Introduction and Disclaimer

Introduction

This collection of pages chronicles my experiences building a mult-boot environment on a new IBM ThinkPad R40 Centrino laptop.  I have managed to get Windows 98SE, Windows 2000, Solaris 9,  RedHat Linux 9 and later Fedora Core 2 to co-exist rather nicely.  Some of it was easy, some of it was fun, and some of it was a real pain in the butt.

The laptop comes with Windows XP Pro installed, but I don't care to risk the stuff that Microsoft might hide in XP, so I wiped it and installed win2k SP3 (w/the spyware disabled) as my "working" OS.  Yeah, I know, we would all rather run Linux or Solaris, but some of the hardware design tools I need aren't available on anything but winxx.  Similarly, I have a couple of ancient design tools that only play with win98 so that had to run too.  Since I need to maintain device drivers running under Solaris and Linux, I needed those as well.

One of the reasons I chose an IBM laptop is the full (almost) complement of drivers and utilities they make available for win98 and win2k, even though they only ship with winXP.  Those drivers/utilities are available here: IBM software and driver matrix.  Too bad they don't include Linux (and Solaris!) drivers in the matrix.

Update: IBM will now ship with XP Home, XP Pro, or Windows 2000 Pro - use "Let Me Build It" in IBM ThinkPad R series sales.

A hidden area of the drive contains the full XP install/recovery image and a set of utilities.  No recovery CDs are shipped with the unit.  As of this writing, IBM will send a set of 4 recovery CDs on request (at least in the US) if asked within 30 days of receiving the laptop.

 

Disclaimer

This will become painfully obvious as you read further, but I must point out that I am no expert on this stuff.  The installations and tweaks described here came about through a lot of clueless flailing and a great deal of help from the good folks in Solaris and Linux newsgroups, and from IBM tech support.

Do not take any of this as guaranteed fact.  I hope the little bit of information I provide here will prove helpful, but I take absolutely no responsibility for any misfortune which may befall you or your laptop.  Please do your own homework before making any irreversible modifications to your computer.

Feedback

I welcome comments, additions, and corrections (please!).  You can reach me at williamDOTwaddingtonATbeezmoDOTcom

Here are rare photos of the author at work.