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Stuff from: Debbie Criggie Daniel Luke Katherine Gladys

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The short of it is, the Compaq Presario 900 is a piece of shit and shouldn't have been sold. The same goes for almost any Compaq bearing the name "Presario" whether its a desktop or a laptop.


Click for 330 Kbyte image

Links

Redhat Linux on the Presario 900US

Debian Linux on the Presario 905EA

Redhat Linux on the Presario 900US

Mandrake Linux on the Presario 920EA

Linux on the Presario 900US

Linux on the Presario 900US

Linux on the Presario Mailing List

This is the hardware

More details might be added over time. Any queries - email me from this mailer page

Installation

I'm installing Debian Stable (woody) from a net install. Firstly, boot with pci=off to stop reboots when the southbridge chip is touched.

It seems that I can't get PCMCIA to work, so I can't install over either of my PCMCIA cards, and the on-board Realtek card is not working at this point - either the module is not available, or the kernel doesn't contain this module. Bugger.

So now I'm groaning about having to download and install 20 floppy disks worth of base image. You see - my normal method of installing is to boot with a boot/root pair, and three or four driver disks, then to install the rest over a net connection. Kinda hard with no net connection. 

for i = 1 to 20
    dd if=base-$i.bin of=/dev/fd0 bs=65536
    floppyeject
    put floppy in laptop and press enter
    if (random() > 0.5) then
        curse("dead disk")
	i--
    endif
next

Right - 20 sucessful disks and 50+ dead ones later I think the floppy drive is either dodgy, or simply excessively picky. I've installed the complete base system, and the next step is to get a better kernel in there. The only ethernet device detected is the infra-red port irlan0 and I don't have anything to talk to it. So, I'm going to wget the various deb packages on my main linux box, then boot winXP on the laptop and copy the files across.

For some reason, my NE2000 PCMCIA card worked just once. I dunno why, and of course I can't seem to make it go again. Bugger!

Suck! On the first reboot using 2.4.18-bf24 I get this: 

CPU 0: Machine Check Exception: 000000000000007
Bank 3: b40000000000083b at 34000000000083b
Kernel panic: Unable to continue

So reboot again and try it with the boot parameters nomce nopci pci=off ide=nodma. This lets me complete the installation of debian. Yay!

However, having no PCI means no PCMCIA, so I've booted winXP and downloaded all the compilation packages (gcc, make, bin86, bunzip, tar, etc) and a kernel source tarball to a shared drive. After a few boots back and forth to get various things I'd forgotten

Compiling 2.4.22 went BLOODY quick! 10 min 0.26 seconds, at 91.2% CPU usage. Puts my old P166 to shame!

Still having problems part-way through startup. It turns out the USB controller is screwing around, so recompile the kernel with NO USB support, and suddenly I can access PCMCIA and the network! YAY!

Specifics about... Specific things (huh?)

Audio

The JBL speakers are astonishingly good for a laptop, but they're still poor. The headphone socket is round the back, and Koss make excellent earphones.

USB

Universal Serial Bus controller has two ports around the rear by the fan, but they're vertical, so its easy to try and plug in the wrong way around.

I bought a USB light, so I can geek at night. No drivers are needed, all the light needs is power.

Output of lspci 

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device cab0 (rev 13)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc U1/A3 AGP Bridge [IGP 320M] (rev 01)
00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
00:08.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
00:0b.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 20)
00:0c.0 Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k HSFi Modem (rev 01)
00:0f.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 PMU
00:13.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility U1

