[EdLUG] Clearout continues: IBM Thinkpad T22 laptop 733MHz PIII CPU 512MByte RAM 80GByte HDD 1024x768 display

[Edinburgh Linux Users Group]

IBM Thinkpad T22

  733MHz CPU "Coppermine" PIII CPU
  512MByte RAM (and a box with the couple of 128MByte sticks it had originally)
  80GByte HDD (that was an upgrade)
  Swappable DVD reader (can be switched out for a floppy drive; included)
  Original IBM PSU 16V x 4.5A
  Keyboard fascia has a couple of cracks; doesn't affect typing.
  Keyboard is proper decent oldschool like IBM used to make 'em.
  1024x768 display (display fills the lid nicely; not very bright though)
  +5 assorted PCMCIA/cardbus wifi cards

Used to run Debian on this for years.  Not used at all recently though!
Just installed Debian9 (Stretch) on it to check modern viability and
scrub the drive.  The firmware+netinst installer CD at
  https://cdimage.debian.org/cdimage/unofficial/non-free/cd-including-firmware/9.1.0+nonfree/i386/
had no problems recognising and using the DLink wifi card was in it at
the time.  I installed an XFCE desktop on it and that seemed to be
basically working.  The main issues seemed to be:

* The RTC clock battery has run down.  If the machine is off mains power
for long it'll complain on the next boot and dump you in the BIOS to set
a time.

* Built-in battery is pretty knackered.  I accidentally unplugged PSU
while it was installing (but after it had had a full charge) and it
started bleeping low power after 20-30mins.

* It's SLOW.  A terminal is OK but forget browsing with current Firefox!

* Screen mode switching seems flaky: letting the screen go to locked, or
exiting the desktop (e.g when shutting the machine down) seemed to hang
the machine.  Also, my initial attempt to install a Gnome desktop just
resulted in it crashing when GDM was starting; fortunately XFCE installs
some different display manager which works.  Vaguely remember this is
all some known issue with the S3 Savage graphics driver and some quirks
of this HW which was fixable by some xorg.conf hacking.  Maybe some
useful info at 
  http://linux-thinkpad.10952.n7.nabble.com/T22-xorg-conf-td19148.html
  http://www.thinkwiki.org/wiki/Installing_Ubuntu_on_a_ThinkPad_T22
  http://jeremysands.com/?p=252 
but I didn't try and fix it and don't want to sink any more time on it.

* Audio HW needs some firmware files; the installer I used prompts for
them by name as they're not ones it includes.  I vaguely remember
they're "out there"... but with enough doubt over copyright status and
distribution permissions noone will officially ship them. 

* Has one USB socket but the BIOS doesn't support booting from a USB
drive (had to burn installer to a CD and boot from that).

The list will strip my email: contact me at

  timday at bottlenose.demon.co.uk 

if interested.

Tim