Linux on a Compaq Presario 1711T

Quick summary

Everything works, except power management, which works only partly.

Hardware specifications

My Compaq 1711T came with a 1GHz PIII processor, a 1400x1050 display, 2x64MB main memory (133MHz) and a 20 GB (18.5, really) hard disk. I've since upgraded the RAM to 2x256MB bought from a third party (Compaq's RAM is outrageously expensive).


Component	Particulars	PCI id	works?
Mouse area	Synaptics touchpad + "4 way scroll button" v5.8	-	yes (99%)
Keyboard	105 keys + 6 "internet keys"	-	yes (95%)
Hard disk	20 GB, IDE	8086:248a	yes
Display/Video	1400x1050x24bit /ATI Radeon M6 LY 8MB	1002:4c59	yes
Video output	15 pin VGA and S-Video	-	yes/untested
DVD/Floppy	Sharing a single "Future bay" socket		yes (90%)
Power saving	ACPI	-	no (25%)
Ethernet	Intel	8086:1031	yes
Modem	Conexant HSF winmodem	14f1:2f00	yes
Sound	Intel i810	8086:2485	yes
USB	Intel	8086:2482 8086:2484	yes
Firewire/1394	Texas Instruments	104c:8023	untested
PCMCIA	Texas Instruments PCI1410		yes
SMBus	Intel ICH3	8086:2483	unknown

Software

Kernel: Linux 2.4.17-rc2
X server: XFree86 4.1.0
Distro: RedHat 7.2

Procedure

First blundering steps

My machine came with a three disk "System recovery" set, so I fearlessly plunged ahead and wiped of the Windows XP partition and installed Linux. That was a very bad idea, because it turned out that that the recovery tool (1) completely wiped off the entire hard disk, linux partitions and all, and (2) did not overwrite the MBR, so the computer became unusable. I used an old version of Windows 98 to get an MBR that Micros*ft would understand, and reinstalled Windows XP. Then, I resized the partition to 4 GB using Partition Magic, and proceeded with Linux installation. Afterwards, I used dd to copy the entire Windows XP partition to a file which I wrote to DVD. That way, I'll never have to use the Compaq recovery tool again, should Windows XP decide to crash irrecoverably in the future.

First steps to success

Since I've used RedHat installations in the lab for some time, I decided to try my luck with RH 7.2. It works quite well. My only gripe with this distribution is that it does not ship with my favorite X11 window manager, fvwm2, so I had to grab that from its webpage.
I used fdisk to setup the following partition table:


Device	Boot	Start	End	ID	Use
/dev/hda1	*	1	510	7	Win XP (ntfs)
/dev/hda2		511	2432	5	extended
/dev/hda5	*	511	1020	82	Linux `/'
/dev/hda6		1021	1086	82	Linux swap
/dev/hda7		1087	1341	b	Windows FAT32
/dev/hda8		1342	2432	83	Linux `/data'

The FAT32 partition will serve to communicate between the Linux world and the Windows XP world, because Linux cannot (reliably) write ntfs, and Windows still flatly refuses to acknowledge the existance of any other operating systems.
RedHat 7.2 ships with linux kernel 2.4.7, but I installed 2.4.17-rc2 instead, to experiment with power management (see below). I use GRUB to boot both operating systems. It works with RedHat's autodetected settings .

Mouse area

Basic usage works by choosing "generic PS/2" mouse in X, including tap to click and tap to drag. The edge scroll and corner click do not. Or rather, I have no idea how to program them.
I rather dislike the clunky mouse buttons, so I set up the right "Ins" and "Alt" keys to mimic middle and right mouse buttons. This was achieved by the following lines in ".Xmodmap":

clear mod1
add mod1 = Alt_L
keycode 106 = Pointer_Button2
keycode 113 = Pointer_Button3
keycode 78 = Insert Pointer_EnableKeys

This also reconfigures the "Scr Lk" (but not the "Num Lk") key to act as "Insert". By pressing Shift + ScrLk, the "mouse button" keys are activated. The effect lasts until the end of the X session, or until Shift + ScrLk is pressed again. Insert these lines into your .xinitrc or equivalent to get the desired auto-repeat behavior:

xset -r 106
xset -r 117

Update: Gpm supports the Synaptics touchpad rather well! It supports corner clicks and even the 4-way scroll button. It has great velocity control based on pressure (i.e. contact area). To make it understand the 4-way scroll button, I had to hack it to enter "wmode" on startup . [See the Synaptics website for excellent detailed documentation about their devices.] With this, the above trick to convert "Ins" and "Alt" to mouse buttons is no longer really needed. Thank you Henry Davies and other gpm programmers.

