08/07/2003 - The UMAX laptop died and I sold it for the price of the upgraded parts. I now have a Sony PCG-TR1A. I'll write that one up eventually.

07/12/2003 - I almost bought a Fujitsu P2120 today, but I decided to upgrade my Umax instead. I'm going to be on call a lot in the next few weeks, so I need a working notebook. I bought a Li-Ion battery for $139 from Priority Electronics, a Hitachi (IBM) Travelstar 40GNX 40gig drive from GoogleGear, and 128MB of EDO memory from Crucial. The memory cost $90, which is steep, but EDO SO-DIMMs are getting difficult to find. Hopefully these upgrades will provide enough of a performance boost to make the laptop seem tolerable compared to my current desktop machines.

06/15/2003 - I was cleaning out my garage yesterday and found the recovery CD for my Actionbook. This is a bootable CD-ROM that will reinstall Windows 98 on the Actionbook, bringing it back to a factory state. It has Windows 98 drivers for things like video, sound, etc.

NOTE: This CD-ROM does not contain Windows 98 itself. It still requires the Windows 98 CD that came with the Actionbook in order to perform a full system recovery. It just provides a way to boot & install the system from the CD-ROM drive.

I have made this available for download, as-is, with no testing and absolutely no support. You can download either the ISO image of the CD-ROM (preferred if you have access to a CD burner; 11,636,515 bytes), or if you just need drivers, you can download one big zip file (10,699,092 bytes).

If you have a dialup connection, be prepared to wait a very long time for the above files to download!

03/21/2001 - It has come to my attention that UMAX batteries and power supplies can be ordered here. I have no direct experience with this vendor.

01/31/2001 - PLEASE READ THIS

I get a lot of questions about where to find replacement parts -- batteries, CPU fans, floppy drives, keyboards, etc. The answer is I have no idea! I will ignore e-mails asking me where to find parts. When my laptop breaks, I will probably throw it away. If you are determined to find parts, I suggest you contact Clevo (Web site at www.clevo.com.tw) and ask them to put you in touch with a distributor on your continent. Then attempt to order parts from the distributor. If you can't get parts from them, try the factory. Good luck!

11/29/00 - The official UMAX drivers/software page for the Actionbook is hidden here -- Sorry, this link no longer works.

This page is not being updated anymore (10/3/2000). I don't use the UMAX laptop very often. I do not mind answering questions, but please keep in mind that I am not an expert! If you get stuck with your UMAX and need help, send me some e-mail. If you need a BIOS upgrade, I have a small collection of them. I DO NOT SUPPORT BIOS UPGRADES! Then again, neither does UMAX!

Note: All these notebook models essentially are the same. The model I own is branded a "UMAX ActionBook 333T," but it was actually made by Kapok of Taiwan, and is the same as their model 1100. Kapok was aquired by Clevo in 1999. It appears to be the same as the ProStar 1200 series. If anyone knows for sure that another model of notebook is the same, please tell me about it! The FCC ID is a dead giveaway. The FCC ID of my UMAX is L4PK1100X13, which you can look up at the FCC.

The only difference between the UMAX 3xx-series and the 5xx-series is the size of the screen and the battery it comes with. According to UMAX technical support (Julian Scott, 5/11/99) the batteries for the 3-series, 5-series, and 7-series are interchangable to at least a certain extent. Some older models probably will not accept newer batteries, and so on. Impressions

At the time of this writing, the notebook was an excellent value. I purchased it because of the low cost, features, and 100% Linux-compatibility. I ordered it sight-unseen, which made me somewhat nervous. I'm a very picky person, so disappointment comes easily. But I am not disappointed with the Actionbook.

I paid about $1,330 ($1,195 plus accessories) for the following configuration from ComputersByNet.com (A division of MicroWarehouse):

• AMD K6-2-333 Processor (2.2V core)
• 512KB 2nd-level cache
• Two SO-DIMM memory sockets, accepting 75 MHz SDRAM or EDO DRAM
  • 32MB EDO Built-in Memory
  • 32MB EDO Expansion memory (user-installed)
• 12.1" 800x600 TFT Screen
• 3.2GB Hitachi Hard Drive w/512K cache
• 24X Max Teac CD-ROM drive w/128KB cache (non-removable)
• Linksys 10/100 Cardbus Ethernet Adapter (user-installed)
• Kingmax 56K (Lucent Venus chipset) V.90/K56flex PCMCIA modem
• NiMH "Stupid" Battery
• Intel 430TX chipset
• S3 Virge/MX Video w/ 4MB SGRAM
• Texas Insturments Cardbus/PCMCIA Controller
• ESS AudioDrive 1688 Sound (ISA)
• Two PCMCIA/Cardbus Sockets, one with zoomed video support
• 1 USB, 1 Serial, 1 IR, 1 Parallel
• Chicony Keyboard w/ the "Windows" keys (the keycaps are black though!)
• SystemSoft Mobile BIOS
• Windows 98, Lotus SmartSuite "Millenium Edition", Adobe PhotoDeluxe, AOL, etc.

