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- Since Toshiba still has not gotten any OS/2 drivers out for the T4600C notebook,
- I thought I would mention a couple of things I've learned about the combination:
-
- 1. The Advanced Power Management Works! Without much special tweaking.
- I suggest getting "TSETUP.EXE", a DOS system setup utility, and "MAXTIME.*"
- the two Windows files associated with Maxtime, the Windows system utility
- and copy them to a directory. Then create icons to launch them. As far as I can
- tell it works great -- including the ability to enter an estimated battery setting
- when the LCD has no display for time remaining.
-
- 2. I discovered, to my amazement, that the Auto-resume feature also works
- perfectly with OS/2. No need to reboot every time you shut down. Just turn the
- power off and next time you turn it on, you are immediately right where you were
- when you left off. You turn RESUME mode on in MAXTIME. (One note: using another
- manufacturers PCMCIA modem, the modem shuts down when you turn off the
- T4600 and does not wake up when you turn it back on. You have to do a warm
- reboot.)
-
- 3. I had a lot of trouble with Video. The T4600C uses a Western Digital Chip
- set. OS/2 thinks it supports it, but it is not one of the WD chips that really
- is supported. (The chip set is WD90626A, I am told.) The result was that I could
- not get seamless WinOS/2 sessions to run. When I tried to reinstall video
- support I got a lot of weird combinations, none of which was right. I got SVGA
- modes that corrupted the desktop display and others that tried to run VESA
- TSR's in DOS and Windows sessions. Once I got seamless Windows to run for
- a day. the next day, it was broken again. And I had done nothing to any settings!
- IBM gave me the following tip to reinstall VGA (the only mode supported until
- TOSHIBA gets moving and gives us some drivers):
- Open an OS/2 window or full screen session and log onto the \OS2\INSTALL
- directory. Then type the following command:
- RSPDSPI /PK:VGA /SK:NONE /S:A:\ /T:C:
- I have no idea what any of this means, so be warned! Then you put the
- requested installation disk (Display Disk1) in drive A: and... supported VGA
- reinstalls perfectly. Seamless Windows in 16 glorious colors! TOSHIBA, please
- give us SVGA drivers!
-
- 4. Don't buy the SCSI adapter TOSHIBA makes for the bus connector. Even
- though it is supposed to be Adaptec compatible, it does not seem to work under
- OS/2 -- and I really did not expect it to when I read the manual. But TOSHIBA
- tech support had told me that they thought it was supported by the Adaptec
- driver, so I bought it. Now I'm stuck with a useless piece of hardware. Please,
- TOSHIBA, an OS/2 driver for the SCSI adapter!
-
- 5. I was told by TOSHIBA that their PCMCIA card does not support OS/2.
- I bought the Chapelet card as a beta tester to see if it works under OS/2. The
- answer so far: no. So I bought the IBM 14.4/14.4 PCMCIA fax modem. It works
- fine as COM2. An installation disk comes with it. I told it I had a T4400 or T4500
- or whatever and it worked. I don't think it even involved installing any drivers
- that aren't part of OS/2. (The only downside, I have to do a warm boot to
- wake the modem up after going into suspend-resume mode.)
-
- Anyway, I recommend OS/2 2.1 on the T4600C with 20 Meg or RAM. It works
- like a dream.
-
- Chris Barr
-
-