Be sure to check out my hardware compatibility database which was created to help others to choose and configure hardware under numerous OSes.
I am in the process of installing various OSes onto this laptop and I figured I'd post some of the troubles and
successes I've had. I am by no means the best resource for information on
these systems, considering I have only been using BeOS and QNX for a few months
regardless yet I know how much I use pages like this to get hints on system compatibility and setup.
Installation of Linux, BeOS, and QNX on a Compaq Armada 1750
This particular Laptop has a 4gb hard drive, an ATI Rage 3D LT Pro AGP
video card, and an ESS1869 soundcard.
I am now using a 3com 3C460B USB network card. It works under both linux and BeOS and costs around $10.00. It has a pegasus II chipset I believe and while QNX supports the Pegasus I it does not yet support the II supposedly.
To summarize where I am now,
Linux supports the soundcard, video card, the 3c574 nic card, and the 3C460B completely.
BeOS support the video card and the 3C460B, but I am having problems with the sound card,
although it partially recognizes it (UPDATE:I haven't tried this yet but here is a Sound Driver), and also I am
having problems with the nic cards (even though one is recognized, with errors though)
QNX supports the video card, the 3c575 nic card, and I am havings problems with the sound card ( althought I can get some sound out of it)
I also have two pcmcia nic cards a 3CXFE575BT and a 3CCFE574BT at my disposal.
I began by partitioning the drive (I left the 14mb compaq diagnostics partition intact)
I had problems placing QNX on an extended partition so I made sure to keep it on a primary.
Here is an approximation of my partition table
| Type | Size |
| Primary | Ext2 | 2gb |
| Qnx | 1gb |
| diagnostics | 14mb |
| Extended | BeOS | 1gb |
| Linux swap | 128mb |
Linux installation
I began by installing a the latest release of Slackware linux 7.1.
I installed the a (base system), n (networking), and d (development) disk sets.
After the install I used the 3c574 card for network access.
I then downloaded the 2.4.0 kernel.
I made sure to compile in the following options
- General Setup->PCMCIA/CardBus support->CardBus support
- Network device support->PCMCIA network device support->3Com 3c574 PCMCIA support(module)
- Character devices->/dev/agpgart
- Character devices->PCMCIA character device support->PCMCIA serial device support
- Character devices->PCMCIA character device support->CardBus serial device support
- Console drivers->Frame-buffer support->VESA VGA graphics console
- Sound->OSS sound modules
- Sound->100% Sound Blaster Compatible
I compiled the sound card as into the kernel so I had to add append="sb=0x220,5,1,5" to lilo.conf.
I next downloaded and installed the pcmcia-cs package from sourceforge.net
The config involved running ./Configure and following the instructions, I will post details later this week.
I then downloaded cvs from cvsome.org
From there I proceeded to download Xfree86 4.0.2 from the cvs tree.
The only problem I had compiling, which I haven't had time to figure out the details, was
while X tried to compile the X print server it would fail with an error.
To fix this I added ...(will include once I am near my laptop) to the ... config file.
Installing QNX RTP 6.1
I used the free iso image on www.qnx.com
If you have problems booting QNX 6.0 (it freezes at detecting EIDE devices) then disable DMA and/or Disable the PCMCIA/PCCARD Enumerator during the boot process. Space bar -> F11 -> F3
Sound add the following to /etc/rc.d/rc.local if it does not automatically work.(make sure it is executable)
io-audio -dsb ioport=220,irq=5,dma=1,dma1=5
Orinoco Gold PC Card
io-net -dorinoco network=NETNAME
Page last updated July 8, 2002
Feel free to email me concerning any errors or questions you may have.