Linux on Toshiba Satellite 2100CDT
This page is where I will put any information that may be useful to someone setting up Linux on a laptop. I have a Toshiba Satellite 2100CDT that I got back in February 2000. I no longer use the machine, but for the whole time I did, it was running Linux. It still is, actually, when I do decide to boot it up. I still occasionally install a new distribution on it just for the hell of it, and it still works.
Anyway, below you'll find documentation of some of my installs. I hope this helps someone. Please let me know if it does.
In some of these pages, you'll notice that I've had problems getting PCMCIA to work properly. It worked fine with FreeBSD, and with the old stand-alone Linux PCMCIA drivers. It would not, however, work with the kernel PCMCIA drivers. I have since discovered, through experimentation and tips from readers of this site, that there is a BIOS option that you can change to get the Linux kernel PCMCIA stuff to work. Changing the "PC Card" setting to "Cardbus / 16-bit" solves the problem. The other two options ("PCIC Compatible" and "Auto") cause the system to lock up when trying to initialize the PCMCIA card services.
Slackware - This was one of my first installs on this machine.
RedHat - I had to revisit my first distribution. The installation has come quite far since then.
Debian - This is my favorite distribution, and the one that I run on my primary machine.