Construction:

The build quality is excellent. The machine is actually made by Kapok of Taiwan and is identical to their model 1100. I only have two complaints about the construction: First, the CPU fan intake is on the bottom of the case, making it necessary to exercise special caution when operating the machine in your lap. Second, the hinged door that covers the PCMCIA sockets is a little frail and may break off someday. Not a big deal, really. Build quality is easily on par with Toshiba, and much better than many others (i.e. low-end NEC models).

Screen:

The 12.1" TFT is very clear and easy on the eyes. Viewing angle is good, but not great. Text looks best on a white or blue background. Since the screen is 800x600 pixels, the standard 80x25 text mode must be expanded to fill the screen. The expansion makes the font look a little strange, but it's still very readable. Under Linux, it is possible to use a 100x37 character mode. The 100x37 mode utilizes the full 800x600 pixels and therefore has a clear font.

Performance:

Very good -- On par with my K6-300 desktop. I suspect it's mostly limited by the speed of the hard drive and amount (and type) of memory. The notebook uses SO-DIMMs for memory expansion, and according to the manual it can use 75MHz or faster SDRAM. Had I known this at the time of purchase, I would not have bought EDO. If you install more than 64MB, you should definitely replace the EDO with SDRAM, as the 430TX will not cache more than 64MB of memory!

Battery:

The battery is NiMH, not the newer Lithium-Ion. It's also not a smart battery, and I haven't found anyone selling a smart battery for this notebook. Yet battery life seems to be good, about 2.5-3 hours of hard use with lots disk and CD-ROM access, doing kernel compiles, etc.

Note: UMAX sells an optional Li-Ion Smart Battery for this model. I have not found one for sale from a reseller, but UMAX Technical Support will sell one directly for $199 + s/h (about $5). You can order on the phone (510-492-5816) or via e-mail. They take only Mastercard and Discover. Be sure to include your name, address, phone number, card number, and expiration date. Tell them exactly which model you have!

What's a smart battery? It knows how much charge is left, so you can have a good idea of how much runtime to expect. The "stupid" battery in the Umax just runs and runs until it finally decides it's out of juice, at which point the machine starts beeping and blinking a red LED. At that point there isn't much you can do but shut down or plug in. The smart battery probably also runs a good deal longer. Lithium-Ion batteries have a much higher power density than NiMH, and they're also more resistant to the "memory effect."

Even though the K6-2-333 in my machine is rated at 2.2V core & 3.3V I/O, I was able to lower the voltages to 1.9V & 2.5V respectively without any side-effects. (Note that at 1.8V, Linux would not boot. 3.45V & 2.5V are the only I/O voltages offered on this laptop.) The dip-switches for these settings are located on the underside of the laptop behind the CPU fan intake panel. You must remove two small philips screws to access it. Your results may vary; don't be surprised if you crash your disk or harm your machine if you try this. I am not responsible for your actions!

If you really want more battery life, consider underclocking your CPU. I've found that a K6-300, when clocked at 150 MHz, will run easily at 1.9V or less -- and without a fan or heatsink! The lower you set the voltage and clock speed, the more battery life you'll get, as long as you're working on things that aren't very CPU intensive.

Keyboard & Touchpad

If you touch type, you'll find the Chicony keyboard to be middle-of-the-road. There are much better ones, and there are some that are far worse. The NEC Ready 340T keyboard is worse by a long shot. When compared with other notebooks in the same price range, the Chicony keyboard is pretty good. The key spacing seems to be full-sized, but some of the keys are miniaturized. I hit caps-lock often by accident, and there are no indicator lights for the keyboard, which gets very frustrating in vi!

The touchpad is another story. This is probably the best touchpad I have used. It is very easy to control. The buttons are stiff, but I don't need to use them often -- tapping the touchpad itself works for the primary mouse button.

