Subject: Linux on the Compaq Armada E500
   Date: Thu, 22 Aug 2002 00:02:30 +0200 (CEST)
   From: Hugo van der Kooij <hvdkooij@vanderkooij.org>
     


Hi,

I can report success with the Compaq Armada E500 laptop and the Compaq 
Convenience base with the supplied card.

Installation done with: Red Hat Linux 7.3 and PCMCIA card some time ago. 
Added the convenience base today and the NIC in the convenience base was 
detected properly and used DHPC correctly.

$ uname -a
Linux e500.hugo.vanderkooij.org 2.4.18-5 #1 Mon Jun 10 15:31:48 EDT 2002 i686 unknown

eth0      Link encap:Ethernet  HWaddr 00:02:B3:2C:B2:C5  
          inet addr:192.168.1.14  Bcast:192.168.1.255  Mask:255.255.255.0
          UP BROADCAST NOTRAILERS RUNNING MULTICAST  MTU:1500  Metric:1
          RX packets:4471 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 frame:0
          TX packets:2376 errors:0 dropped:0 overruns:0 carrier:0
          collisions:0 txqueuelen:100 
          RX bytes:4591019 (4.3 Mb)  TX bytes:162972 (159.1 Kb)
          Interrupt:11 Base address:0x700

USB works fine as well as I used my MindStor unit on the laptop as well as 
I have described on http://hvdkooij.xs4all.nl/linux-mindstor.cms

Feel free to add this information to your page.

Regards,
Hugo.





Subject: Re: Linux on the Compaq Armada E500
   Date: Sun, 25 Aug 2002 21:22:41 +0200 (CEST)
   From: Hugo van der Kooij <hvdkooij@vanderkooij.org>
     



Another addition:

I use a Belkin KVM switch (Keyboard, Video, Mouse) and found that all 
computers can start up unattended. But the E500 needs to have the proper 
port selected on the KVM switch or both keyboard and mouse input gets 
completely garbled. In effect any mouse movement causes kaycodes to 
appear.

This is still the case with the docking station in use. (which I find a 
bit odd.)

If I have any update on the issue I will let you know. Should someone 
report a fix I would love to get a message.

Tested with various 2.4 kernels as shipped with red Hat Linux 7.2 or 7.3 
or any of the errata updates.

Hugo.





Subject: ACPI & APM Nachtrag
   Date: Mon, 30 Sep 2002 17:02:21 +0200
   From: Markus Schell <markus.schell@stadt.bamberg.de>
     

Hallo Frank

habe noch ein paar Infos wegen der 8.1er SuSE.

Die Batterieueberwachung im KDE geht, wenn man ACPI ausschaltet.
Ist mittels eines Eintrages im GRUB möglich: ACPI=OFF als Parameter mit 
angeben.

SuSE verwendet nuerdings ACPI statt APM. Das KLaptop-Tool kann derzeit aber 
anscheinend nur mit APM. Ich bin mir auch nicht sicher, ob das Notebook E500 
ACPI für Monitoring unterstützt unterstützt.


M.Schell





Subject: aramda E500 and X 3D acc.
   Date: Mon, 18 Nov 2002 20:47:43 +0100 (CET)
   From: Djamel Ouerdane <ouerdane@nbi.dk>
     


Hello,

I've just skimmed your webpage with some cool info about the laptop I own 
myself. Great site :)

but you should mention that there is definitely some 3D acceleration for
the 3D Rage Pro. Leif Delgass is the maintainer of this driver and it
works great (well, if you don't demand too much from the chipset :). I can
play Quake 2 and 3, tuxracer and other stuff in 800x600 resolution,
Mplayer uses the gl2 vo driver like a charm (although the gatos xv overlay
is enough but Leif has merged the gatos and the DRI drivers) , etc so long
as you set the color depth to 16 (24 is too much).

Take a look at his web page :

 http://www.retinalburn.net/linux/index.html


If you already know about it, al right all right :)

Ciao
Djam





Subject: Re: aramda E500 and X 3D acc.
   Date: Tue, 19 Nov 2002 18:13:02 +0100 (CET)
   From: Djamel Ouerdane <ouerdane@nbi.dk>
     



Ciao Frank,

You're welcome.

Just a few details : I haven't tried to compile the whole DRI tree for the
mach64, I just picked up the binaries from Leif's homepage and installed
them on my system (I run linux redhat 7.2, with a 2.4.18 patched kernel -
patched for low latency but it's not so important here). I set the
driver's options in XF86Config-4 to an asynchronous DMA mode, an AGP size
of 64 or 32, I don't remember (I have 128 MB of RAM). I reset the color
depth to 16 and added lower screen resolutions (800x600 and 640xdont
remember). I set up the mtrr to the right adresses in rc.local (at boot
time, it's done wrong and X warns about it although it doesn't have any
harm on running X but setting up the mtrr right boosts your system for
e.g. video playback -> DVDs play really cool! without it, it's not so
cool...check /var/log/XFree86.n.log with n being the screen number that 
is active, generally 0, and check for the string "write combining")

I don't know about the stuff running with Xfree86 < 4.2.0. Another thing 
is the latest binaries from retinalburn are compiled with glibc 2.3. It 
won't work if you still use glibc 2.1 but Leif has some binaries for this 
glibc env. too

I'm not a specialist of all these things but got some recipes from the web 
and was lucky enough to make it work without problems (meaning that our 
machines and linux are cool :)

Tschüss :)
Djam




Subject: Compaq E500
   Date: Tue, 11 Mar 2003 23:26:54 +0000
   From: Dirk Engels <dirk@dew.nl>
     

Hi

I read your website about linux on the compaq e500. It was of much use. At the 
moment I am trying to install my TV on my laptop as a secondary screen (for 
movies etc, while I am programming). On your page it says it only works when 
your tv is connected while you boot. But you can activate the tv-out while 
running with a program called atitvout. It can be found of freshmeat 
ofcourse:

http://freshmeat.net/redir/atitvout/20920/url_homepage/atitvout

I hoped I helped a little.

-- 
Dirk Engels
Dirk Engels Webdesign
dirk@dew.nl






Subject: armada e500 hd
   Date: Thu, 3 Apr 2003 11:03:09 +0200
   From: Thomas Kuster <thomas@fam-kuster.ch>
     

hallo

danke für die seite:
http://www.informatik.uni-kiel.de/~fst/linux/description.html
hab auch so ein ding (zuerst suse 7.0, dann mdk8.2 nun debian sid).

zu:
"Peter Fittschen told me, that there is an OEM harddisk bracket with Compaq 
interface, so that you can plugin any laptop harddisk into the E500. Take a 
look at http://toscha_vertrieb.bei.t-online.de/5_2.htm for german users, and 
at for US. "

das stimmt nicht ganz ich habe eine grössere hd eingebaut und wollte die alte 
im multibay weiternutzen, jedoch nicht eine compaq-hd kaufen (da extrem 
teuer), sondern nur den adapter. den adapter alleine kriegt man nicht (wird 
extrem teuer von supportleuten verkauft). es geht jedoch auch ohne und erst 
noch besser. neue hd kaufen den adapter von der alten hd entfernen, sind 
extrem kleine torks schrauben, hatte keinen so kleine torks schraubedreher, 
also habe ich mit einer säge einen schlitz in die schraube gemacht und die 
schraube herausgedreht. die alte hd in ein externes pcmcia-gehäuse und die 
neu an den adapter und in den laptop (drivelock zuerst deaktivieren).

gruss
thomas
fam-kuster.ch