Output of lsmod in 2.4.18-bf2.4

Module                  Size  Used by
Module                  Size  Used by    Not tainted
pcnet_cs               12676   1 
8390                    5888   0  [pcnet_cs]
ds                      6624   1  [pcnet_cs]
i82365                 22384   1 
pcmcia_core            41376   0  [pcnet_cs ds i82365]
nls_cp437               4384   4  (autoclean)
microcode               2812   0  (unused)
apm                     9116   0  (unused)
cpuid                   1184   0  (unused)
msr                     1376   0  (unused)
ntfs                   48512   0  (unused)
ircomm-tty             30016   0  (unused)
ircomm                 13148   0  [ircomm-tty]
parport_pc             25672   0 
parport                21696   0  [parport_pc]
irport                  6696   0  (unused)
irtty                   7424   0  (unused)
irda                  138764   0  [ircomm-tty ircomm irport irtty]
orinoco                29568   0  (unused)
hermes                  3296   0  [orinoco]
mousedev                3744   0  (unused)
raw1394                 6352   0  (unused)
usbkbd                  2848   0  (unused)
keybdev                 1664   0  (unused)
hid                    18784   0  (unused)
input                   3040   0  [mousedev usbkbd keybdev hid]
usbcore                48000   0  [usbkbd hid]
ieee1394               23496   0  [raw1394]
radeon                 92440   0  (unused)

/proc/cpuinfo 

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 6
model           : 8
model name      : Mobile AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1500+
stepping        : 0
cpu MHz         : 1325.091
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips        : 2641.10

/proc/fb 

0 VESA VGA
1 VGA16 VGA

Output from fbset 

mode "1024x768-76"
    # D: 78.653 MHz, H: 59.949 kHz, V: 75.694 Hz
    geometry 1024 768 1024 768 24
    timings 12714 128 32 16 4 128 4
    rgba 8/16,8/8,8/0,0/0
endmode

/proc/mtrr 

reg00: base=0x00000000 (   0MB), size=  64MB: write-back, count=1
reg01: base=0x04000000 (  64MB), size=  32MB: write-back, count=1
reg02: base=0x06000000 (  96MB), size=  16MB: write-back, count=1

/proc/pci 

PCI devices found:
  Bus  0, device   0, function  0:
    Host bridge: PCI device 1002:cab0 (ATI Technologies Inc) (rev 19).
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.  
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf8000000 [0xfbffffff].
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4400000 [0xf4400fff].
      I/O at 0x8090 [0x8093].
  Bus  0, device   1, function  0:
    PCI bridge: PCI device 1002:700f (ATI Technologies Inc) (rev 1).
      Master Capable.  Latency=99.  Min Gnt=12.
  Bus  0, device   2, function  0:
    USB Controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5237 USB (rev 3).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.  Max Lat=80.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4014000 [0xf4014fff].
  Bus  0, device  15, function  0:
    USB Controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5237 USB (#2) (rev 3).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.  Max Lat=80.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4016000 [0xf4016fff].
  Bus  0, device   7, function  0:
    ISA bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV] (rev 0).
  Bus  0, device   8, function  0:
    Multimedia audio controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5451 PCI South Bridge Audio (rev 2).
      IRQ 5.
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.  Min Gnt=2.Max Lat=24.
      I/O at 0x8400 [0x84ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4015000 [0xf4015fff].
  Bus  0, device  10, function  0:
    CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 2).
      IRQ 10.
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=192.Max Lat=7.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0x10000000 [0x10000fff].
  Bus  0, device  11, function  0:
    Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139 (rev 32).
      IRQ 11.
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.  Min Gnt=32.Max Lat=64.
      I/O at 0x8800 [0x88ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4017800 [0xf40178ff].
  Bus  0, device  12, function  0:
    Communication controller: Conexant HSF 56k HSFi Modem (rev 1).
      IRQ 10.
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.  
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4000000 [0xf400ffff].
      I/O at 0x8098 [0x809f].
  Bus  0, device  16, function  0:
    IDE interface: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5229 IDE (rev 196).
      Master Capable.  Latency=32.  Min Gnt=2.Max Lat=4.
      I/O at 0x8080 [0x808f].
  Bus  0, device  17, function  0:
    Bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M7101 PMU (rev 0).
  Bus  0, device  19, function  0:
    FireWire (IEEE 1394): PCI device 104c:8023 (Texas Instruments) (rev 0).
      IRQ 10.
      Master Capable.  Latency=64.  Min Gnt=2.Max Lat=4.
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4017000 [0xf40177ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4010000 [0xf4013fff].
  Bus  1, device   5, function  0:
    VGA compatible controller: PCI device 1002:4336 (ATI Technologies Inc) (rev 0).
      IRQ 10.
      Master Capable.  Latency=66.  Min Gnt=8.
      Prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf6000000 [0xf7ffffff].
      I/O at 0x9000 [0x90ff].
      Non-prefetchable 32 bit memory at 0xf4100000 [0xf410ffff].

