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General Hardware Specifications of this ugly thing:

This laptop is operating under Kernel version 2.6.15

• Needed a 2004.3 LiveCD, 2005.0 didn't detect the keyboard unless Fn-LShift was held down on boot.
   
• Installing Gentoo is just following the handbook
   
• I configured the kernel (I'll post it once I get everything working) manually, as I'm an old geezer who hates genkernel.
   
• If you have a Sempron, do not build your kernel for an Opteron/Athlon64. You'll regret it.
   
• Rebooted into it, discovered that the keyboard is nonstandard interface; toggled the nonstandard input options in Input Devices, rebooted.
   
• Boot

• Networking
  On the first attempt to install Gentoo on this machine, the installer (not myself) skipped an unknown number of steps, and somehow ended up with a kernel which functioned perfectly, save that the network devices were wholly nonfunctional. A stage 1 reinstall remedied this problem. If you run into this, and fix it another way, please inform me.
  
  The Broadcom BCM4306 device in this laptop is compatible with the new, shiny, improbable bcm43xx network driver, and they have install instructions - however, as of when I tried the driver (20060105 in portage), I was able to scan and associate with an access point, but trying to DHCP failed, and using "iwconfig eth1 essid any" after manually setting the essid hard-hung the kernel.
  
  
  
  Oddly enough, sometimes the 8139too driver for the onboard NIC receives and sends no packets, and I've yet to figure out why.
   
• Sound
  On the first attempt to get sound working, we built the snd-atiixp driver into the kernel, but only found a dummy mixer on reboot.
  
  On the second attempt, we built it in as a module, loaded it after boot, and experienced no problems.
  
  David Dewbre informs me that the random problems involved are primarily derived from the soundcard and the modem reporting the exact same identifying data, so depending on which module loads first, sometimes the wrong module loads and then ALSA doesn't know what the fuck.
  
  In other words, YMMV.
   
• PCMCIA/Cardbus usage:
  
  I got this from the PCMCIA instructions for the R3000 series laptops, which employ a similarly weird construction.
  Basically, the laptop uses AMD64 hardware, regardless of whether or not it has an AMD64 processor. You get all of the headaches and very little of the performance. :)
  I've been informed that sometimes, r4000 PCMCIA support works with very little effort, but when it doesn't, I suggest the below steps.
  
  If you've tried the below instructions for 2.6.13+ and they've not worked, add irqpoll to your kernel options. It fixed the weird "cardbus cards are not supported" I was experiencing.
  
  If you're on kernel 2.6.13 or above, it's easy for you...
  
  Just add pci=assign-busses to your kernel's init line and then make sure pcmcia is a boot service and you're golden.
  
  I've had problems with this thing using cardbus cards and the 2.6.14 series of kernels, though, so be warned.
  
  
  If that doesn't work, or you're on an older kernel, use the below steps:
  
  Configuring the laptop for PCMCIA/Cardbus support is a three-step process:
  
  1. First, you make sure you have emerged pciutils, or pcitools, or whatever Gentoo is calling it these days. lspci -vv, and look for the thing that says Cardbus controller.
     Look at the number next to primary=, take note of it.
     
     Do lspci -vv again, and look for devices labeled "PCI bridge".
     You want to look for the one where the number after secondary= is the same as the number you noted above.
     
     Now, take note of the numbers next to the name of the device, and the values next to memory and I/O (ignore the prefetch value, I mean the other memory value).
     
     Make sure you have hotplug and pcmcia-cs emerged, and go into your /etc/pcmcia/config.opts, and add the following line next to the other includes:
     include port [a], memory [b]
     where [a] is the I/O you noted before [it should be in a set of two 8-character numbers, like this: 00000000-0000afff], and [b] is the memory number you noted down [same format as the I/O].
      
  2. Good, you got to step 2.
     This is much easier.
     Go into /etc/conf.d/pcmcia (location varies with distro, I understand Slackware is /etc/rc.d/rc.pcmcia), and replace any CORE_OPTS= line with the following:
     CORE_OPTS="probe_io=0"
     
     (at this point, you should restart /etc/init.d/pcmcia...if it wasn't running, it should be a boot service.)
      
  3. I've been informed you can just edit your bootloader configuration and add "pci=assign-busses" to the options passed to the kernel in order to avoid the below step. Isn't that easier? :)
     
     In grub, to do this, just add "pci=assign-busses" to the end of the line that starts with "root="
     
      
  4. Do not do this unless the above doesn't help:
     
       The fun part.
     Look at the number you wrote down as being next to the name of the PCI bridge from lspci -vv earlier (it should be in the format 0000:00.0, or 0:00.0, or something similar).
     As root, input the following command:
     setpci -s [c] SUBORDINATE_BUS=[d]
     [c] is the numbers next to the bus name, from before, but with only 1 0 to the left of the :, no matter what it was before (IE: if it was 0000:14.4, it becomes 0:14.4); [d] is the hex version of the number between the : and the . (I've included a quick conversion chart below)
     
     00 becomes 00
     01 becomes 01
     02 becomes 02
     03 becomes 03
     04 becomes 04
     05 becomes 05
     06 becomes 06
     07 becomes 07
     08 becomes 08
     09 becomes 09
     10 becomes 0A
     11 becomes 0B
     12 becomes 0C
     13 becomes 0D
     14 becomes 0E
     15 becomes 0F
     16 means you have problems.
     
  
  After all of the above, remove your card and put it back in. There are commands to artificially do this, but they did not function for me.
  Now you check lspci for whatever card you have, and see if anything's found.
  
  If so, add the above setpci line to your system startup script (on Gentoo: /etc/conf.d/local.start), and restart the PCMCIA service if your cards don't work.


• Graphics
  
  This was a tricky thing, and it took some real work and about 9 hours straight of work to figure out.
  
  First of all, do not use any of the 2.6.15-rc kernels. They have a weird mm/swap.c bug that means that if you use the ati driver with them, X won't function correctly (killing windows won't work and will cause a printout of KERNEL BUG ---cut here--- and so on to dmesg, and killing X will hang the system). This is fixed in 2.6.15 final, however.
  Second, leave ATI DRM support in your kernel. Turn it off. Leave /dev/agpgart in, too.
  Next, make sure vesafb isn't built in - if you want framebuffer, use radeonfb.
  Fourth, grab any ati-drivers version from portage above 8.16.xx.
  Fifth, edit your xorg.conf to use Driver "fglrx", and add the following option:
  Option "VideoOverlay" "on".
  Sixth, set your DefaultDepth to 24.
  Finally, boot into X and enjoy 500 FPS or something. :p
  

• Ndiswrapper, for using Windows network drivers under Linux, when no native drivers exist.
• Madwifi, for Linux-native drivers and a convenient list of cards you can go out and purchase if you want nifty things like Master (AKA AP) mode.
• bcm43xx, Linux-native Broadcom wireless driver.
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