Alps TouchPad

[Gunny2k2]

Hi all i ve been reading fedora forums for the past few days, as i have a AJP D480V (Clevo CO D480V, basicly)

P4 3.2Ghz HT, 1Gb DDR333 Corsiar, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600 Mobility, SiS AGP/IDE Chipsets + SiS Audio/RealTek AC97, RealTek 10/100/1000 Lan, USRobotics 54Mb wireless G card.

i ve found fedora core 2 to work best on my lapto however a few problems:

1.) SMP Kernel wont boot (gets to SSH and locks up/freezes, odly USB mouse can still move)

2.) Alps TouchPad is no go i can use linux i8042.nomux to run installer and its fine but once installed no touchpad.

3.) I ve tryed synaptics drivers, i ve tryed editing xorg.conf no go. :o

4.) got ATI GFX driver on wit Kernel 2.6.6 but once i change to the xfree86-4 config (after copying over Mouse and keyboard stuff loads x but no mouse not even my usb mouse, then u log in and it freezes

however i ve got kernel 2.6.6 working with a stack size 16 so i can run linuxant driverloader and use my wireless card (have to run non SMP )

Now here comes interestin Knoppix 3.4 CD (kernel 2.4 everything works FANTASTIC!)
Knoppix CD 3.4 loading Kernel 2.6 evrything works except touchpad.

What Am I Doing Wrong?

PS dont say laptop as i picked it up rather cheap

[mikeyman]

Why are you so concerned with an SMP kernel. SMP is only of benefit if you have more than one processor (Symmetric Multi Processor). It is not loading because you don't have two CPU's.

I also had a problem with knoppix on an older Compaq laptop (anything debian really). You have to load the driver for the touchpad. Check out www.tuxmobile.com for more info.

cheers

Mike

You're not doing anything "wrong" but there's something about the way the kernel accesses the touchpad. From what I understand, to use the Alps touchpad specifc driver(s), you have to jump through a lot of hoops but the benefit is that you supposedly end up with a lot of cool features such as tapping with two and three fingers to simulate other mouse buttons. I didn't do this because it's more than I can focus on at any given time. But I did read somewhere in some forum and later again in the kernel documentation about passing an argument to the kernel at boot time.

Assuming you are using grub, go edit the /etc/grub.conf file and append the following to the line that has mention of the kernel file to use and stuff like "rhgb quiet" and such.

psmouse.proto=imps

This sets the mouse type or something like that. Anyway, the touchpad now works like it used to and I can tap instead of wearing out my buttons. It's a good thing!

Note: that my touchpad worked before I did this change, but it didn't allow me to do tapping. If your symptoms are different, I suspect you might want to look at your BIOS to see what settings are relevant to your touchpad nd fiddle with them a little.