First a summary of the J30 specs and my basic conclusions (in which I have also merged comments from the people acknowledged at the bottom)

• CPU: P100 (40 bogoMIPS) w/ 256 L2 cache. (J30)
• 8Mb memory on board (but my machine came expanded to 24Mb, the maximum is 8+32=40Mb). Standard PCI bus (PCI probing kernel detected 2 unregistered devices, I'm working on getting these clarified).
• onboard 14.4 modem (COM4), which has no error correction or compression, and isn't very good. Use a PCMCIA modem card is you can. I used the on-board modem a few times, and have seen data lost in one instance.
• 10.4" Active Matrix (TFT) screen with C&T 65548 graphics controller, fully supported by XFree3.2. I could run it easily in 800*600, although in 640*480 the screen was not fully utilized horizontally. Even runs 16 bit color in 800x600. No experience with external monitor yet, but it's dynamically configurable via a function key. You can download my XF86Config, but it's at your own risk. Please use XFree86 V3.2 or up. You can also have a look at this
• SmartPoint trackstick PS/2 mouse, which can also be used with external mouse. You must have the external mouse present at (cold, not warm!!) boot-time in order for you to use both mice (which you then can). The two buttons are on the palm-rest part of the keyboard and Emulate3Buttons works fine.
• APM basically works fine, although I am still trying to figure out why it sometimes doesn't want to come out of suspend mode. I have also had a what appears to be a overheating problem of the machine (CPU?) and am trying to reproduce it. Perhaps a problem in APM. It also can make the real time clock run slow (but see comments on this below).
  NOTE added: a kernel patch (Courtesy Dong Chen) is now available that appears to solve this problem.
• I get several hours (2-3) out of the Li-ion battery. When you take it out, put it back in while keeping the tab pushed in the "open" position.
• 775Mb hard drive, mine is a bit noisy and has a high pitch noise. It's removable, but the trick is to keep the button pushed to the right (the "open" position) of the machine while carefully taking out the drive. Spare slots *without* a hard disk are very hard to get by.
  November 1997: I bought, for the amazing sum of USD-260, a new 2.2Gb (Toshiba) drive. WOrks like a charm, the high pitch noise is now gone too. I have a nice story to tell you how you can move Windows-95 over to this new drive without the floppy install, and it uses linux!
• Standard 1.44M floppy, bit slow as I often find on laptops.
• Infrared port on the back (COM2 I believe), but not used yet. Allows for two-way communications with other complying ports. Range isn't very far (few feet).
• During operation the green "Fn" (function) has some very useful options: on-the fly changes to the APM can be made, as well as contrast/brightness, sound level, switch LCD/external monitor. The power button can dynamically be reconfigured as suspend button. Fortunately there is a reset button on the back, which should get you out of almost any problems.
• The ESS card works nicely when set up as an SB16 clone. The vital data is (default) 220h, int5 and dma1. The config program wants some more values, I just told it to use dma5 for the 16 bit sound. Seems to work. The microphone is located under your right palm. You can see two small holes with some metal inside, just on the edge of the top. I discovered this when I was compiling the linux kernel with sound support. For some reason the driver leaves the microphone open and recording, because when I put my hand over the holes, it created some really interresting feedback noises in the speakers. The speakers are a bit weak, I think, but the audio outlet almost blew my headset away.
• PCMCIA: 2 standard slots. This is what I've tried:
  • modem worked out of the box (I use it frequently) (the on-board 14.4 modem indeed seems to have some problems)
  • cd-rom (EXP CD940 CD-ROM) works, but i needed to update /etc/pcmcia/fixed.opts. I don't have this (or any) CD-ROM anymore, so can't comment more on this.
  • My el-cheapo $67 ethernet card seems to work like a charm.
  • An Adaptec EzSCSI (I believe it's called). Worked nicely with a JAZ drive.
  I should add that I and others have experienced some odd behavior during installation if you use a PCMCIA device. I had to disable the sound (IRQ 5) since it was conflicting with the ethernet that I was trying to use to install a new distribution. Tobias had trhe same problem with his CD-ROM.
• serial port (COM1): i'm using a ricochet (900Mhz spread spectrum wireless) modem on that port, runs like a charm, although I think I am loosing packets on the serial port(s) due to some IRQ problem or so. A PCMCIA modem suffers from the same, so I think it's something with the J30.

