Toshiba Tecra A10

Introduction
The Tecra A10 is quite a nice piece of hardware, despite being just a little heavier than I would have expected. I bought mine because I needed a laptop with a 64 bit virtualisation-capable CPU. (Tip: Check out linux-vserver for a superior solution to normal virtualisation approaches if you only need same-kernel environments).

Date
This guide is being written in mid-March 2010.

Oustanding Issues

 * Intel graphics hang in X11, currently I am working around this by using compiled-in CONFIG_INTELFB which gives high-resolution console and then using the fbcon driver (do X -configure) in order to make X run stable. However, this means there is no 3D acceleration.
 * Haven't managed to get CPU Frequency management to work yet
 * Reboot hangs after shutdown rather than rebooting

RAM
4GB expandable to 8GB.

CPU
The CPU is an Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8Ghz.

/proc/cpuinfo

Lspci output
lspci

Lsusb output
lsusb

Graphics
The Intel mobile series 4 GPU seems to crash a minute or two after starting X. So far I have tried two different driver revisions, both with the same results. I am unsure what the cause is, probably some kernel option I have enabled, but I'm sure I will find a working configuration soon.

Network
The Intel Gigabit network chipset works fine with the e1000e driver.

Wireless
The Intel 5000 chipset works fine with wpa_supplicant userspace, the iwlagn kernel module and the net-wireless/iwl5000-ucode firmware package.

Touchpad & Clit
Both work fine under both gpm (console) and X11, though the clit probably requires scaling-down from the default speed of movement.

The clit is called a 'DualPoint Stick' and registers over internal USB as an i8042 serial input device.

The touchpad is called a 'AlpsPS/2 ALPS DualPoint TouchPad' and registers the same way.

DVD
Used as installation media with no problem. Appears as /dev/sr0

LEDs
There are three lights I can see on the keyboard, one on the CAPS Lock key and two under F10 and F11.

Console
The showkeys tool reports the following keyboard scancodes for extra buttons.

Both the person button and the 'monitor button' above the keyboard trigger the following four events: The volume slider on the front of the laptop produces press+release for keycode 114 when slid left (volume down direction), and keycode 115 when slid right (volume up direction).
 * keycode 125 press
 * keycode 45 press
 * keycode 45 release
 * keycode 125 release

These keycodes can be mapped to new actions if you wish to customise your console. See