/etc/X11/XF86-Config

Its an ATI Raedon Mobility U1, look here for more 
http://www.wsu.edu/~ice124/

Output of dmesg

This is the output of dmesg from the Debian-packaged version of kernel 2.4.18 

Linux version 2.4.18-bf2.4 (root@zombie) (gcc version 2.95.4 20011002 (Debian prerelease)) #1 Son Apr 14 09:53:28 CEST 2002
BIOS-provided physical RAM map:
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000000000 - 000000000009e800 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 000000000009e800 - 00000000000a0000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000000d0000 - 0000000000100000 (reserved)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000000100000 - 0000000006ef0000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000006ef0000 - 0000000006eff000 (ACPI data)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000006eff000 - 0000000006f00000 (ACPI NVS)
 BIOS-e820: 0000000006f00000 - 0000000007000000 (usable)
 BIOS-e820: 00000000fff80000 - 0000000100000000 (reserved)
On node 0 totalpages: 28672
zone(0): 4096 pages.
zone(1): 24576 pages.
zone(2): 0 pages.
Local APIC disabled by BIOS -- reenabling.
Found and enabled local APIC!
Kernel command line: auto BOOT_IMAGE=l2418bf24 ro root=303 nomce video=raedonfb:mode:1024x768,cmode:32
Initializing CPU#0
Detected 1325.091 MHz processor.
Console: colour dummy device 80x25
Calibrating delay loop... 2641.10 BogoMIPS
Memory: 109488k/114688k available (1783k kernel code, 4744k reserved, 549k data, 280k init, 0k highmem)
Dentry-cache hash table entries: 16384 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
Inode-cache hash table entries: 8192 (order: 4, 65536 bytes)
Mount-cache hash table entries: 2048 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Buffer-cache hash table entries: 4096 (order: 2, 16384 bytes)
Page-cache hash table entries: 32768 (order: 5, 131072 bytes)
CPU: Before vendor init, caps: 0383fbff c1cbfbff 00000000, vendor = 2
CPU: L1 I Cache: 64K (64 bytes/line), D cache 64K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: L2 Cache: 256K (64 bytes/line)
CPU: After vendor init, caps: 0383fbff c1cbfbff 00000000 00000000
CPU:     After generic, caps: 0383fbff c1cbfbff 00000000 00000000
CPU:             Common caps: 0383fbff c1cbfbff 00000000 00000000
CPU: AMD Mobile AMD Athlon(tm) XP 1500+ stepping 00
Enabling fast FPU save and restore... done.
Enabling unmasked SIMD FPU exception support... done.
Checking 'hlt' instruction... OK.
Checking for popad bug... OK.
POSIX conformance testing by UNIFIX
enabled ExtINT on CPU#0
ESR value before enabling vector: 00000000
ESR value after enabling vector: 00000000
Using local APIC timer interrupts.
calibrating APIC timer ...
..... CPU clock speed is 1325.2275 MHz.
..... host bus clock speed is 265.0454 MHz.
cpu: 0, clocks: 2650454, slice: 1325227
CPU0
mtrr: v1.40 (20010327) Richard Gooch (rgooch@atnf.csiro.au)
mtrr: detected mtrr type: Intel
PCI: PCI BIOS revision 2.10 entry at 0xfd87e, last bus=1
PCI: Using configuration type 1
PCI: Probing PCI hardware
PCI: Using IRQ router ALI [10b9/1533] at 00:07.0
Linux NET4.0 for Linux 2.4
Based upon Swansea University Computer Society NET3.039
Initializing RT netlink socket
Starting kswapd
VFS: Diskquotas version dquot_6.4.0 initialized
