[KLUG Members] Re: Just say NO to the new Toshiba laptop.

[Bruce Smith]

> > Which means you cannot change the "PnP OS" setting, because it doesn't
> > exist!  That means EVERY DEVICE is PnP and must be assigned a IRQ by
> > the operating system.
> 
> Yeah, that can get nasty.  But I haven't had problems with newer
> kernels though -- even though a lot of IRQ sharing is going on.

I haven't had those problems with the newer kernels, UNTIL NOW.

I even tried 2.4.17 hoping for better PnP support but got the same
results as the stock Redhat 2.4.9-21 kernel.

On a default setup and boot, NONE of these devices work:

  Sound
  Builtin modem
  USB
  PCMCIA

Without a serial port, that makes it very difficult to dial up
an ISP!   :-)

After playing around with a lot of kernel boot parameters, (pci=...)
I got it to assign IRQ's for everything but the sound and modem.
HOWEVER using the PCI= parameters caused a lot of RANDOM crashes
(sometimes it booted fine, other times it would would crash while it
was initializing the PnP devices, WITH THE SAME PCI= parameters)

--------------------------------------------
Bruce Smith                bruce@armintl.com
System Administrator / Network Administrator
Armstrong International, Inc.
Three Rivers, Michigan  49093  USA
http://www.armstrong-intl.com/
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