Installing Linux on a Twinhead 380S8

This is a twinhead 340S8 machines also marketed as a 3200 and 3400 models in various countries. It is also the same as a Uniwill 340S8 and some GVC and Genicom models (all of which usually have 340S in the model number somewhere), this one has a 14.1 XGA TFT screen.

I installed redhat-7.2, the installation went smoothly but configuring X was a problem (more later). The SiS630 chipset includes ethernet and sound (all detected no problem) and graphics. The apmd created problems so I disabled it in the bios and stopped apmd from loading - I will investigate this later.

Configurating X. I tried for about a day to get XFree85 vers 3.3.6 to work using the svga driver, I know it works because I have a desktop that uses it with an LCD screen but it would not work on the notebook. The problem was getting the right mode lines. Finally I gave up and started with the framebuffer device which worked within 10 minutes. In the lilo.conf file I changed image=/boot/vmlinuz to become image=/boot/vmlinuz vga=0x317. This gives a framebuffer device of 1024x728 at 16bits. I installed the fbset rpm and the XF86-FBDev rpm. I had to manually link XF86_FBDev to X in the /usr/X11R6/bin directory. I then used the following XF86Config file

# Start for XF86Config for Framebuffer-Device
Section "Files"
 RgbPath        "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
 FontPath       "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi:unscaled"
 FontPath       "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi:unscaled"
 FontPath       "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1"
 FontPath       "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo"
 FontPath       "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc"
 FontPath       "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi"
 FontPath       "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi"
 FontPath       "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc:unscaled"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
 AllowMouseOpenFail
EndSection
Section "Module"
EndSection
# This section is no longer supported
# See a template below
# Section "XInput"
# EndSection
Section "Keyboard"
 Protocol       "Standard"
 XkbRules       "xfree86"
 XkbModel       "us(pc101)"
 XkbLayout      "us"
 XKbSymbols     "pc101"
 XkbVariant     "nodeadkeys"
EndSection
Section "Pointer"
 Protocol               "PS/2"
 Device         "/dev/psaux"
 SampleRate             60
 BaudRate               1200
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
 Identifier     "Primary-Monitor"
EndSection
Section "Device"
 Identifier     "fbdev"
 VendorName     "fbdev"
 BoardName      "fbdev"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
 Driver        "fbdev"
 Device        "fbdev"
 Monitor       "Primary-Monitor"
 SubSection "Display"
 Depth       16
 Modes       "default"
 EndSubSection
EndSection