Journalled Block Device driver loaded
vesafb: framebuffer at 0xf6000000, mapped to 0xc781a000, size 16320k
vesafb: mode is 1024x768x24, linelength=3072, pages=6
vesafb: protected mode interface info at c000:5141
vesafb: scrolling: redraw
vesafb: directcolor: size=0:8:8:8, shift=0:16:8:0
Console: switching to colour frame buffer device 128x48
fb0: VESA VGA frame buffer device
vga16fb: initializing
vga16fb: mapped to 0xc00a0000
fb1: VGA16 VGA frame buffer device
pty: 256 Unix98 ptys configured
Serial driver version 5.05c (2001-07-08) with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI enabled
ttyS01 at 0x02f8 (irq = 3) is a 16550A
Real Time Clock Driver v1.10e
block: 128 slots per queue, batch=32
RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 4096K size 1024 blocksize
Uniform Multi-Platform E-IDE driver Revision: 6.31
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
ALI15X3: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 80
PCI: No IRQ known for interrupt pin A of device 00:10.0. Please try using pci=biosirq.
ALI15X3: chipset revision 196
ALI15X3: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0x8080-0x8087, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0x8088-0x808f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
hda: FUJITSU MHR2020AT, ATA DISK drive
ide: Assuming 33MHz system bus speed for PIO modes; override with idebus=xx
hdc: Compaq CRN-8245B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 39070080 sectors (20004 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=2432/255/63, UDMA(33)
hdc: ATAPI 24X CD-ROM drive, 128kB Cache, DMA
Uniform CD-ROM driver Revision: 3.12
ide-floppy driver 0.97.sv
Partition check:
 hda: hda1 hda2 hda3 hda4 < hda5 >
Floppy drive(s): fd0 is 1.44M
FDC 0 is a post-1991 82077
Loading I2O Core - (c) Copyright 1999 Red Hat Software
I2O configuration manager v 0.04.
  (C) Copyright 1999 Red Hat Software
loop: loaded (max 8 devices)
Compaq CISS Driver (v 2.4.5)
8139cp 10/100 PCI Ethernet driver v0.0.6 (Nov 19, 2001)
PCI: Assigned IRQ 11 for device 00:0b.0
IRQ routing conflict for 00:0c.0, have irq 10, want irq 11
IRQ routing conflict for 00:13.0, have irq 10, want irq 11
IRQ routing conflict for 01:05.0, have irq 10, want irq 11
eth0: RTL-8139C+ at 0xc880b800, 00:08:02:9e:a2:aa, IRQ 11
eth0: PCI cache line size set incorrectly (64 bytes) by BIOS/FW, expecting 16
HDLC support module revision 1.02 for Linux 2.4
Cronyx Ltd, Synchronous PPP and CISCO HDLC (c) 1994
Linux port (c) 1998 Building Number Three Ltd & Jan "Yenya" Kasprzak.
ide-floppy driver 0.97.sv
Promise Fasttrak(tm) Softwareraid driver 0.03beta: No raid array found
Highpoint HPT370 Softwareraid driver for linux version 0.01
No raid array found
SCSI subsystem driver Revision: 1.00
Red Hat/Adaptec aacraid driver, Apr 14 2002
DC390: 0 adapters found
spurious 8259A interrupt: IRQ7.
3ware Storage Controller device driver for Linux v1.02.00.016.
3w-xxxx: No cards with valid units found.
request_module[scsi_hostadapter]: Root fs not mounted
request_module[scsi_hostadapter]: Root fs not mounted
i2o_scsi.c: Version 0.0.1
  chain_pool: 0 bytes @ c11c5ee0
  (512 byte buffers X 4 can_queue X 0 i2o controllers)
NET4: Linux TCP/IP 1.0 for NET4.0
IP Protocols: ICMP, UDP, TCP, IGMP
