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Model: Compaq Presario 1200-XL109 Processor: AMD K6-2 @ 450 MHz Memory: 96 MB (standard 64 MB, expandable to 192 MB) Harddisk: Hitachi DK23AA-60 (ATA) - 5729 MB Floppy Drive: 3.5" 1.44 MB CD-ROM: Toshiba XM-7002B (ATAPI) - 24x Max Display: 12.1" TFT Graphics: Trident CyberBlade i7 Video Memory: 2-8 MB (part of main memory) Sound: VIA Technologies VT82C686 Modem: Lucent 56K V.90 PCI DFi Ports: PS/2 keyboard/mouse, external monitor, USB, serial, parallel, phone/fax, PCMCIA, loudspeakers/headphone, microphone. |
The Presario comes with Windows 98SE pre-installed. The harddisk contains two partitions. The first partition (hda1) contains Windows. The second partition (hda5 on hda2, which is an extended partition) is used by Compaq's QuickRestore software for backups of the Windows partition, so you don't loose your files when Windows self-destruct. If you don't feel like wasting a lot of disk space on backups, you could try installing Linux on this partition (its initial size is 1402 MB). However, I am not sure it is possible to restore Windows from the QuickRestore CD without loosing everything on the harddisk! Of course, if you don't need Windows, or want another version of Windows installed, you don't have to worry about this.
Initially, I had resized the Windows partition to make room for two Linux partitions at the beginning of the harddisk, thinking that it would be unwise to place them between the two original partitions because the backup partition may grow if more room is needed. This, however, turned out to be a poor decision. Apparently, QuickRestore restores the Windows partition to the first physical partition on the harddisk, i.e. if you place the Linux partition at the beginning of the disk, it will be overwritten if you try to restore the Windows partition.
WARNING: QUICKRESTORE MAY DESTROY YOUR LINUX PARTITIONS!
Now, my Linux partitions are placed between the two original partitions. The backup partition has been resized to make even more room for Linux, and I have deleted the files that QuickRestore put on the backup partition to make room for something more useful. Of course, this means that I will not be able to restore the Windows partition next time Windows self-destruct.
If you want to keep the backup partition, the best solution would probably be to resize/move both of the original partitions and place the Linux partitions at the end of the disk; but even if you do this, bad things can probably happen if you allow QuickRestore to extend the backup partition.
I downloaded Red Hat Linux 7.0 to the Windows partition and created the boot disk needed to install Linux using rawrite. When you create this boot disk, DON'T download the boot image to the desktop and drop its icon on the rawrite window to insert the path/name of the boot image. I tried this several times with several different boot images, and for some odd reason it never worked. I suggest you download the boot image to somewhere else (C:\redhat\ worked for me). Using this boot disk I installed Linux from hda1 (C:) without any problems.
The Trident CyberBlade i7 chipset is supported by the SVGA server.
The TFT can display 800x600 @ 60 Hz. Choose "Generic LCD Panel 800x600" from the list during the installation. 24 bit colour depth didn't seem to work, so it probably isn't supported.
If you have connected an external monitor to the Presario, it may be detected during the installation and an appropriate XF86Config may be generated for that monitor. If that happens, you will probably need to add a Monitor section to your XF86Config for the TFT display.
Here's a monitor description you can use with the TFT:
Section "Monitor" Identifier "TFT" VendorName "Unknown" ModelName "Unknown" HorizSync 31.5-37.9 VertRefresh 40-70 Modeline "800x600" 40.00 800 840 968 1056 600 601 605 628 +hsync +vsync EndSection
Insert it into /etc/X11/XF86Config. To use the TFT, set the Monitor entry in the Screen section for the svga driver to "TFT", and set Modes to "800x600" in the Display subsections.
I'm not sure NumLk/ScrLk works as intended (they are placed on the same key, maybe it needs to be supported by software)...
Sometimes, depending on the "history" of the NumLk/ScrLk-key, holding down the Fn-key seems to work like Scroll Lock.
sndconfig detects the VT82C686, tries to play a sound, and then crashes. (You are now unable to boot Linux. To fix this, enter BIOS Setup by pressing F10 during boot and turn off Onboard PCI Audio.) If you want to try to configure sound using sndconfig, I suggest that you use the --noprobe option and avoid the VIA 82CXXX driver.
Fortunately, the VT82C686 is supported by the ALSA driver. I downloaded and installed alsa-driver-0.5.10b and alsa-lib-0.5.10b without any problems. Note that the kernel-source package must be installed to compile these packages. alsa-util-0.5.10 did not want to be compiled (well, I did not try very hard), but it is not needed, anyway.
To use the driver, you must edit /etc/modules.conf as described in the documentation. Adding the following two sections will probably be sufficient:
# ALSA portion alias char-major-116 snd alias snd-card-0 snd-card-via686a # OSS/Free portion alias char-major-14 soundcore alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0 alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss
Harddisk, CD-ROM, and floppy all seem to work.
I bought a D-Link DFE-650 Fast Ethernet PC Card, which is sold as being "Linux Ready". Apparently it is NE2000 compatible, and it can be used with the ne module on both 10 and 100 Mbps networks.
Using linuxconf, you can configure the system for networks using DHCP. Simply enable an adaptor (under "Basic host information"), set config mode to DHCP, net device to eth0, and kernel module to ne. (I believe that Red Hat Linux 7.0 uses pump to configure the network interface, so be sure to install this package.)
Since the network at my university uses DHCP, and I use my Presario at the university nearly every day, I decided to install a DHCP server on my non-portable computer at home. That way, I do not have to switch from DHCP to manual configuration on my Presario when I want to connect it to the network at home which uses static IP addresses.
The DHCP server was supplied by the dhcp-2.0b1pl6-6 package. I made a simple configuration file /etc/dhcpd.conf as described on the man page for dhcpd, which you can use. Since the Presario is the only computer at home configured by DHCP, it gets the first address from the range specified in dhcpd.conf, i.e. at home, I can configure the rest of the computers as if it had a static IP address.
The DHCP server tries to read from a filed called /etc/dhcpd.leases, which was not installed together with the DHCP server. If the file does not exist, the server will not be started. Fortunately, all you have to do is to create an empty file with that name. The file contains information about which IP addresses that have been assigned to which computers.