HP Armada 7400 Software Installation Manual page 8

Installation of Linux on Compaq Armada 7400/7800 Portables
The IBM 14GB hard drive (model DCYA-214000) has 27,609,120 sectors. We use the formula above to solve for
cylinders. Set LBA=27609120, number_of_heads=240(from the BIOS translation), head=239(heads are numbered 0 to
239), number_of_sectors=63, sector=63(sectors are numbered 1 to 63). Solving for cylinder we get 1825. Cylinders are
numbered starting with zero, so the total translated number of cylinders is 1826. By entering 1826 for the number of
cylinders and returning to the main fdisk menu, fdisk will now allow access to all of the hard drive.
The boot: parameter to enter during Linux installation for each of the above drives is (without quotes):
The Linux fdisk limitation has been corrected in the new 2.2.X kernels.
The second Linux utility with a hard drive limitation is LILO (Linux Loader), a utility to boot multiple operating
systems. LILO is a great boot manager but it has to live with the limitations of the PC architecture. Alpha, Sparc and
PowerPC systems do not have these hard drive limitations. Since LILO was designed as a general boot manager to work
on floppies and hard drives it only uses the original INT13 BIOS interface not the extended INT13 code which is not
implemented on every older PC. Therefore, the boot code of every OS LILO handles must be located below cylinder
1024. The best way to use LILO and Linux on >8GB drives is to create a small, 4-16MB, partition completely located
below cylinder 1024. This partition should be mounted under Linux as /boot. By default, LILO stores its map and other
information /boot directory. Creating this directory as a separate partition within the 1024 cylinder limit means LILO
can then boot Linux no matter where the rest of the Linux system is located. Refer to the LILO documentation that
explains these issues in much more detail. There are alternatives to LILO, such as commercial boot managers. Another
alternative, loadlin, does not modify the boot records on the disk. Loadlin is a program that runs under DOS and can boot
Linux. All Linux distributions come with loadlin even if they do not offer it during installation. The SuSE 6.0 manual
has section describing loadlin installation under DOS and Microsoft Windows 9.x.
Video Support
Armada 7400 and 7800 products use the S3 ViRGE/MX (86C260) with 4MB of video RAM and all models use TFT
LCD panels which support resolution up to 1024x768 pixels. The S3 ViRGE/MX is located on PCI Bus 1 that operates
at 66MHz. The X-Windows support for S3 ViRGE/MX is in the SVGA X server and not in either of the two S3 drivers.
The Linux X is an Open Source version of X, which is developed by the Xfree86 project. S3 ViRGE/MX support
requires Xfree86 version 3.3.2.3 or later. RedHat 5.2 has the aforementioned version and SuSE 6.0 has the latest version,
3.3.3.1.The latest X software can be obtained from www.xfree86.org. Also, RedHat, www.redhat.com, and SuSE,
www.suse.com have updates available on their ftp sites.
Audio Support
Armada 7400 and 7800 uses the ESS1879 sound chip. Both RedHat Linux 5.2 and SuSE6.0 include a driver, which will
allow basic sound support. This driver currently supports basic audio functionality under Linux; therefore the extra
features of the ESS1879 are not available. For example, older Linux kernels included support only for the ESS688/1688,
which do not have full duplex, integrated 3D-audio, hardware volume control, or a DSP port. Newer kernels include
support for the ESS1878, which differs from the ESS1879 in that the 1878 don' t have integrated 3D-audio. Also, the
Armada notebooks include hardware volume control handled by the system firmware. This volume control works under
any OS but audio drivers must be specially modified to provide feedback to application programs that the volume has
been adjusted. For example, adjusting the volume using the hardware control will not be reflected in the status of any
audio mixer program. This is limitation also exists in Win* unless the Compaq specific ESS driver is used. The
hardware resources used by the ESS chip can be read or changed using BIOS setup. The defaults are "base I/O= 0x220,
IRQ= 5, DMA= 1, MPU401 I/O= 0x330". The kernel module sound driver RedHat uses is based on an older, free Open
Sound System (OSS) driver. SuSE comes without sound support compiled in the kernel; instead SuSE provides two
versions of the commercial OSS driver. The commercial OSS driver is available from www.4front-tech.com. In
addition, ALSA, Advanced Linux Sound Architecture is available at www.alsa-project.org.
Internal Modem Support
Linux has support for controller based modems. The controller-less or "winmodem" is not supported. The Armada 7400
and 7800 models with 333MHz or faster processors use a 56K V.90 winmodem and the only driver Compaq currently
0206-0799-A
10GB: ' linux hda=1298,240,63'
14GB: ' linux hda=1826,240,63'
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