I mentioned to Mark [1] the trouble I was having with the serial port [2] on the laptop and he mentioned that most laptops have such ports normally turned off to save power.
Of course. My very first laptop (Image of a Data General-One laptop) [3] was like that—you would have to enable the serial ports before using them. Forgot about that.
A quick Google [4] search and I find:
The serial port is disabled by default in the TP (IBM ThinkPad)600. The TP600 can only run one of the serial and infrared ports at a time. The easiest way to enable the serial port is to go into Windows 95 and use the config tool there.
“Linux on IBM ThinkPad 600 [5]”
(I also learned about potential battery problems [6] but for me, that's par for course—this is the first laptop I've had that I could run for any amount of time off the battery)
Looks like I'll have to download tpctl (ThinkPad Configuration Tool for Linux) [7] to enable the serial port.
[1] http://www.conman.org/people/myg/
[3] http://www.simulogics.com/museum/DG1_1.JPG
[5] http://www.levien.com/tp600.html
[6] http://www.levien.com/tp600-battery.html
![[3] http://www.simulogics.com/museum/DG1_1.JPG](http://www.simulogics.com/museum/DG1_1.JPG){kind=link}