Installing Slackware 9.1 on a Compaq Presario 1247

Last updated Mar 20 2005

Presario-1247

Hardware Spec.

  Processor        AMD-K6 3D Processor  400MHz
  Chipset          VIA MVP-4
  Sound            VIA 82Cxxx
  Video            Trident CyberBlade/i7d
  Networking       PCMCIA acx100(wifi), atheros(wifi) + USB 0100TX(eth)
  Modem            Lucent v.90 56kbps software modem
  Memory           150mb SDRAM (added)
  HDD              10GB (original was only 4GB)
  Storage          Floppy 1.44 and Toshiba XM-7002B 24x CD-ROM
  Display          13 inch HPA display
  Touchpad         Synaptics PS/2
  


This is a second hand machine, I purchased it mainly for basic internet tasks, wireless networking, the modem is rarely used.
I know it's old but it suits my needs just fine, maybe a new battery would be nice...

Output of lspci:

  00:00.0 Host bridge:               VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8501 [Apollo MVP4] (rev 03)
  00:01.0 PCI bridge:                VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8501 [Apollo MVP4 AGP]
  00:07.0 ISA bridge:                VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super South] (rev 19)
  00:07.1 IDE interface:             VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586/B/686A/B PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
  00:07.2 USB Controller:            VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 0a)
  00:07.4 ISA bridge:                VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI] (rev 20)
  00:09.0 Communication controller:  Lucent Microelectronics 56k WinModem (rev 01)
  00:0a.0 CardBus bridge:            Texas Instruments PCI1211
  01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Trident Microsystems CyberBlade/i7d (rev 5c)
  02:00.0 Network controller:        Texas  Instruments ACX 100 22Mbps Wireless Interface
  02:00.0 Ethernet controller:       Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5212 802.1abg NIC (rev 01)
  

Kernel

I'm running a vanilla 2.6.11.7 kernel, my config can be found here.

Installation

First I partitioned my hard drive.

  Disk:
      /dev/hda
  Partitions:
      /dev/hda1 - 3,4G - ext3 - /
      /dev/hda3 - 3,5G - ext3 - /mnt/storage
      /dev/hda6 - 2,0G - ext3 - /usr/local
      /dev/hda5 - 0,5G - swap - swap space
  

I booted of the first Slackware CD, chosed the bare.i kernel, and walked through the installation, I just did a full install and
afterwards removed packages that I didn't need, yeah I know I am lazy but there is another reason, when I'm in a hurry
it happened before that I overlook something, and since there is no dependency checking in Slackware packaging system
stuff gets broken, and it's a lot bigger hasle to hunt it manualy later.

Configuration

X11:

I had a little truble running X with a 24 bit colour, it rendered everything slowly and drew garbage when resizing windows, I found
a solution in giving the graphic card more memory in BIOS, I set it on 8MB and it worked fine ever since.
You can find my xorg.conf here.
As you can see from it I installed the synaptics touchpad driver, The driver can be found (and the instructions) here,
as for setting it up feel free to copy the config from my xorg.conf (which is setup for touchpad and USB mouse).
One more thing after I setup synaptics suddenly my scroll keys situated below the touchpad worked, no luck yet with the
rest of the Internet Zone, see more about it below.
For quick changes and easy configuration you can also install Qsynaptics.

Sound

It's a VIA82cxxx integrated sound device. I just run alsaconf and was ready in a matter of seconds.
Unfortunately my sound card 'died' after a while, now I carry my mp3 player around, and fill it up
with music from the hard drive.


Networking

This laptop comes without an ethernet card so I bought the USB (since there is only one PCMCIA slot I reserved it for a wireless card)
ethernet adapter from D-Link, it works fine with the pegasus module.


Modem

The laptop comes with an integrated Lucent 56k WinModem, detailed instructions and the drivers can be found here.


APM

With the apm module loaded I get an resonably accurate battery monitor in XFCE (or any other WM for that matter),
power saving features work fine. I can standby - suspend and poweroff the machine,
I noticed an issue when suspending the machine while the PCMCIA card is inserted, this can be patched but
I just unload the wireless card module before doing it (and I suspend it rarely).


ACPI

When I switched to 2.6.* kernel I switched to ACPI also, it works great, and with acpid you can do some neat stuff.
These are the modules I use: battery, button, processor, thermal. You could also install ACPI Client which replicates
the behaviour of the old 'apm' command


i2c / lm_sensors

This is how I set it up, added to rc.local:

      /sbin/rmmod via686a                      # hotplug loads it automaticly, but...:
      /sbin/modprobe via686a force_addr=0x6000 # it was complaining, so I set other location
      /sbin/modprobe i2c-isa
      /sbin/modprobe i2c-dev
      /usr/local/bin/sensors -s                # monitoring tool
  


You can find my /etc/sensors.conf here.
It's nice, I get CPU core voltage, temp, fan speed... ACPI's thermal module gives CPU temp also but what the he.. :-)


Wireless

I purchased a wireless network adapter from D-Link - DWL-650+ that uses a chip from Texas Instruments - acx100.
This chipset is fairly supported under linux, guys over at acx100.sourceforge.net are doing a great job.
It supports monitor mode so I am able to work with kismet, the connection sometimes stays up for days, it's very stable for such a cheap card.


I waited a while for prices to go down on Atheros based cards, then i bought Skyracer Pro 3054 from TOPCOM,
Atheros chips need no introduction... head over to Madwifi project.

Misc

A friend of mine has some fancy laptop with led indicators of network traffic.
So I decided to setup something similar, I installed tleds (read the instructions carefully if installing on a newer kernel).
Basicly it blinks keyboard LEDs (ScrollLock & NumLock) indicating outgoing and incoming network packets on a selected network interface.
I added to rc.local:

      /usr/local/bin/tleds -qcd 150 wlan0
  

Not Working

Currently what doesn't work are the Internet Zone buttons, kernel is not mapping them at all, I didn't find a DSDT for my laptop over at acpi.sourceforge.net/dsdt.
Since I lack of skills to fix it my self it will stay unused, maybe one day...


Pictures


laptop webcam shot


Final Note

I would sugest to put one of these two images instead of that ugly sticker that comes shipped with the laptop:


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