Linux on a Compaq Presario 700EA

Things that work:

Introduction

If you already bought this laptop thinking in linux, you made a bad move, if you are thinking on buying one, think again! I'm not saying that this is a bad laptop, not at all, the presario 700 is a nice laptop, but it was made with winblowsXP in mind.

Specifications:

Here is the output of lspcidrake:

unknown : VIA Technologies|VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133]
unknown : VIA Technologies|VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133 AGP]
unknown : VIA Technologies|VT82C686 [Apollo Super]
unknown : VIA Technologies|VT82C586 IDE [Apollo]
usb-uhci : VIA Technologies|VT82C586B USB
unknown : VIA Technologies|VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI]
via82cxxx_audio : VIA Technologies|VT82C686 [Apollo Super AC97/Audio]
unknown : unknown (14f1/2f00/ffff/ffff)
unknown : Texas Instruments|PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller
8139too : Realtek|RTL-8139
unknown : unknown (5333/8d02/ffff/ffff)
unknown : Virtual|Hub

Preliminaries

I used Partition Magic7.0 to resize the default ntfs XP partition, don't use anything else or you can run the risk of ruin your existing data. Then you can make the partitions for linux at your own taste. I instaled Mandrake 8.1, but the problems found aren't related to distribution issues. You can use whatever you want.

X / Video

The video board is a (nice) S3 Savage 4, on a the AGP bus. It works with the S3 driver of X4.1, but the driver has some problems, use the driver that you can find at via's site. 

You can find here my XF86Config-4

The screen is 1024x768 pixels, use only 24bits. Tv-out works fine (use the tool that came with the s3 driver).

UPDATE: If you are using X4.2 you don't need the driver from via's site, the one included works fine.

Sound

Major problems here! The card is an integrated via Apollo Super AC97/Audio. Mandrake configures the card for use with the oss kernel module, the module loads fine, everything seems to work fine,but no sound....
Then i tried ALSA, no luck again, everything loads fine, but no sound!
Tried with the OSS drivers, the same thing again.
This seems a mixer problem, with the kernel driver i can hear a faint sound. If someone find a way of making the sound work please let me know.
UPDATE:
Finally i can hear some sound! Last week David Gardner sent me a email with a patch that he found in usenet. Here goes a copy of that mail, just follow the instructions in the mail and you will have sound working!

UPDATE: Tue Apr 23 22:50:12 WEST 2002
I received many mails of people that didn't know what to do to make sound work, even with my howto, so here goes an extra help:
What do you need:
-Nothing special.

HowTo:  UPDATE: 22/06/2002
-Copy this file to /usr/src/linux/drivers/sound/ and recompile your kernel. In here you can find my kernel configuration (mandrake 8.2 kernel) for those who don't  have experience building the kernel. There are many howto's that explain how to compile your kernel, if you need one just do a search on the net.
NOTE: i'm using reiserFS for the root filesystem, so, if you use my kernel configuration choose carefully the filesystem modules or your kernel will not boot.

Network Card

The card is an integrated Realtek RTL-8139, it uses the 8139too module. Worked out of the box with Mandrake.

PCMCIA

I don't have a pcmcia card to test, but this shouldn't be a problem

Advanced Power Management (APM)

This is stupid. There isn't any APM. I'm sure there was a good rea$on for not using APM, but with the poorly supported ACPI, you won't be able to check your batery status as of now. The kernel doesn't support the Speedstep technology also, so the CPU run's hot all the time Wait for kernel updates.

UPDATE: i already have acpi working, well, at least i can see the battery status, but power managment is still poor. When i have some free time i will put online some notes about acpi.

LILO

This laptop has some kind of problem with the pnp (aka plug and pray) bios that won't let the kernel boot, at least the stock mandrake kernel. If you have this problem when lilo comes up press Esc, then type linux nobiospnp. You can add this later to your /etc/lilo.conf

Update: There is some kind of problem with the stock kernel of mandrake 8.2 that won't let the laptop reboot properly, i don't know the real problem, but i do know that if you use a kernel compiled with my options the laptop reboots fine. Be carefull with the filesystem modules!!!!

Modem

The modem is a Conexant, works fine. You can download the drivers here.
Don't forget that you have to initialize the modem with this string: AT&F
I use kppp, open it, setup > Modem > Modem commands > replace the ATZ with the string above.

Last updated: Sat Jun 22 23:14:40 WEST 2002
If you need help contact me.

Written by Francisco Castanheiro.