IBM ThinkPad 600E running Linux

Hardware configuration to enable both IrDA and serial interface

The first thing I did with this machine was install Linux from a CDrom, so I have not used any Windows utilities to explore the configuration. The tpctl package allows for some configuration to be done by Linux, but not the enabling/disabling of the IrDA and serial interfaces, both of which I needed to be able to use. IBM makes available a DOS utility PS2.EXE as a part of a utility package which can be extracted onto a standalone MSDOS floppy disk. I found I had to run it repeatedly with a number of arguments:

ps2 imodem disable
ps2 ir disable
ps2 sera disable
ps2 ir address 1
ps2 sera address 2
ps2 ir enable
ps2 sera enable

This configures:

IrDA port on /dev/ttyS0
Rear serial 9-pin port on /dev/ttyS1

and disables the internal modem which otherwise has an IRQ conflict with the serial port. It would probably be possible to change the interrupts on the internal modem to enable it as well, but since it is probably of little use with Linux, and I need the IRQs for PCMCIA cards, disabling it suits my applications.

When configured with PS2 as described above, tpctl -rsx gives the output:

resource state:                                       current
   serial port 1:                                     enable  0x2f8 IRQ3
   serial port 2:                                     enable  0x3f8 IRQ4

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Last updated 5 July 2005