I recently bought an Advent QT5500 laptop (on special offer)
It, annoyingly, came with Micro$oft's Wimblowz Vista (or Wimblowz Dictatorship!) and it's the biggest pile of... yeah well, you know!

So i thought i'd see how well Linux would perform on it, so i plugged in my SLAX USB stick and... it crashed on detecting PCMCIA devices, so i thought, "fair do's, i dont have a PCMCIA port on this pile o' junk, so i'd start it with the

command, and it got further, but didn't ever seem to load X up

A bit annoyed, i decided to get my trusty Knoppix disc out, and what do ya know, same problems!

I'm not even going to dare to try a HDD install as i guess it ain't going to work either!

Though when i got the machine, i DID try a HDD install of Mac OS X 10.4.6 (JaS version) and the graphics crashed so i couldn't configure it!

Finding a BIOS upgrade is almost impossible! It's a Phoenix (version D3C72), i have read that Phoenix are now locking their BIOSes to only work with VISTA

Anyone else has any more success on this heap of junk?

I really want to ditch this sad excuse of an OS the took M$ 6 years to make!

Calm down, yelling and crying out loud isn't helping anyone. It's not "in" anymore to spend three quarters of the post to insult Microsoft.

Where did you read that? To me it would sound a bit foolish to "lock" a BIOS to only work with one operating system. And how would they go about that? What could possibly be the thing that paid them enough to do that? Sounds like a joke to me.

I would start off with some simple-and-as-configurable-as-possible setup or live-cd disc. Slack12 disc or Ubuntu Alternate could be in my list, Knoppix too if you nowadays can configure it before booting so that it doesn't try to load a million modules. Make it as bare as you can, leave pcmcia and other stuff off if you think you don't need it. Don't even try to start X at first; your first goal should be to get the command line working.

I dont think i said that many bad things about M$

Anywho, i remember SLAX doesn't even go into X by default

Here is the Phoenix issue http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi....php?p=2705017

I suppose i didn't try seeing if DSL would start, i just dont get how a distro that works on my Pentium II can't work on my new laptop?

You should have read through the entire thread.

You have some kind of driver issue. Maybe more than one. Probably has nothing to do with BIOS.

yeah, just come back from booting into a minimal SLAX (using the nopcmcia and nohotplug commands) i guess this wouldn't be an issue on openSUSE as once it finds what devices are in my machine after setup, it wouldn't need to keep reprobing.

Correct me if im wrong

You should be able to get any Linux distro properly configured. It may require editing the kernel command line or adjusting drivers (such as blacklisting any that cause lockups).

What hardware is in the computer?

The Advent QT5500 full specs using SiSoftware Sandra


Processor
Model : Intel(R) Core(TM)2 CPU T5500 @ 1.66GHz
Speed : 1.66GHz
Cores per Processor : 2 Unit(s)
Threads per Core : 1 Unit(s)
Type : Mobile, Dual-Core
Internal Data Cache : 2x 32kB Synchronous, Write-Thru, 8-way set, 64 byte line size
L2 On-board Cache : 1x 2MB ECC Synchronous, ATC, 8-way set, 64 byte line size, 2 threads sharing

Mainboard
Platform Compliance : Intel Centrino Mobile Technology
Bus(es) : ISA PCI PCIe IMB PCMCIA CardBus USB FireWire/1394 i2c/SMBus
MP Support : 1 Processor(s)
MP APIC : Yes
System BIOS : Phoenix Technologies LTD 255.255
System : DIXONSXP Calistoga & ICH7M Chipset
Mainboard : Intel Corporation MPAD-MSAE Customer Reference Boards
Total Memory : 1014MB DDR2-SDRAM

Chipset 1
Model : Quanta Computer Inc 955XM/945GM/PM/GMS/940GML Express Processor to DRAM Controller
Total Memory : 1GB DDR2-SDRAM
Shared Memory : 8MB

Video System
Monitor/Panel : Generic PnP Monitor
Adapter : Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family
Adapter : Mobile Intel(R) 945GM Express Chipset Family

Physical Storage Devices
Hard Disk : HTS541080G9SA00 ATA Device (75GB)
Hard Disk : IC25N080 ATMR04-0 USB Device
CD-ROM/DVD : Optiarc DVD RW AD-7530A ATA Device (CD 24X Rd, 24X Wr) (DVD 3X Rd, 3X Wr)

Logical Storage Devices
Hard Disk : 5.4GB (1.8GB, 33% Free Space) (NTFS)
Vista (C:) : 69GB (21GB, 30% Free Space) (NTFS)
CD-ROM/DVD (E:) : N/A

Peripherals
Serial/Parallel Port(s) : 1 COM / 0 LPT
USB Controller/Hub : Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27C8
USB Controller/Hub : Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27C9
USB Controller/Hub : Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27CA
USB Controller/Hub : Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB Universal Host Controller - 27CB
USB Controller/Hub : Intel(R) 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 Enhanced Host Controller - 27CC
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Mass Storage Device
FireWire/1394 Controller/Hub : Texas Instruments OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller
PCMCIA/CardBus Controller : Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
Keyboard : Quanta Keyboard Filter Driver
Mouse : Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad

Communication Device(s)
Device : HDAUDIO Soft Data Fax Modem with SmartCP

Printers and Faxes
Model : Send To OneNote 2007
Model : Microsoft XPS Document Writer
Model : EPSON Stylus Photo R340 Series
Model : \\Server\680

Power Management
Mains (AC) Line Status : On-Line
Battery No 1 : 98%

Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows Vista Home Media Center 6.00.6000
Platform Compliance : Win32 x86

Network Services
Adapter : Marvell Yukon 88E8055 PCI-E Gigabit Ethernet Controller
Adapter : Intel(R) PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection

Performance Tips
Notice 5901 : CD 1x= 150kB/s; Exercise caution when comparing measured versus published ratings.
Notice 5902 : DVD 1x= 11.08Mbps Exercise caution when comparing measured versus published ratings.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.