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Solaris
Native Installations
On this machine I didn't try any Linux or Solaris bare-metal installs. This T400 is a Vista Business 64 only configuration with Linux, Solaris, and WinXX virtual machines running in (free) VMWare Player. Virtual machines were copied from my other machines or built with (free) VMX Builder + the appropriate install media.
Live CDs
Open Solaris 2008.05
No way to boot to a GUI desktop with either switchable graphics or Intel integrated graphics enabled. A text console boot worked and I could log in (user jack, password jack) and run the X configuration routine:
pfexec Xorg -configure
But no amount of fiddling with the resulting xorg.conf got me anywhere.
Switching BIOS to enable only the ATI discrete graphics (OS detection OFF, swithcable OFF, discrete selected) let it boot to a GUI desktop with 1024x768 resolution - and no other options available. Presumably the ATI hardware supports VESA modes correctly, but this is all you get.
Neither wired or wireless networking was functional. Didn't try anything else.
Open Solaris 2008.11
Default boot (OpenSolaris 2008.11 snv_101b_rc2 X86 in the grub menu) gets a boot splash and a bunch of messages:
Can't reserve 0xfc626c00 ~ oxfc6273ff for pci17aa, 20f0
and a black screen. This seems to relate to BIOS virtualization settings per:
I rebooted and edited the grub menu on the fly, adding this to the to end of kernel$ line:
-B intel-iommu=no
and did not change the BIOS settings (that had CPU virtualization features enabled. The desktop comes up with the correct 1440x900 resolution. Looks like this.
Wired networking works automatically. Wifi did not work initially. My device (Intel 5100AGN) is supported, but only in later releases of Open Solaris. It was just missing the correct PCI ID as it turns out, so I ran this to add the ID (the single quote, double quote combo may not be necessary these days):
update_drv -a -i '"pciex8086,4237"' iwh
Enabled wifi manually via the NWAM icon (right click - IIRC), and in a few seconds my access point was recognized and wifi came up. Nice.
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