Q.  Dear Mr. Know-It-All,

How do I install Warp on my new laptop?

A.  This can be easy or it can be hard. As always, it's all about driver support. Laptops are very different from desktop systems. Desktops tend to use standard components with recognizable brand names. Laptops use standard components, but these are typically chip level standard components. A great number of these components have Warps compatible drivers, but it can take some work to determine what components the laptop contains.

If you planned ahead, you got all this information and checked for drivers before you purchased the laptop. You did plan ahead, didn't you? If not, good luck. For those of you who are still in the planning stage here's what you need to do.

If you are considering a Thinkpad, go to

and review the device driver matrix for the model you are interested in. If it shows supported Warp drivers you are in luck. Be aware though that IBM defines support for Warp differently that support for the preloaded Operating System.

If you considering another brand, go to

Dr. Martinus's site contains a wealth of information, reviews and device driver links for many laptop models, including Thinkpads.

Finally get very familiar with IBM DDPAK Online at:

Both are a good source for drivers.

Laptops are going to need device specific drivers for:

• Hard disk drive
• PCMCIA
• Video
• Mouse/touchpad

Most current laptops have IDE disk drives larger than 4.3GB. Many of this will work fine with IBM's latest IBM1S506.ADD. This is available from the DD Pak website at IBMDASD.EXE. If IBM1S506.ADD does not work, Daniela Engbert's drivers may. Look for danis506.zip.

PCMCIA support can be a problem. For some reason, the laptop vendors do not tend to advertise which chip a particular system uses. Texas Instruments supplies a large percentage of the PCMCIA support chips used in laptops and IBM Thinkpads tend to use TI chips. Often you will be able to use one of the Thinkpad drivers.

Video support is relatively easy to acquire, if available. The laptop vendors usually advertise the video chip brand and model.

Most laptops have a built-in PS/2 mouse interface. The MOUSE.SYS supplied with Warp should work.

OK, I lied. This answer is really about how to select a laptop and how to get ready to install Warp on your laptop. Next month, after you have downloaded all the drivers, we will discuss how to get them installed.