Linux and other annoyances with the Compaq Armada M700

My Compaq Armada arrived Friday, over the weekend I have tinkered with it a bit, and got a dual-boot set up.

For starters the specs are:
Intel Pentium !!! Processor @ 700Mhz
320MB RAM (came with 192MB)
ATi RAGE Mobility M1 graphics with 8MB graphics memory
8x DVD-ROM drive
ESS Maestro sound card
Intel PRO/100 Ethernet
Lucent v.90 Winmodem
30GB PATA hard drive (came with 12GB)

The first annoyance was that the 256MB stick of RAM I got on eBay did not work with this machine. I was a little surprised to see that it had a 128MB stick of RAM in it (not a 64MB). It has 64MB RAM on the motherboard, and the eBay listing said it has 128MB. I tossed in a spare 128MB stick out of an old Dell that I had laying around and it worked just fine.

The next annoyances are quite minor. One is that the listing said that it had a DVD-ROM/ CD-RW combo drive, however it is just a plain 'ol DVD-ROM. The other foiled my plan to tote several hard dives with me with a different OS on each. This was foiled because the hard drive caddy is a real PITA to swap drives in. One Torx screw to remove the caddy, and 6 Philips to remove the hard drive from it, not to mention the whole thing falls into about 5 pieces after you remove all the screws.

Back to the problem RAM: in my fiddling with it, I though that there was a problem with the DVD drive as it was only half-loading OSes from boot CDs (I tried Windows 2000, Windows ME, and a special DOS one). I went through and swapped out the CD-ROM in its caddy (it has a modular bay) only to come across the error "Invalid Memory Module Installed!!!" I couldn't get this error to go away, even with the hard drive, battery, optical drive, and all RAM removed. I found out that there is a hidden key combination (Fn + F11) that will reset the CMOS and usually overcome this error. Thankfully for me it fixed it. I put in the original 128MB stick of RAM, and another one, then original DVD drive, the hard drive and finally the battery.

Onto installing Windows. Since I was limited to one 30GB hard drive, and 320MB of RAM I decided to go with Windows 2000 instead of Windows XP. This gives me almost all the needed compatibility with smaller RAM and hard drive usage. The compatibility issues I have with Windows 2000 are with an older game (refuses to install on Windows NT, however can be overcome by Windows XP's compatibility wizard), and the latest versions of my security software. I was able to find alternates to them, so that is no big deal, either.

The install of Windows 2000 went without problem, HP has all the drivers and extra software for all version of this laptop series on its website, and Window Update gave me some newer versions.

On to Linux. Since this is an older laptop with less than 384MB RAM my favorite version won't work very well with it (Ubuntu). There is an official Ubuntu derivative, Xubuntu, that is designed for older systems that don't have as many resources, so I decided to use that.

The problem was that the CD wouldn't boot.

Having a similar issue with some Acer laptops I gave it the ACPI=OFF option, and it booted. while it was installing I did some research online and found out that ACPI wasn't the problem, it was the radio_maestro module in version 9.04. If I have to re-install in the future for any reason I now know that I can use the alternate install CD with no problems, however I will still have to access it from some other way to blacklist the file, but should be no problem now that I have done it once.

Why it booted, I have no idea, and as I suspected, after trying to boot from the hard drive it froze up on me.

I had blacklisted modules before, but only from within a booting OS. A forum thread I found online talked about using an older version's live CD and editing the file from that, however that would require me do download one as I didn't have one with me. I though to myself there must be a simple solution... There was: Windows 2000 worked perfectly. All I had to do was fine a driver to access the ext3 file system with read/write access and edit it from there. I ended up using Ext2FSD (http://www.ext2fsd.com/), modified the file, saved it, rebooted, and bingo, there it was staring me right in the harry eyeball - the Xubuntu Desktop.

A quick edit to the GRUB menu to enable ACPI, a reboot to test, and I was good to go. Updates installed, ndiswrapper and drivers for my Airnet AWN154 PCMCIA wireless card and I was well on my way to getting it going.

My To Do list is:

• Get the Lucent Winmodem set up for use in Xubuntu
• Get the official built of Firefox installed in Xubuntu via Ubuntuzilla
• Install multimedia codecs in Xubuntu
• Install the latest version of OpenOffice.org for Xubuntu.
  
• Customize and install any other wanted programs for both OSes.

All in all, my experiences with this laptop would baffle a Linux n00b, however an amateur should have little difficulty. I consider myself to be slightly above an amateur with Linux, however I am rapidly learning more and more about it.

Still using SDRAM?

If you are still using a computer that uses PC66/100/133 SDRAM and wee thinking about upgrading the RAM in it, you may want to do it now before it is too late.