Hard Drive

It's small, but still fairly quick. Good shock-resistance specs. And it's upgradable anyway, so who cares? The latest BIOS can at least support an 8GB drive.

Before The First Boot

Before I booted the system the first time, I wanted to make an exact copy of the hard drive. That way, when I sell the notebook someday, I can return it to its original pristine state. This could also come in handy if I ever hose up Windows 98 and don't feel like installing it again.

The ideal way to do this would be to use the PCMCIA Ethernet adapter. Unfortunately, The Debian 2.1 boot disks are based on Linux 2.0.x kernels and therefore lack Cardbus support. Debian 2.2 will probably remedy this. In the meantime, I had to take desparate measures.

I used a copy of tomsrtbt, a single-disk Linux distribution, to copy the hard drive image to a desktop PC. To do this, I used the PLIP (Parallel Port IP) kernel module to connect the laptop to my desktop machine with a Laplink data transfer cable. (Note that you can do something similar using commercial DOS software like Ghost, but Ghost doesn't do an exact job.)

The general procedure I used is:

1. Boot tomsrtbt on both machines
2. Connect Laplink cable between the parallel ports
3. Mount a hard drive partition on the desktop machine
4. insmod plip on both machines
5. ifconfig plip1 on both machines
6. Add host routes so the machines can see each other
7. Tell "netcat" (nc) to listen on the desktop, and redirect the output to a file.
8. On the laptop, do something like "gzip </dev/hda | nc <options>" to send a compressed copy of the hard drive image to the desktop.
9. Sadly, this took me about 4.5 hours. I forgot to put the parallel ports in bidirectional mode first (in BIOS), which may have helped.
10. Don't forget to unmount the drive on the desktop machine.
11. Verify the file (gzip -t) on the desktop to make sure it's correct.
12. You're done. Keep the file or burn it on a CD-ROM. [XXX filesize]

Booting Windows 98

I intend to keep this as a dual-boot machine, or I would have removed the Win98 partition completely. After the hard drive image was done, I booted Win98 and completed the install process. It only took a few minutes. Then it was time to repartition the hard drive. You can use the freeware FIPS or the commercial Paritition Magic to do the job without destroying data. If something goes wrong, you'll be happy you now have a backup!

Installing Linux

The next task at hand was to install Debian GNU/Linux. I used Debian 2.1 CD's that were kindly provided by Linux Central. Installation was trivial, and then came the tricky part...

Setting up the Linksys Cardbus 10/100 Adapter

The Good stuff: This is a nice card. It's cheap (I paid $70). It consumes only about 500mW, or about 1/3 what a typical PCMCIA network card draws. And it uses the high-performance DEC 21142 chip. Since it's Cardbus, it's insanely fast. Cardbus is basically PCI for your notebook. In comparison, PCMCIA is worse than the old 16-bit ISA bus.

The Bad stuff: Installation is tricky for now. In the future, Linux distributions will address this stuff. And there is still a but in the driver (v0.91) that locks up the machine when coming out of suspend mode. Always eject the card before entering suspend mode!

For now, you will need:

• Linux kernel 2.2.x. I used 2.2.7, the latest as of this writing.
• The latest version of pcmcia-cs, currently 3.0.9.
• The latest version of the Linux Tulip Ethernet driver.

Here is roughly what needs to be done:

1. Unpack the Linux 2.2.x source tree.
2. Replace the linux/drivers/net/tulip.c file with the new one.
3. Configure the kernel. Do not load a network driver in the kernel. At this point I advise you to configure sound card support as a module, but do not configure any of the sound card modules themselves. More on that in the sound section.
4. Unpack the pcmcia-cs code.
5. Follow the pcmcia-cs instructions to make sure you have all the files in the right place.
6. XXX fix the pcmcia-cs ioport configuration [todo]
7. Build the kernel/modules. If you're using Debian, I highly recommend you use make-kpkg, as it takes a lot of pain out of the process. You'll end up with two .deb files, one containing the kernel & modules, and the other containing PCMCIA/Cardbus modules. Install both .deb's, reboot, and plug the card in!
8. The network configuration file is /etc/pcmcia/network.opts.

Installing X-Windows

I get a lot of questions about this. I'm not going to write anything lengthy about it. XFree86 3.3.6 works fine for me. First of all, you need to use the XF86_SVGA server! Here is an XF86Config file that worked for me at one time.