Libretto Toshiba

[Ilse Marseau]

Inabout 2004 a friend from college got into his hands a series ofToshiba Libretto 50CT.They all came with Windows 95 pre installed, and we wiped them outand installed Debian with a 2.2 kernel from floppies, with much pain because ofthe unsupported disk drive. I remember it being so difficult that Idon't even want to write about it. But it booted and was able torun Vim, Links, and connect to the internet. Enough for anetwork-enabled typewriter.

I got Richard Stallman to sign mine while it was running GNU/Linux,but when I bought a regular laptop I stopped using it because,well, it is too old, and its keyboard is too tiny to typecomfortably with it.

There are some tutorials available on the net, but none of themcovered 100% of the hardware support for my machine. Most of themare also outdated, and refer to distributions that don't exist,don't have any support or are about unusable nowadays. However, Itook many hints from those tutorials, and I will reference themaccordingly.

The mouse device is emulated as a PS/2, and physically is a"clitoris"-like pointing device. You know what I mean. Working with the X windows is a pain in the neck because thelocation of the mouse and buttons isn't very ergonomic, and clicking on a button makesthe whole screen move on its hinges.

This device doesn't have any extension port other than a dockconnector for a dock I don't have, and a 16-bit PCMCIA slot, whichyou will need for the network card. It doesn't have a COM port oranything like that, which is understandable, given the size of thecase.

It does have an Infrared device, which is quite slow and useless,but for its time it was as good as wireless could get. The otherholes correspond to the power adapter and the reset button next tothe PCMCIA, big enough to be able to reset the laptop with aregular pen.

I was very lucky to find that my machine had been upgraded to 24 MBof RAM. Apparently, even low-end distros have difficulties bootinga regular kernel with 16 MB. I didn't want to tune or recompile thekernel on a 75-MHz machine, so I had to do some tricks.

There is also the fact that DSL is based on Knoppix, so it detectedmy hardware perfectly, didn't have to tweak the PCMCIA, and onlyhad to configure the audio manually because the I/O ports were notthe standard ones. This was a huge aid for me. PCMCIA Internetworking out of the box is something I hadn't even imagined tohave.

apt-get can be enabled, but it might break packages already installed with MyDSL.Furthermore, those packages tend to disappear on a reboot for some reason. I'mstill unsure on whether to use apt-get with MyDSL. We will not be using it.

My biggest fear, however, is that most of the packages are old andmight have security issues. However, as this will not be my mainmachine, and it won't run a browser with JavaScript enabled, I'mnot very worried.

Why didn't I choose Tiny Core? because it didn't boot on aVirtualBox machine with 24 MB of RAM. It would have been my firstchoice, because it is better maintained than DSL. A real pity.

And what about Puppy? The LiveCD is great but the installationinstructions were too complicated for me. I really didn't want tospend that much time configuring everything. It is maybe too modern(based on Slackware 13.37 with Kernel 3.1.10) and I doubt theLibretto could have handled its kernel.

There are two alternatives: use floppy disks or physically removethe drive and set up a VM. Years ago, I went the first path,because I had the floppy disk drive. Since I don't have itanymore, I foundan awesome tutorialwhich suggested to physically remove the drive from the Libretto,attach it to a 2.5" IDE to USB adaptor, and install the system fromanother computer. Check out his pictures for details on how toremove the drive. My machine is in a bad condition(broken hinges, cracks all over the case, stuck screws) and I hadto break some plastics and metal parts to access the drive.

So, we will use another Linux computer, which you probably alreadyhave, and set up a virtual machine inside VirtualBox. Then, we willremove the Libretto's physical HDD and attach it via USB to yourcomputer, using an adapter. The DSL CD image and the new /dev/sdwill be mapped inside the VM.

This way we can boot and install from a CD, instead of doingnetinsts with the Debian Woody diskettes, as you will read on manyother websites. It is the fastest and painless way, and if youdon't have the floppy drive, it is the only way.

If you have the floppy drive and are wondering if it is worth tobuy the adapter, go ahead! Walk thedifficult path, install DOS, start a Linux setup from DOS, try tomake the floppy disk work, then install from diskettes with acrappy kernel, fight with the PCMCIA driver until you are able touse the network, and install from the net. And, should theinstallation fail, start OVER AGAIN! When this happens, please sendme an email so that I can pretend that I sympathize with you butactually laugh at your misery.

