Last updated: September 20, 2006
| Processor: | AMD Turion 64 1.8GHz |
| RAM: | 512Mb DDR-333 SDRAM |
| Video: | ATI Radeon Xpress 200M |
| Sound: | ATI High-Definition Audio |
| HDD: | 80Gb ATA |
| Optical: | 24X DVD±RW |
| Network1: | Realtek 8169 Gigabit Ethernet |
| Network2: | Atheros 5005G 802.11a/b/g |
I originally opted for Ubuntu Linux, but that effort met with a swift end when the install CD refused to boot, giving me a kernel panic. I then chose to proceed with Slackware Linux, mostly because I happened to have the CDs laying around and I didn't feel like downloading any more ISOs.
The 80Gb hard disk comes pre-partitioned into two 40Gb partitions, both FAT32. Windows XP Home is installed on one, while the other is completely empty. There is also a small 7Gb-ish System Recovery Partition at the beginning of the disk. I did something incredibly boneheaded and ended up erasing the partition table, so it was repartitioned as follows:
| Linux Name | Size | FS | Notes |
| /dev/hda1 | 35Gb | NTFS | Windows C: |
| /dev/hda2 | 1Gb | swap | Linux Swap |
| /dev/hda3 | 30Gb | ext3 | Linux Root |
| /dev/hda4 | 14Gb | vfat | Shared Files |
As you can see, I created an extra partition for any files that I needed to be able to access in both Windows and Linux
I booted off of the Slackware install CD and proceeded along with the install. The first thing that I noticed was that it was going really slowly. It turned out that the kernel shipped with Slackware 10.2 (2.4.31) does not have the correct drivers for the IDE chipset in this laptop installed or turned on. Thusly, DMA was turned off and doing an "hdparm -d1 /dev/hda" simply returned with an error. Therefore. simply copying all of the packages across took the rest of the day.
After the install was complete, I began to sort through the hardware and getting them to work, one by one:DMA:
The IDE controller is an ATI chip. Kernel version 2.6.17.13 (the
version I'm using) includes support for it. With an installation
of the new kernel, DMA is working fine:
hdparm -tT /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 1708 MB in 2.00 seconds = 852.83
MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 102 MB in 3.00 seconds = 33.97
MB/sec
Gigabit Ethernet:
Like the IDE controller, one must upgrade to a newer kernel in
order to use this. It now works fine with no trouble
HD Sound:
It's Sound Blaster Pro compatible. Worked "out of the box".
Video:
This one took a while. Install and use ATI's proprietary drivers
if you want it to look halfway decent. You'll also have to
manually edit the xorg.conf file to change the screen res. from
"2048x1024" to "2048x800" in order for the image to display
correctly in X
Wireless:
By far the most difficult to get running. It's an Atheros 5005G
chip. There are basically two things that you will need to do in
order to get it to work: Download and install madwifi and
acer_acpi, then make sure that the card is turned on before the
driver is loaded. In oter words, you want to echo "enabled :
1">/proc/acpi/acer/wireless before you modprobe
ath_pci