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1

I am fixing a Tobisha A75-S206 for a friend wondering if OpenSUSE 10.3 will work on it here’s the Specs.

Manufacturer: Toshiba Part Number:PSA70U-003002 General
Recommended Use Home use , Small business Built-in Devices Stereo speakers , Wireless LAN antenna Width 14.4 in Depth 10.8 in Height 1.8 in Weight 7.9 lbs Localization United States Notebook type Desktop replacement (7.5 + lbs.) Screen type Wide-screen Wireless capabilities 802.11b, 802.11g Processor
Processor Intel Mobile Pentium 4 518 / 2.8 GHz Data bus speed 533 MHz Processor features Hyper-Threading Technology , Enhanced SpeedStep technology Chipset type ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP Cache Memory
Type L2 cache Cache size 1 MB RAM
Installed Size 512 MB / 1.5 GB (max) Technology DDR SDRAM - 333 MHz Memory specification compliance PC2700 Environmental Parameters
Min Operating Temperature 41 ?F Max Operating Temperature 86 ?F Humidity Range Operating 20 - 80% Max Altitude Operating 9840 ft Storage Controller
Storage controller type IDE Storage
Floppy Drive None Hard Drive 60 GB - 4200 rpm Hard drive type Portable Optical Storage
Type CD-RW / DVD-ROM combo CD / DVD read speed 24x (CD) / 8x (DVD) CD / DVD write speed 24x CD / DVD rewrite speed 4x Optical Storage (2nd)
2nd optical storage type None Display
Display Type 15.4 in TFT active matrix Max Resolution 1280 x 800 ( WXGA ) Widescreen Display Yes Color Support 24-bit (16.7 million colors) Video
Graphics Processor / Vendor ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 IGP Video Memory Shared video memory (UMA) Audio
Audio output type Sound card Audio codec Realtek ALC250 Audio output compliant standards DirectMusic , DirectSound , DirectSound3D Audio Input None Input Device(s)
Input device type Keyboard , Touchpad , Multimedia control panel Telecom
Modem Fax / modem Max transfer rate 56 Kbps Protocols & Specifications ITU V.92 Networking
Networking Network adapter Networking / Wireless LAN Supported Yes Data link protocol Ethernet , IEEE 802.11b , IEEE 802.11g , Fast Ethernet Networking standards IEEE 802.11b , IEEE 802.11g Expansion / Connectivity
Expansion Slots Total (Free) 1 ( 1 ) x PC Card - Type II , 1 ( 1 ) x Memory Interfaces 3 x Hi-Speed USB - 4 pin USB Type A , 1 x Display / video - VGA - 15 pin HD D-Sub (HD-15) , 1 x Display / video - S-video output , 1 x Network - Ethernet 10Base-T/100Base-TX - RJ-45 , 1 x Modem - Phone line - RJ-11 , 1 x Headphones - Output - Mini-phone stereo 3.5 mm , 1 x Microphone - Input - Mini-phone 3.5 mm , 1 x Parallel - IEEE 1284 (EPP/ECP) - 25 pin D-Sub (DB-25) Miscellaneous
Features Power-on password , Hard drive password , Security lock slot (cable lock sold separately) Compliant Standards ACPI , Plug and Play Power
Power device form factor External Voltage Required AC 120/230 V Power provided 120 Watt Battery
Technology Lithium ion Installed Qty 1 / 2 (max) Battery capacity 6450 mAh Mfr estimated battery life 2 hour(s) Operating System / Software
OS Provided Microsoft Windows XP Home Edition Software AOL , Microsoft Works , Toshiba ConfigFree , ArcSoft ShowBiz DVD , Drivers & Utilities , InterVideo WinDVD 5 , Adobe Acrobat Reader , AT&T WorldNet Service , Toshiba Speech System , Toshiba Custom Utilities , Toshiba Touch and Launch , Toshiba Notebook Maximizer , Microsoft Office OneNote 2003 , Norton Antivirus 2004 (3 months subscription) Manufacturer Warranty
Service & Support 1 year warranty Service & Support Details Limited warranty - Parts and labor - 1 year , Limited warranty - Battery - 1 year

2

Your best bet is to burn a LiveCD and see how that works. But keep in mind the following:

The specifications do not include what the chipset is on the motherboard. The chipset southbridge will house the disk controller, and sometimes the kernel needs specific parameters added at boot for chipsets with quirks. Probably not an issue on this older machine, especially since it uses an IDE controller.

Next, the machine uses an ATI Radeon 9000 video device. You can google and check the ATI website for compatibility of the ATI proprietary drive and the linux open source drive for that device. The LiveCD and the installation DVD will use only the open source driver, or possibly the generic vesa driver. So, similar to doing a clean install with Windows, you may at first not get native graphics resolution - you may need to install ATI’s driver after the OS has been installed. This is fairly simple to do, but important to be aware of.

Finally, the laptop supports both wireline and wireless, but the specs do not indicate what the physical devices actually are. Usually there is no problem with wireline, but the kernel must detect what it is and load the driver for it; again, a LiveCD will almost always verify this. The wireless device depends entirely on the chip it uses; often it takes a bit of extra work getting wireless up and with a few types of devices, it just isn’t possible.

If you boot from the LiveCD and get into a terminal, or from the DVD booting into Rescue mode, you can use this command to better identify all the hardware - the controllers, the network devices, pretty much everything you need to check.

lspci

The above may sound more complicated and difficult that it actually is. It’s just a matter of familiarity. If you have experience building or repairing machines running Windows, this shouldn’t be a major problem - you’re doing many of the same things but just in a different way.