support works quite well. Tried USB mouse (personally I 
use a Mccally mouse, http://www.macally.com/specs/usbimousejr.html 
which is very good because, even if it is a USB device 
it attached as a psm0, so you can use both the pointing 
device togheter) and D-LINK ethernet adapter.

7)
Suspend/resume the machine works well, provided you 
don't do it w/ X window running, and therefore 
quite useless. I am not sure how to do hibernation 
or if it does it at all. The 3440 BIOS seems to support 
restoring from a raw hibernation partition (type 84). 
I (Chain) found this out accidentally by creating a 
partition with type set to 84. However I dont know how
to get it to hibernate under FreeBSD. Would appreciate
the information from anyone.

Here is the dmesg output:
FreeBSD 4.1.1-STABLE #0: Sat Oct 28 18:06:26 CEST 2000
    root@portege.ablia.org:/usr/obj/usr/src/sys/FREEBSD
Timecounter "i8254"  frequency 1193182 Hz
CPU: Pentium III/Pentium III Xeon/Celeron (500.02-MHz 686-class CPU)
  Origin = "GenuineIntel"  Id = 0x683  Stepping = 3
  Features=0x383f9ff<FPU,VME,DE,PSE,TSC,MSR,PAE,MCE,CX8,SEP,MTRR,PGE,MCA,CMOV,PAT,PSE36,MMX,FXSR,SSE>
real memory  = 66977792 (65408K bytes)
avail memory = 62349312 (60888K bytes)
Preloaded elf kernel "kernel" at 0xc02e2000.
Preloaded userconfig_script "/boot/kernel.conf" at 0xc02e209c.
Pentium Pro MTRR support enabled
apm0: <APM BIOS> on motherboard
apm: found APM BIOS v1.2, connected at v1.2
npx0: <math processor> on motherboard
npx0: INT 16 interface
pcib0: <Host to PCI bridge> on motherboard
pci0: <PCI bus> on pcib0
pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x8086, dev=0x7195) at 0.1 irq 11
pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x0000, dev=0x0000) at 0.2
pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x11c1, dev=0x0441) at 2.0 irq 11
pci0: <S3 model 8c12 graphics accelerator> at 4.0 irq 11
chip1: <PCI to Other bridge (vendor=8086 device=7198)> at device 7.0 on pci0
atapci0: <Intel PIIX4 ATA33 controller> port 0xf870-0xf87f at device 7.1 on pci0
ata0: at 0x1f0 irq 14 on atapci0
uhci0: <Intel 82443MX USB controller> port 0xf840-0xf85f irq 11 at device 7.2 on pci0
usb0: <Intel 82443MX USB controller> on uhci0
usb0: USB revision 1.0
uhub0: Intel UHCI root hub, class 9/0, rev 1.00/1.00, addr 1
uhub0: 2 ports with 2 removable, self powered
chip2: <PCI to Other bridge (vendor=8086 device=719b)> at device 7.3 on pci0
pci0: <unknown card> (vendor=0x1179, dev=0x0d01) at 9.0 irq 11
chip3: <PCI to CardBus bridge (vendor=1179 device=0617)> at device 11.0 on pci0
chip4: <PCI to CardBus bridge (vendor=1179 device=0617)> at device 11.1 on pci0
isa0: <ISA bus> on motherboard
atkbdc0: <Keyboard controller (i8042)> at port 0x60,0x64 on isa0
atkbd0: <AT Keyboard> flags 0x1 irq 1 on atkbdc0
kbd0 at atkbd0
psm0: <PS/2 Mouse> irq 12 on atkbdc0
psm0: model IntelliMouse, device ID 3
vga0: <Generic ISA VGA> at port 0x3c0-0x3df iomem 0xa0000-0xbffff on isa0
sc0: <System console> at flags 0x100 on isa0
sc0: VGA <16 virtual consoles, flags=0x300>
pcic0: <Intel i82365> at port 0x3e0 iomem 0xd0000 on isa0
pcic0: Polling mode
pccard0: <PC Card bus -- kludge version> on pcic0
pccard1: <PC Card bus -- kludge version> on pcic0
sio0 at port 0x3f8-0x3ff irq 4 flags 0x10 on isa0
sio0: type 16550A
sio1: configured irq 3 not in bitmap of probed irqs 0
ppc0: <Parallel port> at port 0x378-0x37f irq 7 on isa0
ppc0: Generic chipset (NIBBLE-only) in COMPATIBLE mode
lpt0: <Printer> on ppbus0
lpt0: Interrupt-driven port
ad0: 5729MB <TOSHIBA MK6014MAP> [12416/15/63] at ata0-master UDMA33
Mounting root from ufs:/dev/ad0s2a
pccard: card inserted, slot 0

