Install Report for Compaq V3133AU (V3000 Series) AMD Laptop

[This is the final version of my document]

Mostly everything works out-of-the-box on the system. Some things (graphics, sound) require some love to get working properly. Some (wireless) fail to work at all until the proper drivers are installed. Nothing has completely failed to work so far.

Note: I chose a AMD Turion for the 64-bit capabilities, as Core 2 Duos weren't available. However, based on experience installing Kubuntu Edgy on a friends V3000 series laptop with the Intel Centrino chipsets, everything seem to work completely out-of-the-box in every respect. Unless you really need 64-bit computing, I'd recommend going for Intel-chipset based laptops to make things easier.

Operating System: Ubuntu Edgy 6.10 64-bit. The laptop comes installed
with FreeDOS. GNOME 2.16.1 used on the system. Linux Kernel 2.6.17-10-generic SMP.

Processor (AMD Turion 64 X2, TL-52, 1.6Ghz)
Works. Dynamic frequency control works too, however, powernow-k8 seems to switch to only two frequencies (800/1600Mhz) despite ACPI reporting that the processor supports 8 speed steps.

Dual-core = Smooth computing.

On Board Graphics (nVIDIA GeForce Go 6150)
nv driver was not detected for the card, started up in VESA. With nv, hsync/vsync frequencies need to be specified, after which the maximum resolution of 1280x800 works. Font corruption seems to occur randomly for the nv driver.

I currently use the nvidia driver, which seems to disable 1280x768 (which works with the nv driver). Switching to a VT causes problems with the display, with lots of flickering. I'm yet to resolve this problem.

BrightView totally sucks in my opinion. Oh the glare!

S-Video: Not tested

External VGA
Works in dual-head configuration with the nvidia drivers (1.0.8776), see Appendix P (Configuring Multiple X Screens on one card) in the nVIDIA documentation for details. Note that some false alarms seem to go off, with another card supposedly being detected by X, but both the Device instances must use the same BusID.

I've not tried to get "copy out" functionality working on the external display, for now, it is a separate display.

Hotkey functionality (Fn+F4) doesn't seem to work or most likely isn't configured.

Unable to get this working with nv driver.

Expansion Card Type 3: Not tested

Integrated 10/100 Ethernet: Works.

USB2.0: Works.

Firewire (IEEE1394)
Works. Linux supports IP over Firewire! (400Mbps!!!!) See the eth1394 module. Update: I tested this out, works like a charm, but I've achieved only a peak of 17MB, with the hard disk spinning like crazy :D

SD/MMC Card Slot
Detected by the sdhci driver in 2.6.17 and above kernels, but I've been unable to get it to work with the only MMC card that I've tried. 2.6.18 supposedly has much better support, and I've heard rumours that only SD cards work. Will try this out soon. Update: SD cards work fine. It's the MMC cards that do not work.

PCMCIA
Not tested

Bluetooth
Works. Use the bnep+PAN module to get ethernet over bluetooth! This is lovely! KDE seems to have excellent BlueTooth applications, GNOME is still lacking in this area.

The command hciconfig shows you your Bluetooth devices, for which the wireless switch must be on.

Wireless (Broadcom 4312)
Works with ndiswrapper 1.28, which I had to compile for my kernel. Seems that Edgy ships with a broken ndiswrapper (Invalid argument errors). The driver is from the the SP33008A driver package
from Compaq.

The bcm43xx driver fails to extract firmware from the driver package, and does not work with my card.

Note that ndiswrapper was originally in Dapper Drake (32-bit) picking up the 64-bit driver, and obviously failing to run it.

Trackpad
Works. Use the gsynaptics (note the 's' at the end) package to get a utility to manage it.

Keyboard
Works. Including all the multimedia keys and special keys! However, some keys (like Mute) don't seem to reflect the current status (or they don't turn orange).

Audio
You'll need ALSA 1.0.13, with the disable_msi=1 parameter, to get the headphone working on the nVidia chipsets. That also seem to have stabilized things. Embedded Microphone (LCD Panel), headphones and speakers all work. Front-panel microphone not yet tested, but shows up in ALSA mixer, so should work.

DVD-Writer+CD-ROM
Works.

Power/Battery (6-cell)
Works. Displays status (charging, etc.) with charge remaining as well as time remaining.

65W AC Adaptor works.

Internal Modem
Not tested, though Edgy does show a ppp0 connection.

Suspend
Works. Edgy refused to show the Suspend button, probably because Dapper settings were imported with my home directory. Wiping out ~/.gconf/ helped restore the button (though this was done for other reasons).

The only flaw is that the trackpad comes back disabled, but a single button press gets it working again.

Hibernate
Works. However, on restore, the muted Speakers are unmuted, and headphones stop working. I must do a /etc/init.d/alsa force-reload to get everything working again.

See also: http://hpwiki.cactii.net/hpwiki/Presario_V3%2A%2A%2A for more install reports on this series of laptops.