I've been trying to get Linux on my laptop and have had trouble every step of the way. ( Or so it seems )

I started with Redhat 8.0 because that is what I have on a couple other systems. Well, that didn't work at first but that will come back shortly. I then tried Mandrake 9.1 and the install work only by going into interactive mode during bootup, and choosing no to the pcmcia service. However, after that I could not find any documentation on the web, or Mandrake man files to help me with this issue. I also found on the web many people complaining about the support of Mandrake.

I got away from Mandrake after that. Mandrake might be pretty good. I didn't really check it out much after the problem that I was having.

Back to Redhat.
I found a site that talks about the pcmcia issue and shows you how to get around this issue. If you are interested, the site can be found at http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/toshiba1115.php

This site helped me to compile a new kernel better for my needs. Everything worked fine until I had to reboot. If I chose to boot using the custom kernel that I created, then I didn't have any mouse. No USB mouse or Touch pad. This will not do me any good. So, I rebooted and chose to go into the original kernel and my mouse works again.

I'm going to mess with it a bit and I'll let you know how it goes.

Ok, I was able to get the touch pad working by editting the XF86Config file. So I went on to the next step and when I attemped to try out the pcmcia driver by doing the following. And this is what I got.

[root@localhost /]# /sbin/service pcmcia start
pcmcia: unrecognized service

Does anyone have any clue as to what is wrong?

Thanks in advance.

Well I'm not 100% on this but if you made changes to XF86Config then you should only have to restart X for the changes to take effect right? I run RedHat 8.0 on a newer model Toshiba laptop and everything works great. Have you checked out http://www.linux-laptop.net/ ? They have a lot of good help there.

Thanks for the reply. I have been to linux-laptop.net. That is how I found the link to the HOW-TO on getting this done. I think it has something to do with the ./Configure trying to use the older kernel. I'm not sure, I am very new to Linux but am very determined.

Any other advise?

What ./configure are you speaking of exactly? Have you tried, and this may not do much, updating your kernel using the up2date service? There have been many kernel updates from the stock 8.0 kernel.

The ./Configure I am talking about is for the new pcmcia driver after I compiled the custom kernel. Check out the link that I inserted in the first post for what I exactlly did. I got stuck at the point where I was to restart the pcmcia service.

Maybe I should try another approach. I can't find any other source on the web to get the pcmcia slot to work.

Thanks

I just wanted to give an update on this subject. I installed Redhat 9.0 on this Laptop and followed the instructions on this site.

http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/toshiba1115-rh9.php

And after that, the pcmcia sockets were working. So, install the drivers and POW! Wireless network card is now working.

I wanted to thank you for your comments here and I'm off to try and get my DVD working. One more step to being free of Mico$oft.

Well, bad news for me. After weeks of trying to get the dvd working and failing, I decided to make this laptop dual boot so I can at least use the dvd in windoze until I get it figured out in Linux. Guess what? The dvd player took a dump on me. So, since it is still under warranty, I had to use the windoze restore disk that came with the laptop to bring it back to the factory settings so they can't say that I did anything to make it go bad.

So, when I fet it back I will put Linux back on there and try to make it work in Linux.

Kind of makes me wonder if the dvd was good, how quickly I could have gotten the dvd to work. I guess we'll find out when I get it back.

Regards

Well good luck, hopefully you'll get it back in working order quick.
I just wanted to offer moral support on the DVD issue. I have an older laptop with a DVDROM and its been a real pain to get it to the point of being able to watch DVDs in linux at the same quality as PowerDVD.

I've had limitted success, ie: with mplayer setup properly (LOTS of tinkering) and a kernel compile I can watch movies and they are pretty smooth (29fps or so), 90% as good as powerDVD was...but there's no support for the fancy menus and such...but I've decided to live without (for now) and scrapped windows.

for dvd use ogle, it has menu support