I just made a recent purchase to add to my computer collection: compaq armada m700 1 GHz w/ 320 MB ram

Since I love slackware to death, I have been considering putting the world's best operating system on my new laptop when it arrives. However, I have been reading online that due to the odd setup of the system bios for the compaq armada (no flash rom, but located on boot sector of disk) that it is extremely tricky to install linux on this particular line of laptops.

I was hoping that someone on this board has installed linux on a compaq armada and may want to shed some light on the problems that they encountered (if any)

thanks!

I've got a Armada m700 also (can't remember but I think it's 600 MHz and only 128 MB) as the trusty sidekick and typewriter. I've started it with Fedora Core 1 and upgraded it all the way through up to FC4 and no problems. I've also done a fresh install with FC4 and still no problems.

When do you get your machine?

I've been experimenting with Slackware on my M700 (1Ghz, 576 ram, dvd/cdrw) for about a year now. I'm using VGA graphics because I don't think the ATI Rage Mobility is very well supported in Slackware - other distros have loaded drivers automatically on installation, so there probably is a way... The main problem for me was setting up the memory mapping for the pcmcia and wireless cards. I use an Orinoco Gold card, but the original /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file would freeze the os when anything was inserted in the pcmcia slot. I put another hard drive in and copied all the relevant memory addresses for the pcmcia and network adapters under windows and put those addresses into my /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file. If you plan on using pcmcia, copy and use mine:

Phil's /etc/pcmcia/config.opts file (the important stuff anyways):


# These are the official ports to use from pcmcia-cs:
#include port 0x100-0x4ff, port 0x800-0x8ff, port 0xc00-0xcff
# However, ports 0x810-0x81f hurt on some DELL machines and
# ports 0x3b0-0x3df hurt on some FSC machines, so we use this port
# list instead:
include port 0xfc00-0xfcff, port 0xfa00-0xfaff, port 0xfd00-0xfdff, port 0xfe00-0xfeff, port 0xff40-0xff7f, port 0xdf40-0xdf7f

include memory 0x000df000-0x000dffff
include memory 0x000de000-0x000defff
include memory 0x41180000-0x41180fff
include memory 0xffeff000-0xffefffff
include memory 0x41100000-0x41100fff
include memory 0xffc00000-0xffdfffff
include memory 0xffefe000-0xffefefff
include memory 0xffa00000-0xffbfffff

# High port numbers do not always work...
#include port 0x1000-0x17ff, port 0x2000-0x27ff

# Extra port range for IBM Token Ring
#include port 0xa00-0xaff

# Resources we should not use, even if they appear to be available

# First built-in serial port
#exclude irq 4
# Second built-in serial port
#exclude irq 3
# First built-in parallel port
#exclude irq 7
exclude irq 0
exclude irq 14
exclude irq 5
exclude irq 1
exclude irq 2
exclude irq 8
exclude irq 12
exclude irq 6
exclude irq 13
exclude irq 11

#----------------------------------------------------------------------

Good luck. Installation is a breeze... I have a lot of other posts/fixes on this board concerning the M700 - do a search.

i'll have to try those, thanks a bunch noxious!

I'm not sure if the ati drivers are working or not... when I type "glxgears", I get about 182 FPS. I'm not sure if that's good or not for the Rage Mobility 2X.

One other thing - the built-in modem is a winmodem... but a pcmcia card modem works great (in a pinch) with gnome-ppp.

hey noxious, if you're interested... when I run xorgconfig, follow all the instructions, and then run xorgsetup the laptop recognizes the video card as an ATI rage Mobility AGP 2X

*edit*

I guess it does properly recognize the video device since lspci spits out the following:

I have an old M700 - PIII 850, 256mb. It's currently set up as my test system with Slack 10.1 and several 2.4 and 2.6 kernels. I use wireless, authenticating to my AP with eap-tls with XSupplicant on ORiNOCO and Prism cards. It was originally Red Hat 9 and Win2K. I re-partitioned it for Slack and loaded XP onto it, although that never gets used.

The only problem has been the winmodem. Everything else has been fine.