Linux on KDS 6370iPT

Processor-P3-700

256 megs ram (purchased with 64K and upgraded later)

10 gig hard drive

Cdrom and floppy

Onboard shared video (4 or 8 meg) Trident

Onboard audio

Onboard network (RTL-8139 Realtek)

Onboard winmodem-not supported

I purchased a new KDS Valiant 6370iPT in 2001. At that time, the current information I found on the Internet for this model had information only for Redhat 7.1. I bought a copy of Redhat 7.1 and installed it using the information I found on various pages. Video support needed some tweaking, but other people with more knowledge than I have gave me exactly what I needed to make the video work correctly. The audio chip also had problems that required the installation of the Alsa drivers. I tried that, and it caused a conflict with my built in network, so I dumped that change and settled for an installation that gave me minimal audio support so I could have fully functional network. Under Redhat 7.1, this laptop would play short audio files of a few seconds, but failed to play if the file was much longer than that. I used this laptop for my business trips for 4 years and loved it until I tried Fedora Core 1 on my desktops in 2004. From that point, I kept wanting to try Fedora on the laptop. Finally in the early months of 2005, I decided to give it a try. I loaded Fedora Core 1 on this laptop. This has to be just about the easiest installation anybody could ever do. Everything on the computer was automatically detected and set up correctly, except for the on-board winmodem. That didn't bother me because I have had a Zoom 2975 PCMCIA modem in the PCMCIA slot since I bought this computer and it was automatically detected and set up by Fedora. It might be possible to make the winmodem work, but I won't spend my time trying. I'll leave that to someone else to do. My Zoom modem works so well that it would be foolish to mess with it.

Basically, the Fedora installation just worked. It set up the video resolution at 1024x768 which is the native resolution of the LCD, and it detected the audio after I ran the post-boot audio detection utility so that it worked the way it was supposed to and Redhat 7.1 couldn't quite get to. The Fedora installation went so easy that this page doesn't really contain any useful information except that if you have this model of laptop, you can expect it to install almost by itself.

So, I am completely happy with this installation. Fedora (and Redhat 7.1 before it) both work so much better than that W------ operating system that it was shipped with.

gstegmiller@btinet.net