IP: routing cache hash table of 512 buckets, 4Kbytes
TCP: Hash tables configured (established 8192 bind 8192)
NET4: Unix domain sockets 1.0/SMP for Linux NET4.0.
EXT3-fs: INFO: recovery required on readonly filesystem.
EXT3-fs: write access will be enabled during recovery.
kjournald starting.  Commit interval 5 seconds
EXT3-fs: ide0(3,3): orphan cleanup on readonly fs
ext3_orphan_cleanup: deleting unreferenced inode 321058
EXT3-fs: ide0(3,3): 13 orphan inodes deleted
EXT3-fs: recovery complete.
EXT3-fs: mounted filesystem with ordered data mode.
VFS: Mounted root (ext3 filesystem) readonly.
Freeing unused kernel memory: 280k freed
Adding Swap: 136544k swap-space (priority -1)
EXT3 FS 2.4-0.9.17, 10 Jan 2002 on ide0(3,3), internal journal
[drm] Initialized radeon 1.1.1 20010405 on minor 0
usb.c: registered new driver usbdevfs
usb.c: registered new driver hub
usb.c: registered new driver hiddev
usb.c: registered new driver hid
hid-core.c: v1.8 Andreas Gal, Vojtech Pavlik 
hid-core.c: USB HID support drivers
usb.c: registered new driver keyboard
usbkbd.c: :USB HID Boot Protocol keyboard driver
raw1394: /dev/raw1394 device initialized
mice: PS/2 mouse device common for all mice
hermes.c: 16 Jan 2002 David Gibson 
orinoco.c 0.09b (David Gibson  and others)
irda_init()
parport0: PC-style at 0x378 (0x778) [PCSPP,TRISTATE]
parport0: irq 7 detected
IrCOMM protocol (Dag Brattli)
NTFS driver v1.1.22 [Flags: R/O MODULE]
apm: BIOS version 1.2 Flags 0x03 (Driver version 1.16)
IA-32 Microcode Update Driver: v1.09 
Linux PCMCIA Card Services 3.1.33
  kernel build: 2.4.18-bf2.4 unknown
  options:  [pci] [cardbus] [apm]
Intel ISA/PCI/CardBus PCIC probe:
PCI: Enabling device 00:0a.0 (0000 -> 0002)
PCI: Assigned IRQ 10 for device 00:0a.0
  TI 1410 rev 02 PCI-to-CardBus at slot 00:0a, mem 0x10000000
    host opts [0]: [ring] [pci + serial irq] [pci irq 10] [lat 32/176] [bus 2/5]
    PCI irq 10 test failed
    ISA irqs (scanned) = 9 polling interval = 1000 ms
cs: memory probe 0xa0000000-0xa0ffffff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0100-0x04ff: excluding 0x200-0x207 0x3b8-0x3df 0x408-0x40f 0x480-0x48f 0x4d0-0x4d7
cs: IO port probe 0x0208-0x03b7: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x03e0-0x0407: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0410-0x047f: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0490-0x04cf: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x04d8-0x04ff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0800-0x08ff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0a00-0x0aff: clean.
cs: IO port probe 0x0c00-0x0cff: clean.
eth1: NE2000 (DL10022 rev 05): io 0x300, irq 9, hw_addr 00:E0:98:33:38:C2
eth1: found link beat
eth1: autonegotiation complete: 100baseT-HD selected
VFS: Disk change detected on device fd(2,0)

Compaq Part Numbers related to this machine

Some of these are international part numbers, some will be localised. If you know more email me!

More details will be added over time. Any queries - email me from this mailer page

This file last modified Friday July 14, 2017

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Part # Description
PP2140 Base Laptop (NZ model)
285546-001 or 239427-001 PSU (NZ model) 18.5V at 3.5A