Slackware96 (3.1)

Nice Things

• Dynamically configurable APM features using the green "Fn" key. (but see below)
• X-windows ran out of the box in 800*600 resolution mode, even does 16-bit color.

Potential Problems

• The CPU gets quite hot if using at 100%. It's mainly the area below the lower right part of the keyboard, close to the PCMCIA slots. My modem card got very very hot, I'm quite worried about it. Somebody else comments he was afraid the floppies might melt... Now that I think I have the APM linux software "under control", the heat problem is definitively less. Of course when the CPU is 100% utilitized, it still does get hot!
• I also have problems removing and inserting the removable hd, but it seems that it's just a matter of pulling the lock away hard enough. The whole hd thing seems very fragile, so be careful. I have not dared to try and take it out.
• Although it's a P100, compiling the kernel (zImage+modules) takes quite some time. The disk I/O isn't super, and the whole projects takes about 40 minutes (cf. 20 minutes on my SCSI based 486DX4-100).
• The mouse pointer sometimes appears to get stuck in a auto-motion, as if it's calibration is off. Just let it wander, this machine recalibrates if the motion is persistent over a long time (10 seconds or so). Despite it's anti-slip surface you sometimes need to have a napkin nearby and cover your mouse finger! I would also advice to have a fair amount of spare ones nearby, they don't seem to last too long (few months?). My J30 was supposed to come with spares, but didn't. Just call AST (1-800-727-1278), they will gladly send you one (but that still hasn't happened to me). Recently (January 1998) my keyboard-mouse died, I am now working with the external mouse, but this clearly needs to get fixed. When can I find time to part with this machine. In March 1998 my screen died; since it's in the warrenty, it in the shop and being replaced. At the same time the keyboard (which every now and then has "Keyboard Failure" at boot) was replaced to fix the mouse.
• As for the external monitor the only problem I had was that when I exited X-Windows the monitor didn't seem to like that but if I simply used the Fn key and turned it off and then back on it worked fine. (Tobias, J50)

Bizarre

• Lockup in suspend mode when the power button is configured as power. linux cannot get out of this suspend mode (need to check if W95 can)
• After long idle time suspend mode cannot be awoken anymore. Suspend button will beep twice loudly and nothing will get the system back except a (cold) boot via the reset button on the back.
• built a kernel with what I thought was the PCMCIA stuff for the cdrom, but X windows wouldn't run anymore (core dump) and the card manager never came up... Actually it turned out I added all the special debugging features for Pentium laptops, and so this is probably not a good idea to add to the kernel. Need to double check.
• Clock running about 10 times slower. A reboot fixes this. This may be related to the fact that you have the RT option enabled, but this has to be tested. I am not aware of a slow clock under Win95.
• Closing X-windows doesn't always return the console mode in a sane way. (although I have not had any recent problems with this). (take that back: now I cannot return to console, screen remains black). Adding proper support for APM appears to fix this?

Questions

• does one need different XF86Config files for active matrix and doubles scan, or are they guarenteed to be exchangable? Related perhaps: is the performace on both the same. Answer appears to be: different, e.g. DoubleScan cannot do 16 bit color.
• fvwm2 has an intermittend problem with focus. Sometimes moving the mouse into another windows leaves the focus in the other window. Problem confirmed by others.
• Is there a tty based utility I can run as part of startup to turn off the microphone feedback? How do I (can I?) alter the system beep sound and volume on VC's and rxvt/xterms?
• are irqtune and hdparm known to be safe on the j-series? (the answer I think is yes)
• does the j-series require the kernel work-around options for either the cmd640 or rz1000 chipset? (the answer I think is no).
• Is there a source for drive caddies without drives? (AST seems not to be willing to sell caddies without a hard drive)
  Answers: (1) PC Service Source 1-800-464-2781, $36.75 (USD) Part # 234455-420

Also visit the Linux Laptop Page.

Acknowledgements: Jan Fredrik Leversund (db117@solo.lhg.hib.no), Andrew K Bressen (bressen@hks.net) Dong Chen (chen@ctpa04.mit.edu) Tobias Kenneth Prettol (J50, tobias@isaac.biola.edu)

Last updated: 11-jun-2000

Problems, Suggestions, Solutions? Email: teuben@astro.umd.edu