Setting up Fedora on a Presario R3000

This file is rather out-of-date. I have successfully installed Fedora Core 6 on this laptop, and it works pretty well. Specifically, wireless works using the in-kernel driver, and can be controlled by NetworkManager. I didn't take good notes when I did it. but if you have problems and email me, I'll try to to figure out what I did.

There is a R3000linux wiki. I hope to gradually merge my generally-useful information from here into that wiki.

Dual-booting Windows

Note Windows XP: Surving the First Day.

In Windows's Command Prompt, I typed:

chkdsk /f

ntfsresize -22G /dev/hda

run_qtparted

Graphics

I updated the kernel (via Red Hat Network). Then downloaded the NVIDIA driver, and installed it.

NVidia's README.txt has lots of information.

Notes on TwinView.

I'm using version 6629 on the Nvidia driver.
Here is an xorg.conf for TwinView using the laptop display and an external ViewSonic 1600x1200 LCD monitor. Unfortunately, the laptop is only displaying 1400x1050, which only uses part of the laptop resolution - if I try setting the laptop display to the native 1680x1050 resolution, things don't work. However, a total resolution of 3000x1200 is nice. Even better, I can switch screen the resolution between 3000x1200 (twin monitors) and 1400x1050 (latop only). The latter is nice for moving the laptop into the family room to half-watch some TV, say. It would be nicer if I could get 1680x1050 in laptop-only mode, but that doesn't work either. Note that the external monitor does need to be plugged in when you start up X, but it's OK to unplug it after. (There is probably a way to force X to not disable TwinView when no external montor is plugged in, but that's not a priority.)

Here is an xorg.conf for the laptop display (1680x1050) standalone (without TwinView support).

Here is how to use two layouts in a single xorg.conf.

Wireless

(These instructrions are obsolete, since Fedora Core 6 has native support for the wireless chip.)

Downloaded, compiled, and built ndiswrapper. I followed these instructions. The instructions said the driver on the Driver Recovery CD (in my case DVD) (from HP that came with the computer) should work, and it did. They were bcmw15.inf and bcmw15.sys in SWSetup/WLAN as auto-mounted on /media/cdrecorder.

A helpful Fedora-specific note.

A useful tool for roaming etc is wificonfig. It scans for networks and allows you to connect. It can remember passwords for you. It requires gtkmm etc, which is available from Fedora Extras. It does have a weird quirk in that scanning for networks disables the current connection, so you then need to re-connect - but that's a simple matter of selecting the access point and hitting Connect. (The kwifimanager program doesn't work for me.)

Some scripts to control WiFi - which I haven't tried yet.

CPU Speed

The CPU speed is initially limited to 800MHz. You need to enable cpufreq to enable faster speeds, according to demand. Add the following line to /etc/cpuspeed.conf:

DRIVER="powernow-k8"

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_cur_freq

On my systems it's 800000 except when doing a compile or similar, when it can go up to 2400000.

A Gentoo-oriented note that I found helpful.

Modem

A note on finding correct modem drivers. My hardware matches that in the note.

I downloaded the driver from SmartLink's Linux Driver page.

Building the driver:

tar xzvf /tmp/slmodem-2.9.10.tar.gz
cd slmodem-2.9.10
make install SUPPORT_ALSA=1 

Starting the daemon:

/usr/sbin/slmodemd --alsa --country=USA

This creates a link to /dev/ttySL0. I started up kppp and configured that, including specifying /dev/ttySL0 as the modem device. It works!

Links

Installing Debian-AMD64 GNU/Linux on a Compaq Presario R3000 Laptop

Installing Fedora Core 3 on Compaq Presario R3000Z (v0.9)