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

HP Omnibook 5700CT Hartoyo, Nov 2000

nothing special needed. PAO works great.

 

Toshiba Satellite 325CDS/335CDS Linh Pham, Nov 2000

Doesn't like to boot off of distribution CD-ROM all of the time... better use/make boot floppies based on teh .flp files on the CD-ROM

The standard XFree86 that came with 4.0-RELEASE and 4.1-RELEASE worked perfectly when choosing the Super VGA video card.

I was able to get a 3Com Megahertz 574 16-bit 10/100 PC Card and a Xircom 10/100 RealPort 16-bit PC Card to work right off the bat.

When configuring the PC Card, make sure that you add 10-15 second pause after rc.pccard is read to allow it time to initialize the PC Card controller.

I haven't tried sound nor APM...

kernel configuration

 

Toshiba Satellite 325CDS/335CDS Linh Pham, Nov 2000

Doesn't like to boot off of distribution CD-ROM all of the time... better use/make boot floppies based on teh .flp files on the CD-ROM

The standard XFree86 that came with 4.0-RELEASE and 4.1-RELEASE worked perfectly when choosing the Super VGA video card.

I was able to get a 3Com Megahertz 574 16-bit 10/100 PC Card and a Xircom 10/100 RealPort 16-bit PC Card to work right off the bat.

When configuring the PC Card, make sure that you add 10-15 second pause after rc.pccard is read to allow it time to initialize the PC Card controller.

I haven't tried sound nor APM...

kernel configuration

 

IBM ThinkPad 560E Satoshi Asami, Mar 1999

I needed a patch to use my Linksys Etherfast 10/100
PCMCIA card.  Patch available from

http://www.freebsd.org/~asami/linksys.patch

kernel configuration

 

Toshiba 2805-s301 Jaime Fournier, Nov 2000

The video required a patch to X. APM works fine, except hibernation.
Sound works fine with the new pcm. GENERIC with pcm added
works fine with integrated intel etherpro100. Have not tested USB, 
or pcmcia, or modem.

 

Acer/TravelMate 602Ter Troy P. Bahan, Nov 2000

Works with built-in Intel ethernet card.  Tricky to set up 
XFree86. Builtin modem is a Win modem.  Sound card does not
work under FreeBSD.

XF86Config

 

Toshiba 4360ZDVD Mike Nowlin, Dec 2000

Haven't played with the DVD, IR, or USB parts yet, but
everything else works fine.  X was a little tricky - I had
to used a patched (from ports) 3.3.6 server, and only 8bpp
is "without" glitch.  (32bpp works, but there's enough
snow when the mouse moves to make it disconcerting.)  I did
try the XiG demo server, and that worked beautifully in 
every mode I tried (8, 16, 24, 32bpp).  At 8bpp, it will
usually (not every time) have a scrambled text mode when
X exits.  Best thing is to do a "shutdown -p now" from inside
X when you're ready to kill it.  If you work entirely in
text mode, everything works just like my desktop.

 

Sony/F580 Eric Anderson, Dec 2000

The video setup was the hardest part.  Pick the NeoMagic (laptop) card,
and then pick the NM2200 as the chip set, pick 4mb ram, and that should do it.