Talking seriously, I am just trying to warn you.I tried that, I failed, then I succeeded, and not even in mysuccess I want even the worst of my enemies going that path. Buy it, then come back and follow these instructions.

The tutorial then notes that the last 32MB of the disk space areused for the Libretto's hardware Hibernate feature. I followed hispartition table suggestions completely. Just in case his page isdown, do this:

Follow the setup assistant from there. I chose Grub instead of LILOfor the bootloader, and it worked. The network also works out ofthe box, so I didn't need to apply any modifications in/etc/default/pcmcia as stated in David's tutorial.

The Knoppix core of DSL detected my Ethernet card, configured itwith DHCP, and it talked instantly to my home router. Woohoo, it'son the Internet! I actually didn't need to do anything, compared tothe hell I suffered with the Debian setup some years ago.

First, prepare your wireless router to work with WEP. It is highly discouraged to do so, because it is a big security hole. Fortunately I had a spare router that I can use only for theLibretto and will turn it off after playing with it.

This other tutorialpoints out some tricks to use all of the Libretto's capabilities. Ididn't try most of them, but since I couldn't play any music, Iwent ahead and probed the opl3sa2 driver. At first, it didn't work,because the I/O parameters on my card weren't the same than on thatpage.

Finally, the Pentium 75 CPU is able to play most mp3 files, but youwill need to compile your own mpg123. DSLcomes with mpg321, but the audio isn't fluid and for some reasononly mpg123 is able to decode mp3 in realtime. Running it from aconsole instead of an X session also helps, though the mainbottleneck is the CPU, not the RAM

This blog posthas some pointers on how to install the Toshiba experimental ACPIdriver, but as I didn't want to recompile the kernel, I couldn'tuse it. If you feel strong enough, use the same Virtual Machinethat you used for the DSL install and recompile it there, with thepower of a current computer.

The toshiba kernel module loads correctly (/proc/toshiba), but nottoshiba_acpi (/dev/toshiba). Not a big deal for me, but if youmanaged to get it working without recompiling the Knoppix kernel,please let me know.

The Libretto does some power management by hardware (screenblanking, hibernation), and this is enough for me. However, to getthe system to actually power off after a shutdown, edit the/boot/grub/menu.lst and change the parameter noapm to apm=onapm=power-off

As the pointing device is not that great, I usually run a singletty with a screen session for terminal multiplexing, and do most ofmy work on the terminal. X is only needed for viewing PDFs orimages, and that's a perfectly suitable task for that computer.

I find it amazing that a laptop from early 2001 canstill hold about an hour of battery, its drive is still spinning,and that it overall works. DSL gave it a new life, and though it istedious to use a cable or WEP to connect to the internet, it is afunctioning UNIX system, with audio and a decent mobile typewriter.Yes, the keyboard is small and uncomfortable, but this thing fitsin any bag. Why, by 1990s standards, it would "fit in yourpocket"!

There is plenty of information out there on installing Linux on aLibretto, but at the time of writing this article, most of articlesare about 7-10 years old. I hope that it can be useful for somebodywho, like me, found this machine at the bottom of a drawer andmight want to play with it a little, install a current Linux andmaybe give it to your kids or use it as a second laptop.

I wouldn't use it as a server, since it has little memory to run aserver daemon, the disk and fan are noisy,and keeping it on 24/7 would burn the machine. Ifyou want a cheap server, go for an old Mac Mini and install thelatest Debian there. The Libretto is a ultra portable laptop and,if yours still holds some battery charge, is a nice toy to writestuff on or browse the simple internet.

DSL is highly customizable, and there is plenty of documentationout there. The default software is great, and searching the net youwill find current software which is suitable for low memorydevices. You will find yourself with a machine capable of reading andwriting emails, displaying images, playing music, and more.

The only sites it can't browse are those which use Flash or areheavy on JavaScript. Well, the modern web, Gmail, Facebook,Twitter... but if you try to use the mobile versions you might geta nice surprise. You can try to use the Firefox version bundled inDSL but I wouldn't recommend that, it's too slow.

The drive was dead so i replaced it with a 2.5 CF adapter (as master) together with a 2GB card and after preparing the card with a bootable win98 and moving the 98 SE installation onto it, i now have a full installation. So far so good.

But my main question is really: Was the toshiba floppy/pcmcia combo really some OEM from somebody else? I have seen Sony units that looks very similar on Ebay, and other places. Would it be possible to use such units instead of the Toshiba branded ditos? (would it even boot from such a device??).

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