Linux on the Compaq Presario 1115ea laptop

15 march 2003: Roberto A. Foglietta, robang@libero.it

Introduction

The Compaq/HP Presario 1115EA is a low/middle expensive, high performance laptop using a Celeron 1.6GHz and with 256Mb of RAM shared between system and ATi Mobility Radeon. It is pretty and thin notebook with a brigth 14.1" TFT and weights around 3kg. It's a little brothers of Presario 2500 (see here the orginal doc by Thomas M. Breuel)

I started off by resizing the NTFS partition that it came with using Linux Mandrake 9.1rc2 partitioning tools (see here). After resizing HTFS partition I rebooted the laptop into "the other OS" to check the filesystem coherency and then just did a regular Mandrake installation.

ACPI system

Configuring ACPI propely the battery could endure more tha 4 hours in text-only console. Actually I'm working on swap suspend tool because it works quite well in hybernation of consolle. But it corrupts the XFree VESA buffer [ 1 ] so much to make freeze the system when CTRL-ALT-F7 is pressed to switch back to the graphic session.

Linux Mandrake 9.1rc2 RPM packages about ACPI are:

acpid-1.0.1-1mdk
acpi-0.6-4mdk
suspend-scripts-1.3-1mdk

[ 1 ] I spoked about VESA Frame Buffer corruption because the garbage I saw on the display after the CTRL-ALT-F7 switch.

Built-In Sound Card

The built-in sound card is supported by the "trident" module. Working fine.

Built-In Ethernet

The built-in Ethernet is supported by the "natsemi" module. Working fine. I didn't test the boot from net possibility of this laptop yet.

Built-In Modem

The built-in modem is a Linux-supported soft-modem (see here). By now there isn't a Linux Mandrake 9.1rc2 hsflinmodem driver delivered in RPM but it's possible to use the generic tar.gz package Download the hsflinmodem driver delivered in tar.gz package and try to compile it. If you will see a error about a KERNELSRC unset variable you should execute this command from a root shell:

ln -s /usr/src/$(uname -r) /lib/modules/$(uname -r)/build

or if it doesn't work you should trying to modify common.mak a little bit about the path where it is looking for kernel sources

Graphics Card

The laptop has an ATI graphics accelerator but actualy there aren't any version of XFree that support its 3D. It's reasonable that it will be supported soon but in the meanwhile if you use "vesa" for the device, it works fine in 2D only. This graphics card use the part of system memory, that portion is sizeable from BIOS: from 8Mb to 64Mb.

USB

I just tried it with a Compact Flash Card reader and it seems it worsk fine.
I experimented a drastic fall of performances (just loading vmlinuz) disabling USB Legacy from BIOS.

Synaptics TouchPad

I haven't tried to configure it yet, but you can get a utility for configuring the Synaptics TouchPad here, others references here and here

You can use that to tune the sensitivity and tap-behavior. Even better, you can just plug in an external mouse and turn off the touch pad altogether (the button between the touch pad and the keyboard does the trick).

System Info

Here is the output from "lspci": 

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device cab2 (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 7010
00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation Intel 537 [M5457 AC-Link Modem]
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 PMU
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon IGP 340M

Here is the output from "lspci -v": 

00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device cab2 (rev 02)
	Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 64
	Memory at e8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
	Memory at e4005000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Capabilities: [a0] AGP version 2.0

00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 7010 (prog-if 00 [Normal decode])
	Flags: bus master, 66Mhz, medium devsel, latency 99
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=01, subordinate=01, sec-latency=68
	I/O behind bridge: 00009000-00009fff
	Memory behind bridge: e4300000-e43fffff
	Prefetchable memory behind bridge: ec000000-efffffff

00:02.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 002a
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 10
	Memory at e4000000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2

00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 002a
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 5
	I/O ports at 1000 [size=256]
	Memory at e4001000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
	Subsystem: ALi Corporation ALI M1533 Aladdin IV ISA Bridge
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0
	Capabilities: [a0] Power Management version 1

00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation Intel 537 [M5457 AC-Link Modem] (prog-if 00 [Generic])
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 002a
	Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 10
	Memory at e4002000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
	I/O ports at 1400 [size=256]
	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 002a
	Flags: bus master, stepping, slow devsel, latency 168, IRQ 11
	Memory at e4003000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Bus: primary=00, secondary=03, subordinate=03, sec-latency=176
	Memory window 0: e4200000-e42ff000 (prefetchable)
	Memory window 1: e4100000-e41ff000
	I/O window 0: 00001c00-00001cff
	I/O window 1: 00001800-000018ff
	16-bit legacy interface ports at 0001

00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4) (prog-if fa)
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 002a
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 32
	I/O ports at 2000 [size=16]
	Capabilities: [60] Power Management version 2

00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 PMU
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 002a
	Flags: medium devsel

00:12.0 Ethernet controller: National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) Ethernet Controller
	Subsystem: Unknown device 3c08:5400
	Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 90, IRQ 10
	I/O ports at 2400 [size=256]
	Memory at e4004000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
	Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=64K]
	Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2

01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon IGP 340M (prog-if 00 [VGA])
	Subsystem: Hewlett-Packard Company: Unknown device 002a
	Flags: stepping, fast Back2Back, 66Mhz, medium devsel, IRQ 10
	Memory at ec000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=64M]
	I/O ports at 9000 [size=256]
	Memory at e4300000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=64K]
	Expansion ROM at <unassigned> [disabled] [size=128K]
	Capabilities: [58] AGP version 2.0
	Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2