To use gpm as a mouse source in X, put the following in the InputDevice section of XF86Config-4:

Option "Device" "/dev/gpmdata"
Option "Protocol" "MouseSystems"

I start gpm like this:

/usr/local/sbin/gpm -R msc -t synps2

Now there's one more annoyance: whenever you touch the mouse, the timestamp of /dev/gpmdata is changed, causing the hard disk to spin up. That should really not be necessary, and it can indeed be avoided if you do the following:

Compile "RAM Disk" support into the kernel (or build a module)

Construct a tiny RAM Disk:

dd if=/dev/zero of=dev/ram bs=1k count=64
mke2fs -m0 /dev/ram 64

Mount it (first mkdir /mnt/dev):

mount /dev/ram /mnt/dev

Create a FIFO on it:

mkfifo /mnt/dev/gpmdata

Make gpm use it:

ln -sf /dev/gpmdata /dev/gpmdata

Then start gpm as before.

Overkill? Sure, but hey! It works. I constructed an alternative /etc/rc.d/init.d/gpm to automate all of the above steps.

Keyboard

Again, basic functionality works, out of the box. Even the blue numpad keys work after pressing Fn + NumLk. All "internet zone" keys worked the first time I booted into Linux, but four of them don't anymore. I fear ACPI may have confused them. The volume controls "-" and "+" register as key codes 174 and 176, but the others do not register at all. Not that they are really needed, of course. Wasn't this sort of stuff why terminals got F1..F12 keys, way back when? Whoever decided that those are no good any more and had to be supplanted by extra buttons?

The "F1" through "F12" keys are supposed to have various functions associated with them when pressed together with the "[Fn]" modifier. "[Fn]+F7]" and "[Fn]+F8" work (display brightness down and up). "[Fn]+F3" causes a brief screen flash, but nothing more, and "[Fn]+F4" produces an ACPI "Sleep button pressed" event. "[Fn]+F1", "[Fn]+F2" and "[Fn]+F9" through "[Fn]+F12" don't do anything.

In addition to the mouse hacks above, I turned the right "Menu" key into "Ctrl", and the two "Windows" keys into "Hyper". Also, I changed "Caps Lock" into "Super", because I never use Caps Lock, and like to have many modifier keys to have a separate "namespace" for XEmacs and window manager shortcuts. Here's my .Xmodmap . I like fast auto-repeat, so I inserted this into my .xinitrc:

xset r rate 200 50

Did I say how wonderfully responsive this keyboard is? The only thing I don't like about it, is the layout of its bottom row:

[Fn] Ctrl Win Alt \| [Space] Ins Alt [Win] [Menu]

By reprogramming it as above, most of the trouble goes away, but I can't seem to reprogram the "\|" key (it generates the same keycode, and raw scan code as its twin just below the backspace key), and I find it very hard to use a left "Ctrl" key which is not at the extreme end of the row. Of course, [Fn] doesn't even register as a keycode, so there's no chance of moving it about.

Hard disk

To make the harddisk work a bit faster and spin down after a minute, I use

hdparm -c1 -d1 -X68 -S12 /dev/hda

With these settings, hdparm -tT reports 200 MB/s cache read and 16-20 MB/s disk read.

Warning: hdparm may cause system crashes. Read the man page before use.

Display/Video

The ATI Radeon card works almost out of the box using XFree86 4.1.0's "radeon" driver. Just add the line

VideoRam 8192

to the "Device" section. Please be careful when copying my XF86Config-4 file: They say it is easy to permanently damage monitors with incorrect settings.

Video output

It works, but is not configurable. Without acpi installed pressing Fn+F3 freezes the computer. With acpi installed, Fn+F3 makes the display flash briefly, but otherwise doesn't do much. My standard 1400x1050 display works reasonably well on my 19" monitor, except that the 60 Hz refresh rate is not exactly pretty, and that the top 10 pixels or so are distinctly ugly. I could probably fix that by fooling around with the XF86Config file, but it isn't worth my time right now. Interestingly, in MS Windows, choosing an 800x600 display and connecting an LCD projector gave some esthetic problems as well: the leftmost 50 pixels or so were cut off. I'm sure this can be tweaked by changing the modelines in XF86Config, but I haven't spent the time yet.

