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Summary, and new info on Compaq Armada:

The 100MHz Toshiba 420CDT, 24MB RAM, has chips 6550 video (Xvesa) and sb 
sound that by default is io 240 irq 10 dma 1 but can be changed in BIOS. 
Full screen nice looking text.  It works with Xvesa and xfbdev and vesafb 
and SVGA X server, and has headphone, mike, line in and vol dial. Mono 
speaker, probably stereo jacks.  High quality keyboard and case, no boot 
problems, very nice computer.  Needs swap space.

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> The 166Mhz laptop DELL Latitude LM 166SM 72MB RAM has neomagic 
MagicGraph 128 V/ZV 40K SVGA BIOS with 1MB RAM and full-screen scrawny 
text.  It works with vesafb and xfbdev but crashes with Xvesa or SVGA X 
server.  To use xfbdev you must first boot with a framebuffer kernel, 
having made device fb0.  The SVGA server from XF86 does not support this 
neomagic chip despite claims that it does.  xfb server also requires a 
framebuffer kernel and fb0 and is three times the size and memory usage. 
There is no BL3.5 framebuffer 2.2.26 kernel (unless maybe the 'big' kernel 
supports framebuffer).  Use my 2.2.16 (zimage.fsm) or 2.4.31 - for USB 
storage - (bzimlsbf.431) for framebuffer and sound support.

All three laptops have ISA sb sound that requires io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1 
(not changeable in this BIOS) when insmodding or specified with loadlin 
when booting (also needs a kernel with built-in sound support).  The DELL 
has no vol control or line in. Stereo speakers.

The A20 line often fails if you warm reboot but is okay cold rebooted.

No CD-ROM boot.  SBM (smart boot manager) crashed with error message. 
Maybe this is related to the CDs I tried to boot from using syslinux? 
(UBCD DSL Knoppix).  It won't boot David Moberg's syslinux 1-floppy USB 
linux either. A couple newer DELL computers also won't boot live CDs with 
syslinux. (I should recheck this info).

Win98 recognized and loaded drivers for this video and sound.

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The 233MHz Compaq Armada 1573DM (32MB RAM), circa 1998, 32MB RAM has chips 
6554 video (vesafb, xfbdev, Xvesa, probably SVGA X server).  Nice looking 
text but 3/4 the size of the screen. ISA sb sound, same settings as the 
DELL.  play-mp3 and sox play work. headphone, mike, and two-button vol 
control.  Stereo speakers.

Kernel 2.2.26 must be booted with 'nomce' at the end of loadlin or it will 
get a machine check exception.  Therefore you cannot boot 2-floppy 
BL3.50.  2.2.27 should work (nomce is the default).  2.2.16 and 2.4.31 
work.  Linux will not warm reboot - power off and on again.

Boots DSL and Knoppix (syslinux/isolinux) with DSL 2 or Knoppix 2 to 
bypass X, because of only 32MB memory.  Also the USB syslinux floppy.


None of them worked with playmidi - could not open /dev/sequencer even 
with opl3.o.

With vesafb, these all have nice looking text (Toshiba 640x480, others 
800x600), full screen.  Vesafb disables svgalib.

They all have pcmcia support (I used wireless with the Toshiba and the 
DELL), parallel ports, serial ports, but only the Compaq has a USB port. 
The Toshiba has internal CD-ROM and plug-in floppy, the DELL has a choice, 
and the Compaq has both built in and is larger and heavier.


The Toshiba is small and simple to set up, has no machine check exception 
problems, no A20 or warm reboot problems, no video problems.  I don't 
recall if it boots from a CD - probably too old - or with syslinux.  I 
think Steven has one of these 420CDTs.

A slightly newer Toshiba would not work with orinoco wireless and it has a 
boot problem and Windows won't work with modem or network card in it - 
probably something is failing.

What laptops have people got to work with BL3.5?  What features do not 
work?  Video, sound, ethernet, warm reboot.....?

Compaq Presario won't boot Knoppix.

Sindi