[TriLUG] Install - ThinkPad T20

Bill Geschwind geschwin at email.unc.edu
Mon Jul 18 14:15:40 EDT 2005


Hi Matt,

I will leave the question about the choice of distros to others out there,
but in regard to your question about how the DVD drive works, it works just
like a CD-ROM drive in any other ThinkPad. When the power is off you won't
be able to open the tray (unless you stick an unraveled paperclip in the
little hole). What I would do is stick the (bootable) CD in it while the
power is on, close the tray, turn off the machine, turn it back on and
(provided that the option to boot from CD is set in BIOS) boot off of the
CD.

Since you bought the machine used off of eBay, there is no telling if the
boot options in BIOS are still set to the default settings or not. By
default those ThinkPads (should) be set to boot off of a CD before trying to
boot off of the hard disk, however it would be worth it to double-check this
first. Within a couple of seconds after turning on the machine, press F1 (on
some machines it may be a different key, but on most ThinkPads it is F1) to
get into the BIOS Setup Utility. Depending on what version of the BIOS is on
your machine, the exact steps to proceed from here may vary, but look for
something called "Startup" or "Startup Settings" and from there go to "Boot
Options" or "Startup Sequence" and make sure that it is set to boot from the
CD-ROM before booting from the hard drive. Also, on many different ThinkPad
models you can also press the F12 key before the operating system tries to
boot to get a boot sequence screen with which you can set the device to boot
from for this one session.

Hope this helps,
Bill

 
---------------------------
Bill Geschwind, CNE, MCSE
Technical Assistance Manager
Student Affairs Technology and Systems Support 
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
03 Teague Hall, CB# 5510
(919) 962-5629
geschwin at email.unc.edu
http://www.unc.edu/~geschwin
 

-----Original Message-----
From: trilug-bounces at trilug.org [mailto:trilug-bounces at trilug.org] On Behalf
Of matt-nc
Sent: Monday, July 18, 2005 2:01 PM
To: Trilug at trilug.org
Subject: [TriLUG] Install - ThinkPad T20

A few weeks ago I was asking about laptops and Linux.  I ended up trying to 
combine a low-dollar option with hardware that would most likely be 
compatible and I got an IBM ThinkPad T20 (P3/700MHz) on eBay.  I haven't 
tried powering it on yet but I don't think there is any operating system on 
it.

So now I am deciding which Linux distro to use.  Any suggestions about what 
would be best for this machine or what I should avoid?  I have the Mandriva 
10 install CDs on hand but I also have Roadrunner broadband and a CD burner 
on the desktop so I can get anything that's out there.  Mainly I want to 
get Apache, PHP and MySQL working on it.  It has a 12GB hard drive so space 
should be sufficient.

Is it likely that some version of Linux will support most of the machine's 
features or would it be good to do a dual boot setup?

Am I supposed to do this like a regular install?

BTW, about laptops in general, how do these DVD drives work?  Can I just 
pull the DVD tray out manually while the power is off, put the install CD 
in, push it back in manually and then power on to start the install process?

Any suggestions on where to get extra battery packs, besides eBay?

Thanks,
Matt



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