Popular Guides
View more guides at Linux Wiki Guides
Welcome to LinLap - The Linux Laptop Wiki
WinBook XL
Specifications
| Name | WinBook XL |
|---|---|
| Processor | Pentium MMX 233MHz |
| Screen | 12.1” SVGA |
| RAM | 64MiB |
| HDD | 2GB |
| Optical Drive | CD-ROM |
| Graphics | Chips & Technologies CT65554 |
| Other | 2 x USB1.1, 2 x Type II PC card slot, Lucent K56flex winmodem |
Note: this is a sample configuration
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | Yes | |
| Screen | Yes | |
| HDD | Not Tested | See notes below |
| Optical Drive | Yes | |
| Graphics | Not Tested | Only tried vesafb so far |
| Sound | Not Tested | Might be ISAPNP |
| 56K Modem | Not Tested | |
| USB | Yes | uhci_hcd driver |
| PCMCIA | Yes | See notes below |
Notes
HDD
The BIOS seems unable to recognize hard disks other than whatever the machine is shipped with (it stalls indefinitely at boot), regardless of auto-detection or manually-entered disk geometry. 
Does upgrading the BIOS fix this? Update: BIOS version tested is apparently the latest available (see http://www.winbookcorp.com/support/xl/xl/xlbios.htm).
PCMCIA
Due to what is apparently a BIOS bug, the PCMCIA sockets get assigned IRQ 12, which conflicts with the hardwired interrupt for the internal trackpoint/touchpad and PS/2 port, at the very least causing one of them to not work. Specifying pci=irqmask=0xafff on the boot command line seems to resolve this (found at http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php/product/977).
The lack of DMA in PCMCIA IDE devices results in absurdly bad transfer rates (under 2MB/sec), so further testing on this particular system will probably require a BIOS update for HDD support, a very lightweight live CD, or some sort of network boot configuration…
Discussion