The trackpad is a Glidepoint - which it autodetects with the moused -t auto.
I did set it up with extra switches, to get the 3 button working and also to get the "tapping" as a single click instead of double click.
Here is my rc.conf moused line:
moused_flags="-3 -m 1=4"

XF86Config

 

Toshiba 4360ZDVD Mike Nowlin, Jan 2001

Haven't played with the DVD, IR, or USB parts yet, but
everything else works fine.  X was a little tricky - I had
to used a patched (from ports) 3.3.6 server, and only 8bpp
is "without" glitch.  (32bpp works, but there's enough
snow when the mouse moves to make it disconcerting.)  I did
try the XiG demo server, and that worked beautifully in 
every mode I tried (8, 16, 24, 32bpp).  At 8bpp, it will
usually (not every time) have a scrambled text mode when
X exits.  Best thing is to do a "shutdown -p now" from inside
X when you're ready to kill it.  If you work entirely in
text mode, everything works just like my desktop.

 

HP Omnibook 4150B Chris BeHanna, Jan 2001

Everything "just works", although suspend-to-disk is not
configured; however, apm -z and apm -Z DTRT.  A GENERIC
kernel works just fine, however, you need to add device pcm
to get sound (ESS Maestro on this box).

XF86Config

 

Toshiba Portege 3480CT Lance Smith, Jan 2001

built-in sound: yamaha YMF752 is unsupported (yamaha is not releasing info to open source community)

NIC: I bought an Linksys 10/100 (PCMPC100) because I didn't want to deal with the dongle think that came w/ the laptop. You might have to edit /etc/defaults/pccard.conf to make pccardd recognize it and give it an IP (and other cards). I have v2 but the identifier string in pccard.conf only recognizes v1...(the driver is "ed")

xfree86 4.0.2: the 3480CT uses the S3 Savage IX, use the "savage" driver...I am using HorixSync 31.5-48.5 and a VertRefresh 50-70 

USB floppy: works like advertised

cdrom: I bought an external cdrom which hooks up via pccard. (i got the TEAC, the color matches the laptop perfectly unlike the others...www.teac.com : ) To make it work you need to enable scbus, da, cd, pass in the kernel...

modem: .v90 I have yet to try but I have read that it is unsupported...

 

Toshiba 2805-s301 Jaime Fournier, Jan 2001

More information on getting Freebsd to work with this laptop
can be found at http://just.rtfm.net/2805.html.

 

Sony PCG-Z505-JE Ben Lutgens, Jan 2001

Sound works, X4 works, Internal ether express pro 100 works, usb floppy works, PCMCIA slot works, havent tested the port expander yet or IRDa stuff. APM works great, I can suspend from X and all is well. Only problem I am having is that when the battery runs out of power it doesn't suspend, it just shuts off uncleanly.

XF86Config
kernel configuration

 

Dell Inspiron 4000 Aaron Burstein, Jan 2001

5.0-20000506-CURRENT

	I used a generic 5.0 kernel, which I installed from
CD-ROM. This is a dual-boot machine, with windows me on the first 4GB
slice and FreeBSD on the remaining 16GB. (Aside: I had to resort to
using PartitionMagic to reparatition the disk; I couldn't get fips to
clear the last cylinder.) Also, I seem to have annihilated the windows
video and CD-RW drivers during the repartition.

I am using XF86_Mach64, version 4.0.2. I had no luck getting X to run
with older (3.3.[5,6]) versions. But the new version works
beautifully. I was fortunate enough to find an XF86Config file
elsewhere, which I adapted to the particulars of this machine.

I am using a Linksys Ethernet PCMCIA card (model EC2T); this card is
entered in /etc/pccard.conf and worked without other modifications.

I have not yet attempted to configure the kernel for APM, nor have I
explored sound. Aside from the problems I caused myself repartitioning
the disk, the process went fairly smoothly. I am new to FreeBSD but am
very happy with it so far.

XF86Config

 

Sony VAIO PCG-505G Eric Lakin, Mar 1999

3.1R notes:
I had problems w/ suspending when a PCCard was initialized.
This stems from 3.1 loading the PCIC code twice into the
kernel. To alleviate, do not add "device pcic?" to your
kernel config. They get loaded via KLD's when pccard_enable
is set to "YES" in /etc/rc.conf. the "controller card0" is
still required in the kernel...

Also, the default APM entry from GENERIC has 
"disable flags 0x31" at the end. Remove these to have APM
loaded at startup, and APM 1.2 specs used (otherwise uses
only 1.1 specs).

For X: use 3.3.3.1, which supports the NeoMagic chip. no
phunky stuff required to get 800x600x16.