Continuing on my theme of things that no one really cares about but someone might find useful, I present to you: The HP ZE4200 Running Linux

Personally, I did my install using Debian. Some guy did it with gentoo and someone else seems to think knoppix works as well.

So here's what you have to do:

• Disable Legasy USB in BIOS


• Take out any PCMCIA cards
  (PCMCIA is the Bitch of this system)


• Do the base install of Debian however you like. I had success with both Woody from a pile of CD's and Sarge doing a net install.


• Here's the stupid part:
  
  Get the source to kernel 2.4.22 (Yes, I know this is a downgrade if you used Sarge.)
  
  If you don't know the basics of recompiling your kernel, get to know the Kernel-Build-HOWTO, or better yet, find a friend who does.
  
  The important things to remember when building the kernel for this machine are:
  
  
  • Disable ACPI (Otherwise the machine will hang early on in the boot process)
  • Disable PCMCIA (Because the PCMCIA in this machine is a bitch)
  
  Build and install your new kernel. Once again, if you don't know how to do this, get to know the Kernel-Build-HOWTO, or better yet, find a friend who does.


• Once you're booted into your shiny new 2.4.22 system, get yourself the source to pcmcia-cs. The newest version as of today is pcmcia-cs-3.2.7. I used pcmcia-cs-3.2.5. Using pcmcia-cs as a standalone instead of using the PCMCIA support in the kernel isn't too hard, but there is information available. Once again, if that's not enough, find a friend who know's what they're doing.


• Edit your '/etc/default/pcmcia' such that "PCIC=i82365". This is the whole point of using the old kernel and standalone PCMCIA: yenta_socket Just Doesn't Work(tm) with this machine.


• That's it really for basic setup...you probably can use a newer kernel, but good luck with anything newer than 2.4.x. You should also be able to use newer versions of pcmcia-cs, but once again, your mileage may vary...good luck


• XF86Config-4 (Goes in /etc/X11/)
• Kernel Config (Put as linux-2.4.22/.config to avoid having to configure)

For more information on Linux Laptops, check out TuxMobil - Linux on laptops, notebooks, PDAs and mobile phones.

Last updated: Sunday, 20-Sep-2009 16:55:45 CDT

Contact me at randall dot will at gmail dot com

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