Ethernet card

Worked straight out of the box without any tweaking using the eepro100 module with manual host configuration. I experienced problems with DHCP, which I initially ascribed to conflicts with ACPI. Several other people have experienced the same problems, though, and they are not, in fact, ACPI related. See www.rsmasters.com/linux/laptop for the solution, which I haven't myself used, because with a manually configured connection, everything works fine even without that fix.

Modem

My particular computer came with an HSF winmodem. I've read that some models come with HCF modems instead, which is unfortunate, because no Linux driver exists for those at the moment. The HSF works fine though, using Conexant 's "hsflinmodem" driver. I'm using version 4.06.06.01mbsibeta01120400. I got their RPM, which compiles the driver for your kernel upon "rpm -i". It works flawlessly for me.

Sound

The Intel 810 sound card works immediately with modules "soundcore", "ac97_codec" and "i810_audio".

USB

Works flawlessly with all devices tested (a pen drive, a printer, a digital camera and a hard drive). It's slow though: 1.1 standard.

Firewire/1394

Untested. The hardware is recognized by /proc/pci. It uses the same IRQ (9) as the network card. I do not have any Firewire devices, so I won't be testing this any time soon.

PCMCIA card system

Works. (Tested with a wireless modem.)

Future bay

Both the DVD drive and the floppy disk work as advertised, but hot swapping them does not work, even if I rmmod the DVD-associated kernel modules before swapping and insmod the floppy.o module after I've inserted the floppy drive. Fortunately, I rarely use floppies these days...

SMBus system

I have very little idea what this is supposed to do. According to the kernel documentation, SMBus is a subset of the I2C protocol. I suspect it may be used in this computer to communicate with some of the fancy laptoppy features such as the four way scroll button, but I don't have a clue how to program it. It grabs IRQ 5 though, and seems to be happy with it. I'd be interested if you know more than I do.

Power management

This computer uses ACPI rather than APM. That's nice and modern and all that, but not very well supported under Linux. The version of ACPI in kernel 2.4.17 doesn't work with this laptop. However, the latest patch (12/18/'01) from sourceforge compiles and runs fine, and recognizes the battery and AC adapter states, provided the "ospm_ec" module is insmod-ed before the "ospm_battery" module. It tells me whether my battery is charging, full, discharging or critically low, and how many mWh I have left.

Entering sleep mode by echoing "1" to /proc/acpi/sleep freezes the computer. I haven't managed to make the computer power off from software yet, and suspend-to-disk is out of the question. Fortunately, the display shuts off when the case is closed, so a mimimal power saving system does work. With lid closed (that is, backlight switched off), the laptop stays alive for about 3 hours on a full battery. See also my hard disk spin down settings .

I'd be most grateful if anybody could help me get ACPI work a little bit better. Sleep mode would be a welcome feature! Here is the acpidmp output from my ACPI tables, and here are some of the files in /proc/acpi:

ac_adapter/0/status
battery/1/info
battery/1/status
gpe
info
processor/0/info
processor/0/status
sleep

It seems the laptop supports a suspend-to-ram sleep mode (S1) and a suspend-to-disk hibernate mode (S4), but they don't work for me. For experts only, here's /proc/acpi/dsdt.

Update: I was experiencing random crashes in matlab and also in lame. At first I blamed my new memory, but I was able to prove it innocent. So I upgraded to kernel 2.4.18 and acpi-20020225. This seems to have fixed the problem. Sleep mode still doesn't work though.

I wrote a tiny little qt-based program to display battery status. It's currently not very installer friendly, but feel free to give it a try: qacpi-020316.tgz.

Further info

You are no doubt aware of www.linux-laptop.net ? Several other people have installed linux on Compaq Presario 1700 series computers, with various degrees of success depending on their particular hardware configuration. Compaq, in their infinite wisdom, have decided that buyers do not need to know exactly what hardware they are going to get prior to their actual purchase. Still, this is a great laptop, which works quite well under linux, despite Compaq's lack of support.

Last modified by Daniel Wagenaar on Jul 25, 2004.