Running Linux on a Compaq Armada E500

Last update: august 30, 2000

The Compaq Armada is quite a new notebook and you might get some serious trouble if you're installing Linux on it. But no worry, everything will be just fine at the end. According to Compaq it should be possible to run Linux on your E500, but you can't call them for support. But who needs Compaq anyway if your surfin' on the greatest knowledgebase of this planet?

Let's take a look at my Armada E500 and it's software:

Default configuration: Pentium2 processor, running at 400 Mhz
6 GB harddisk space
64 MB internal memory
A Compaq V90 56.6 kb modem
ATI Mobility-P AGP graphics adapter and 14" TFT display
3Com 589d BNC / UTP ethernet adapter

I need Windows'95 for work, we use some windows based mail and office application, so Windows 95 was installed by the Desktop Services department of our company. But that's no problem as you will see in a minute.

Installing Linux

Preparing your notebook

I got a copy of Red Hat Linux 6.1 so the rest of my story is based on this distribution. But the technical details will apply to other distributions as well. The installation started with preparing the system. As Windows'95 was already installed and running I printed all information of the device manager, so I had a very detailed list of all resources. Next I started a defragmentation tool because the next step strongly advices to do so.

Splitting your partition

Splitting my 6 GB partition was easy. All you need is FIPS 2.0 which is located on the Red Hat 6.1 CD-ROM. Although FIPS ends with an error which hang my system, all partition splitting went just fine. FIPS 2.0 can split FAT16 and FAT32 partitions and provides you an option to create a restore disk. FIPS writes partition and boot information on this disk so you can restore the original state if something goes wrong or if you change your mind about the partition sizes. I use 4 GB for Windows and 2 GB for Linux.

Starting the installation

The Armada boots directly from CD so there's no need to create boot disks. This saves some time. The default installation runs in an X session but after a while I ran into troubles. When I came to the point where I had to install and configure X, I ran into serious trouble. You have to select a monitor, but which one? Every listed monitor isn't working. In my cases, sometimes the screen went black or the machine simply died. So I decided to restart the installation in text mode. I installed but did not configure X and the rest went as expected with some minor problems. Linux ran fine, even the installation and configuration of the network adapter didn't require any intervention (provided you have a DHCP network).

The X problem

The problem with many laptop displays is that they use a fixes Hsync frequency, because of the fixed resolution. Some notebooks provide multiple resolutions by reducing the window size. So if you use a 640x480 mode than only about a quarter of the display is used. There are notebooks which stretch this window but the result is awfull. The Armada has a display of 1024x768 pixels and 262,144 colours and I wanted to use the highest possible resolution because this is the most beautiful display.

What went wrong? Red Hat comes with XFree86 3.3.5 which detects the proper videoadapter and selects the correct server (XF86_Mach64). But the monitor section in xf86config, and all the docs, don't mention the display of a Compaq Armada E500. You have to know the exact frequency for Hsync, otherwise your display shows only some lines and filled rectangles. The stupid thing is that you can attact an external monitor and use that for X. You can even switch back to the LCD display and it still works fine, until you go back to console mode. The text display is corrupted.

I decided to update to XFree86 3.3.6. This made the problem only worse. The new X server hang the computer completely. Only a hard power off could get the system back to work. I decided to use the simplest X server: XF86_VGA16 . This worked fine in 640x480. I tried also the XF86_SVGA server. This went wrong, but the messages showed something very interesting, the mark and model of the LCD display itself.

Compaq uses a Samsung LT141X7-122 (14.1" XGA TFT) display. I went to the Samsung Website to search for information and I found some. But not enough. I looked at the other displays, especially the LT151xxxxx. This seems to be an 15" model of the LT141. And Samsung provides datasheets of that display. In this datasheets I found the Hsync frequency of the display. It is 48.3 kHz.

In xf86config I entered this horizontal frequency and the vertical frequency, which is 60 Hz. The X server deleted all modelines and didn't start at all. In the mess(age) that was left I read a line that a mode of 1024x768 required a horizontal frequency of 48.36 kHz. So I entered this one in the configuration program. And X runs fine!

After all, I think upgrading to XFree86 3.3.6 wasn't nessecary but it doesn't harm. The most important information is:

Display Type	Samsung LT141X7-122 (14" XGA TFT)
Horizontal Sync frequency	48.36 kHz
Vertical Sync frequency	60 Hz

View my XF86Config file

Sound issues

The Armada E500 is a very new system, build with very new components. If you run 'soundcfg' you'll get a message telling you that the Red Hat doesn't ship yet with drivers for the ESS Technology ES1978 Maestro Audiodrive but you can download a beta-driver from " http://people.redhat.com/zab/maestro ".

The audio driver page has some information about installing the driver onto your system. But it's only a one-time installation. If you reboot then the module is not reloaded. If you want the audio module to be autoloaded when starting your computer just do the following actions:

Build and install the maestro.o kernel module according the instructions of Zab.
Copy the module to a permanent directory, e.g.

Put this shell script in your /etc/rc.d/init.d directory:
#!/bin/bash
# Loads Maestro Sound module
insmod /lib/modules/2.2.12-20/misc/maestro.o

Make symbolic links to this script from any /etc/init.d/rc?.d, name the links S??maestro where ?? is an unique number. I did this for the runlevels 3 and 5.

The sound driver is still in beta, I use version maestro-20000128 which was the most recent at the time of writing. The only problems I have with this driver is some annoying ticks when shutting down the computer. If I reboot into Windows'95, it dies when initiating the sound system. But I think this is more a Windows problem rather than Linux. A good work-around is not rebooting but shut down and power back on. Windows starts normal again.

Update: I received an e-mail from Neil Bingham, he told me that Red Hat Linux 6.2 comes with the correct sound drivers, so this shouldn't be an issue anymore.

The Compaq mini-modem

This modem is just a simple Lucent WinModem. So point your browser to " http://www.linmodems.org " and download the binairy kernel module which has been released by Lucent Technologies. After a simple installation of the module you can use Minicom to connect to a BBS or use PPP for a connection to your ISP. Although it's a beta release, things seem to work well without many problems.

Conclusion

After some starting problems, they took me a week to solve, Linux runs fine, fast and stable on a Compaq Armada E500. Don't expect some support from Compaq or their Business Partners because they only support Linux if there are no problems.

Feedback

If you have further questions about Linux on a Compaq Armada E500 or have any comments about this page, please feel free to contact me. I would also like to hear from you if the information on this was useful.

This page was created with Star Office 5.1 on Linux.