JP Loh: Compaq X1010AL TuxMobil UniX Laptop Report

I. Description II. Installation III. Post-Installation Tasks IV. Problems V. Screenshots I. Description The Compaq/HP Presario X1010AL is an excellent desktop replacement. It came with a hefty price tag but got it out of a last stock bargain. This box came into my hands July 18, 2004 with the following specs:

Intel Pentium M 1.3GHz (Centrino Chipset)
256MB DDR-SDRAM
ATI Radeon Mobility 7500 (32MB; VGA/SVideo Out)
15.4" WXGA Screen (1280x800)
Intel PRO Wireless 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter (802.11b)
Realtek RTL-8139C+ (Ethernet Card)
56k Dial-Up Modem
30GB Western Digital Hard Disk Drive
Compaq CRN 8245B (Internal CD-ROM Drive)
Intel 82801DBM(ICH4-M) USB Host Controller (3x USB 2.0)
VIA IEEE 1394 Host Controller (Firewire)
Intel 82801DBM(ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller
Synaptics TouchPad with integrated scroll pad and switch
SD Media Card Reader/Writer
JBL Pro speakers
Pre-installed with useless crap (Norton AntiVirus 2005, MusicMatch Jukebox, etc)

And the upgrades:

Seagate 60GB 5400rpm Hard Disk Drive (~early May, 2005)

II. Installation Installation of Fedora Core 4 was a breeze with Anaconda. After installation, it correctly detected almost all hardware. Only the SD card drive, WiFi adapter and 56k dial-up modem were not detected. For the display just select a generic 1280x800 LCD display. III. Post-Installation Tasks Intel gave the Linux drivers to the community as a project. The drivers for the WiFi device could be found at SourceForge. Make sure that you have Wireless Extensions and Tools by HP. Compile from source the firmware then the driver. Everything should be working after that. IV. Problems The battery meter works on GNOME but I believe my kernel wasn't compiled with ACPI or it is unsupported so I can't bring it to suspend mode. APM doesn't work either. The SD card drive and dial-up modem are not functional but no efforts from me to fix those yet. As for the Firewire port, I don't have hardware to test it with. Dual Head doesn't seem to work well. In the login screen, it displays the login prompt at the external display with inappropriate resolution. After logging in at X Window System with GNOME, it replicates the screen of the internal display to the external display with distortion since it doesn't have the same resolution. V. Screenshots