Recently I won an auction for a Pentium !!! -based laptop on eBay. I wanted more RAM for it, so I decide to head over to my favorite online computer parts website, newegg.com, to see if they had any 256MB SO-DIMMS that I could use in it for around $25. They had several, but the ones in my price range were incompatible with the laptops that were picky about which RAM used in it (the one that I won falls in to that category). The ones that were compatable were around $50, slo I decided to take a trip over to TigerDirect, and to my surprise they had NO SDRAM in SO-DIMM form, and very few standard DIMMs. After that I went over to crucial.com (a name-brand memory manufacturer where I have bought laptop memory before), and to my surprise again, they didn't even list the model number for that laptop. This meant that they no longer made/ sold the type of RAM that this laptop uses (PC100/PC133). This also indicated that the ram at Newegg was old stock. I then did some looking around the Google Product search and found nothing but cheap incompatible RAM, and overpriced old stock. In the end I bought a refurbished OEM stick on eBay for $11.99 USD.

I am still waiting on said laptop, but the RAM came today. When the laptop arrives, and I have some time to tinker with it I plan on posting a review of its capabilities and my thoughts on its overall build.

Genealogy Software

About two years ago I was doing some research on my family history. Today out of the blue I got an e-mail from somebody asking if I was related to someone one of her ancestors knew.

The name she gave seemed familiar, but I wasn't sure how I was related. Back when I was doing my research I had a somewhat inaccurate book made by some family members back in the 1970's, but had misplaced it. I also found wc.rootsweb.com very useful, so I took a trip back over there. It took me quite a while to find the link, however I did manage to find it.

That got me thinking: "It sure would be nice if I could keep a local easily-accessed record of the family tree."

I remember haring about some Genealogy software for Linux and a quick Google search turned up GRAMPS (Genealogical Research and Analysis Management Programming System). It is a free and open source program, however it is a bit too big for me to download on Dial-up, so I will have to do it tomorrow while I am at college.

Not only is GRAMPS available for Linux, but there are also MacOS X and Windows versions. Note that for the standard Windows versions there are a lot of other programs it relies on to run, however, there is a "portable" version that you can install on a flash drive and run from there. This is nice because then you can take it to other family member's houses, pop the drive in their computer and add information.

The website for GRAMPS is here: http://www.gramps-project.org/

AMD vs. Intel

This is just some ramblings and thoughts about AMD and Intel Processors.

I will come right out and say it, I am a fan of AMD. At the same time, I don't hate Intel, but given the choice, I will always choose AMD.

AMD has a much better price-to performance. A quick trip over to newegg.com reveals the fastest AMD Phenom II X4 CPU is $245 (clocked at 3.4GHz) and the fastest Intel Core i7 is $999.99 (clocked at 3.33GHz).

Granted the Core i7 is a faster processor than the Phenom II X4, however, its price is just outrageous, the performance isn't $745.99 worth of difference.

From what I can tell, their mid range processors are somewhat comparable in performance. I currently have a somewhat older AMD Athlon 64 X2 5000+ in my system, and it has more power than I actually need.

Also, it seems that low-end motherboards for AMD processors are cheaper than their Intel-compatible counterparts, too. I am using a PCChips board that performs very well and it was less than $60.

Netbooks

Last year a craze started of the super tiny and super cheap laptops, commonly referred to as netbooks.

Laptops of this style have been around since the days of Windows 3.1, though they were called Sub-notebooks back then. I have one from about 1994.

Anyways, last November I jumped on the netbook bandwagon with an Acer Aspire One. I have to say that I am very pleased with it. The one I have has an 8.9" screen, 120GB Hard drive, 1GB of RAM, and a 3-cell battery. This makes it one of the earlier ones put out by Acer, there are 10.2" and 11.6" screen versions out now. My biggest gripe about the hardware is rather minor, the rubber feet on the bottom all came off, however this was easily remedied by replacing them with felt. The only other issue I can think of is that the screen and lid are both major fingerprint magnets.

Mine shipped with Windows XP Home Edition on it. Windows XP's interface, however isn't all that well suited for use on such a small resolution display, so I have a dual-boot set up with Ubuntu Netbook Remix (a type of Linux specialized for use with small netbook screens).

I have seen mixed opinions on the future of netbooks, the craze for them has diminished a lot the past few months, however, I think they are here to stay. A new one coming out in October alonside the release of Microsoft Windows 7 is the Acer Ferrari One, a premium Netbook. It will feature AMD's new VISION platform with a low-power Athlon X2 at 1.2GHz, and Integrated low-power ATI graphics. I think the start price for the basic one will be around $630 USD, so it is definitely a premium computer (The 10.2" Acer Aspire Ones retail for around $300), however the price isn't as outrageous as some other brands.