PmWiki | Main / MyLaptop

My old laptop was a Amilo 7400. Had to change laptop when I changed job, so now I use Pavilion Ze2216

Some useful links:

Had some troubles turning on dma using hdparm. Then I changed CONFIG_IDEDMA_PCI_AUTO (i think, have to check this) from 'm' to 'y', and the it works.

Search the archives, there was a thread on this a while back. I was having the exact same error message when trying to set the dma to 1. I needed an extra option in my kernel and thus a kernel compile. Make sure at least these are set

  CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA_PCI=y
  CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDEDMA=y

For me, it also involved setting CONFIG_BLK_DEV_PIIX to yes since my server has a PII motherboard so make sure the appropriate chipset is loaded for your motherboard

Regards, Benedict

I'm reinstalling debian on my laptop, just to see how good the installer is, and to clean up the machine a little.

Booting debian gives a black screen when we enter gui mode. So I had to start over again with install vga=771 as advised on one of the help screens.

Selected "Norwegian Bokmall" language and confirmed "Norsk - latin1 " keyboard layout

Then the installer searches the CD and copies the debs from the net inst cd to the hard disk.

Selected eth0 (Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ as the network device to use for install. The other option was eth1 that was the wireless card.

Wait a few seconds for dhcp setup.

Selected hostname and invented a network name for the home network.

Partitioning. When partitioning started, I started a new shell on F2, and deleted the old linux partitions. Then I restarted the partitioning program and selected guided partitioning using available free space. One root partition /G and a /home taking the rest, approx 30G

Accepted the suggested time zone: Oslo/Europe.

Entered root password. No I wont tell you... Added a normal user.

The installer then installs lots of packages.

Adds a mirror using all the default values suggested.

Tasksel: Accepted the default tasks, Desktop, Laptop and .... (was it called "Standard"???).

Remembered that I answered one question about swap and suspend without thinking. So I ran dpkg-reconfigure uswsusp just to be safe. Saw nothing special here.

Printer

Turned on my Brother HL-1250 and connected with a usb cable. Ran Programs->System tools->Printers and clicked continue a few times. It works perfectly.

Wlan

Installed build-essential since we need to compile stuff.

I started looking at a question on linuxquestions.org.

First I verified using lspci that I have the correct hardware.

Then I downloaded and built bcm43xx-fwcutter. Copied bcmwl5.sys from the windows partition and extracted the firmware from the driver. Installed it into /etc/firmware.

After this I could connect to my router with 64bit WEP using the wireless tool (NetworkManager) available on the menu bar on the top of the screen. I never imagined it would go this easy!!