Linux on a Hitachi VisionBook Traveler

This page documents my experiences in loading and running (for a short time) Linux on a Hitachi VisionBook Traveler.

Features
PCMCIA
Setting up X
Distributions

Features

 First a small description of its features. The Traveler is a pentium 133, which wasn't all that enticing, but with Linux it's more than fast enough. Max RAM is 40 MB, again not all that great, but more than adequate, and the 1GB hard drive fills out the triple "adequacies" :). What was great was the size, 6.8" x 9.2" x 1.3", under 3 lbs., the TFT display and 3 PCMCIA card slots (more about them later). Floppy is external, but unlike the Libretto, the OS doesn't know about that, e.g. when plugged in it works just like a real floppy :). I'll generally only need the floppy for boot/install, so it's great that I can leave it in a box somewhere. There's no CDROM. That's a bummer, but not a show stopper. Small size and low weight were my biggest concerns. With 3 card slots, I can plug in anything I want. The Traveler operates off of tandem video camera batteries, so they're available everywhere and aren't too expensive. They are also hot swapable since you can leave one in while you swap the other. Serial, parallel and video ports are onboard along with jacks for speakers and microphone.

PCMCIA

Three PCMCIA slots isn't normal fare and seems like a good idea to me. Granted, they're making up for the missing drive bay by letting me buy another card and another device :). Hitachi support has been great as far as answering me, though they haven't always known the answer to my questions. What I've been able to garner from them is that the two slots that are together, e.g. that make up the type III slot, are both CardBus and the third slot is 16 bit PCMCIA. All three slots are controlled by the same 82365i chip. I didn't get the third slot to work, but didn't really even look at that before deciding to return the Traveler due to the other PCMCIA incompatabilities.

Speaking of which, Hitachi has some known problems with several PCMCIA cards. Unfortunately the 2 ethernet cards I wanted to use were amongst those with problems. Even more unfortunately, I didn't find this info on their web site and instead got it from their support after already having problems. The two cards I had problems with were 3c574 and 3c575. Both are 3com 10/100 cards, the former 16 bit and the latter 32 bit. Hitachi suggested the 3c589d, which is a plain 10 based T card. For the $20 bucks, I want a card with more future value, so the 589 isn't an option for me.

I've not gotten either of the network cards to work consistently. I presume this is due to the incompatabilities mentioned by Hitachi support (I've asked them for a description of the known issues). Both cards functioned just fine in a Compaq Armada I loaded with Linux at the same time. Installed with 574, moved in the PCMCIA package, compiled it and the 575 worked as well. The 575 shows up as a memory card on the Traveler :(.

The Adaptec 1460 worked like a charm. I was able to install via scsi CDROM several times.

Setting up X

The video works with both the vga16 and the svga XF86 servers. The mouse took a few tries to get right and the "correct" driver didn't work at least once. I'm not sure what the problem was, but the settings turn out to be: /dev/psaux, emulate 3 buttons, PS/2 protocol and Chips and Technologies CT65550. I like the two mouse buttons being close enough that I can use my thumb to depress them at the same time to get the "middle" button. The X server doesn't recover from going into sleep mode. The display will wake up and repaint your screen, but the computer doesn't respond to any keyboard/mouse input. Terminal mode does just fine as long as you wait for it to finish waking up. I never got to trying anything with the APM stuff.

Distributions

For distributions I worked with S.u.S.E., RedHat and Debian, mostly S.u.S.E. I found PCMCIA documentation to be pretty horrible. S.u.S.E. and RedHat suggest checking the PCMCIA project for compatable cards, but don't mention that their one month old dists don't have up to date PCMCIA packages available during the install, e.g. the 3com 3c575 card isn't supported during install (this is the card I purchased, but I was able to borrow a 3c574, which is supported during install, from work). The dist docs should have a snapshot list of what's supported for that particular release. It didn't matter for RedHat because their install program decided I don't need PCMCIA support and would not let me have it, thus limiting me to floppy and PLIP installs of RedHat. I don't want to do a floppy install and haven't gotten PLIP to work.

Written and Maintained by der.hans