Date: Mon, 28 Jun 2004 15:46:20 +0200 From: Radek Kozlowski <radek@raadradd.com> To: Stuart Barkley <stuartb@4gh.net> Cc: freebsd-mobile@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Anyone have HP ZE4805US laptop working (US$900) Message-ID: <40E0212C.5000804@raadradd.com> In-Reply-To: <20040627155159.S25924@freeman.4gh.net> References: <20040627155159.S25924@freeman.4gh.net>
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On 2004.06.27 22:21, Stuart Barkley wrote: > My old laptop has finally given up the ghost and I'm searching for a > replacement. CompUSA, Best Buy and Circuit City are all selling the > HP ZE4805US for about 900 USD and it looks like about the right > machine for my needs. > > - AMD Athlon XP-M processor > - 256MB (upgradable) > - 60GB hard drive > - DVD/CD-RW > - ATI Radeon based video (1024x768) > - Integrated wireless > - Integrated 10/100 Ethernet > - Modem > - 2x USB 1.1 > - 1x PCMCIA slot > - Printer port > - Serial port > - Headphone out/Mic in > > I would prefer USB 2.0, a second PCMCIA slot and would really like to > have a line-in port. Otherwise this looks like a reasonable > configuration. > > Has anyone had success running FreeBSD on this or other HP/Compaq > machines. I've seen queries (usually unanswered publicly) about > various HP/Compaq laptops over the past several months. Most of the > discussion here seems to be about Dells (I've been happy with them at > previous jobs), IBMs (sound good) and Toshibas (I'm pretty > dissatisfied with my old Toshiba laptop). I'm running 5.2-CURRENT on ze4430us, which has almost the same configuration as your machine. Basically everything works, but you need to be aware of the following things: - the Radeon card needs at least x11-servers/XFree86-4-Server-snap (or x.org or XFree86 4.4) to be recognized. - the built-in wireless card is based on a Broadcom chipset, for which you'll need NDISulator that is at the moment only available in CURRENT. - the ethernet adapter works with the sis(4) driver. - modem is not recognized, but probably you won't need it anyway. - I boot my machine with ACPI enabled so I can use the power button to switch it off instead of typing 'halt -p', but that's about everything I can do with ACPI. Suspend/resume doesn't work, I get a lot of warning messages about 'thermal stuff', which is probably why the fan is rotating very fast all the time and making quite a lot of noise. To make it a bit more quiet I use a kernel module named powernow_k7 (which can be obtained from here http://www.poupinou.org/cpufreq/bsd/powernow_k7/) which allows me to lower the CPU's frequency and/or voltage. > I tried booting the FreeSBIE CD on the HP ZE4805 and it looked like > there where problems reading from the CD drive later in the booting > process. I also tried booting the FreeBSIE CD on another random HP > laptop and it appeared to lockup just after loading the acpi module. > I've seen reports about needing special acpi tables for some systems. I didn't have luck with FreeSBIE either and I didn't find out why, but what you can do is try booting a FreeBSD 5.2.1 cd and once you get to the first sysinstall screen, press scroll lock (that'd be pause/break key on HP) and then press page up to see how your devices are recognized. For what it's worth, I'm not using any special ACPI tables. -Radek
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