Compaq Evo N400c Laptop

  • Processor: Intel Pentium III (Coppermine) 700MHz

  • Memory: 196 MB

  • Video: ATI 3D Rage (Mach64) 8MB

  • Screen Size: 12"

  • Hard Drive size: 20 GB

  • Ethernet/Modem: Intel Ethernet Pro 100 / Agere LT Winmodem

  • Sound Card: ESS ES188 Maestro 3

  • IBM TrackPoint stick

  • Compaq W200 USB Wireless module

  • Multimedia dock with Floppy and CD-ROM drive

  • Current Value: $250.00

Compaq Evo N600c Laptop

  • Processor: Intel Pentium III Mobile 1GHz

  • Memory: 512 MB

  • Video: ATI Radeon Mobility M6 16MB

  • Screen Size: 14.1"

  • Hard Drive size: 20 GB

  • Ethernet/Modem: Intel Ethernet Pro 100 / Agere LT Winmodem

  • Sound Card: ESS ES188 Maestro 3

  • IBM TrackPoint stick / Synaptics touchpad

  • Current Value: $220.00

I am running Gentoo Linux on both of my newer laptops (the DEC had failed me). I booted each system with a Knoppix LiveCD just to see if there would be any issues encountered. The Knoppix LiveCD booted correctly into the KDE desktop.

Note: when booting with the Gentoo CD make sure you pass the acpi=on option ... or you may encounter overheating problems (like a system shutdown).

The mainstream installation method of Gentoo Linux has changed since I wrote the article on my DEC laptop. I used a Stage 3 install method for the Evo N600c. This gave me a running system in a very short amount of time. As this was to be my main system I emerged all the GUI stuff ... KDE and Gnome ... Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, OpenOffice, lots of network apps, multimedia stuff, eye candy ... etc.

For an older PIII system I was quiet impressed by it's performance in KDE. Application startup time was negligible and even applications such as OpenOffice ran smoothly. Just to test out it's speed I loaded up Chromium (a space shooter game) and it ran without hesitations ... who needs a P4 !!!

When I got the N400c I decided to give the new Gentoo Installer CD a try ... and it failed when starting Gnome. It appears that the Xorg server failed (though the Knoppix LiveCD had no problem starting Xwindows). I then proceeded to install a Stage 3 installation from the good old command line. As this was going to be my scripting/coding machine I only installed the XFCE4 desktop manager ... in case I needed an X Windows application ... I intend to primarily use the console.

For those of you that want to master Linux I suggest you spend a lot of time on the Command Line. This is the place where you will learn how to do everything. The GUI is a nice easy way of doing things but it is only a front end to the CLI commands. My N400c is designed as a non-GUI Linux setup (I only have XFCE just for special apps) ... I surf the web using elinks, read email using pine, edit text using vim or nano (I have not mastered emacs yet), and I write shell/perl scripts to create special apps ... all from the command line.

If you want a good starter book you should pickup "Classic Shell Scripting" published by O'Reilly (actually I could suggest a large number of books from this publisher ... but I won't).

Kernel

  • Gentoo 2.6.17

My usual scheme is to use genkernel to generate a generic build ... just to get a running system. Then I examine all the loaded modules and things that don't work ... I use this information to build a custom kernel

Video / X Windows

Framebuffer

  • N400c used the Mach64 FB

  • N600c used the Radeon FB

Xorg - /etc/make.conf - I did not decide to use the ATI drivers.

  • N400c used VIDEO_CARDS="mach64"

  • N600c used VIDEO_CARDS="radeon"

I had no problem using Xorg -configure with the N600c but this failed on the N400c (I used xorgconfig to generate the xorg.conf file).

Winmodem

  • emerge ltmodem

W200 USB Wireless

With the newer kernel's (2.6.16 or higher) I encountered problems compiling the driver. After googling I discovered that there is a patch to remove some entries in the source that will help it compile ... and I also found a reference to a branch of the Orinoco driver that compiles without modification.

https://svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/orinoco/branches/usb

 ACPI

Make sure to enable this in your kernel. You can then use the ACPI scripts to setup sleep or turning off the LCD. See the Gentoo Doc's for further information.

Enabling the Intel Speedstep on the N400c was a chore. After three days of googling and many kernel rebuilds I figured out the answer. I had to compile the Speedstep 440BX - SMI as a module and enable Relaxed speedstep capability checks. I added the following lines to /etc/modules.autoload.d/kernel-2.6:

  • speedstep-lib relaxed_check=1

  • speedstep-smi

I used cpufrequtils and an ACPI event script to switch between 700MHz and 500MHz when on battery power (ACPI ac_adapter event triggers cpufreq-set) .

Used same technique on the N600c:

  • speedstep-lib

  • speedstep-ich

 

 

Home Up