Why is this laptop cool?

  • It's _reasonably_ affordable
  • 2.0GHz Intel ® Mobile Pentium ® 4 Processor-M
  • 15.2" widescreen LCD display
  • DVD/CD-RW combo drive
  • 32MB nVidia GeForce4 420 Go Graphics
  • Built-in 802.11b wireless networking
  • 2 IEEE 1394 (FireWire ® ) ports 2 USB 2.0 ports
  • Sonopür™ 24/192 digital audio system
  • S-video/TV-out
  • CD/DVD Playable with computer off
  • Service/Support - I had to send mine back to vpr Matrix for service about a month after I got it. It was the fastest and smoothest repair I've ever experienced
And yes, being x86 based and designed like a Titanium PowerBook G4 also makes it cool. If you want to rant about it leave me alone and go here. ://macslash.org

Related Links:

How to configure Linux on the vpr Matrix 200A5 Laptop

Andrew D. Goodfellow
andrew@goodfellow.net
Last Updated: 07/21/2004
Warning: I take no responsibility for anything that happens to you or your machine using this information. Use at your own risk!

Display
Networking
Modem
Audio
Advanced Power Management / ACPI

I am running RedHat 8 on the Linux Kernel 2.4.18-18.8.0. This is all I have tried with this laptop and probably all that I will until I upgrade the Kernel or RedHat.

In my humble opinion the first thing you need to do is tear off those miserably ugly "Intel Inside" and "Made for Windows XP" stickers that come on it and sticker this box up right! This year my company StudioNorth, is celebrating its 25 year anniversary so I swiped one of the stickers our designers made and stuck it there in place of them.

Display

Video Driver

So that Linux will recognize your video card you need to get and build the latest nVidia driver files. Here are the ones that are the most current as of me writing this article. Just follow the instructions in the readme.

README
NVIDIA_kernel-1.0-3123.src.rpm
NVIDIA_GLX-1.0-3123.i386.rpm

To see if there are more up to date drivers follow this link: nVidia Linux Display Driver Archive

Video Settings

Next you need to modify your XF86Config file settings. This file will most likely be found in /etc/X11. The key is the modeline, no other laptops have this widescreen display yet. SUSE Linux actually has a slick utility that you can give a resolution setting to and it will spit out the correct modeline. This is the modeline you need for the 200A5, it goes in the "Monitor": section of your XF86Config file.

   Modeline "1280x854" 85.26 1280 1296 1552 1792 854 854 861 892

Here is a sample XF86Config that will work right away. It needs some further tweaking to be smooth but I'll leave that up to you.

Sample XF86Config file.
Here is a background/wallpaper to aid you in confirming your resolution settings.

Some feedback from Steve Freitas, it worked a little different for him:

"Your XF86Config file didn't work for me, it complained that it couldn't find any usable screens. So I ran xf86config, let it do its thing, added your modeline, changed the driver to "nvidia," edited the default mode and that was that."

Networking

802.11b Wireless Networking

The internal chipset is by LAN-Express, I found zero support for it. However I found on of all places, HP's support site, a post by Willam G. James that worked great.

" It is supported via the orinoco driver. The trick is the chipset is connected via the pci bus. Add this line to your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file:

modprobe orinoco_pci

reboot and you should be able to configure your wireless connection via the network configuration tool in your linux distribution.

I have tested this only with Red Hat 8. "

If anyone wants it here is a link to the post as well: HP Support :: LAN-Express drivers?

Modem

Embedded Modem Driver

Version 2.7.14 has been tested and is known to work; NOTE: Version 2.7.14 doesn't build against the 2.5.69 kernel -- it seems to support only the 2.4.xx kernel. All the versions since Feb 2003 can be found here: http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink/ or I have a local copy of 2.7.14 here: slmdm-2.7.14.tar.gz

Just follow the instructions found in the archive. The driver claims to support "HAMR5600 based AMR/CNR/MDC/ACR modem cards on the ALI 1535 southbridge" (/usr/src/modem/slmdm-2.7.14/README). WinXP says "Agere SoftModem Version 2.1.14, AMR ALi1535p MB" -- even though lspci says something else (ALi Corporation Intel 537 [M5457 AC-Link Modem]).

Audio

Here are some instructions I received from Ryan C. Gordon. I still have yet to try this:

"If you want audio on your laptop, you should choose the "trident.o" module. If building your own kernel, this is "CONFIG_SOUND_TRIDENT", which can be enabled with the "Trident 4DWave DX/NX, SiS 7018 or ALi 5451 PCI Audio Core" under "Sound Card Support"."

Also some feedback from Steve Freitas, I have yet to try this as well:

"Regarding sound, I started down the path with ALSA, but after it didn't work I looked for a few more clues, and the solution was deceptively simple:

modprobe trident

That was it. Sound works well now, although the headphone port is muted and I can't figure out why."

7/21/2004 - Finally someone figured out the audio. Thanks to Jason Fuchs!

The secret to getting the headphone jack to work is to turn down the sound on IEC958 playback. Do NOT mute, or disable it. Just turn down the volume all the way. In ALSA mixer, mine is listed as IEC958 playback AC97. If you are using gnome, in the Gnome ALSA mixer, make sure IEC958 box is checked, and turn IEC958 volume down all the way. I don't know how to make this setting permanent, and need to make the adjustment upon every reboot.

Advanced Power Management / ACPI

In progress...

Some feedback from Ed Herr(vpr.matrix@charter.net), I have yet to try this as well:

Use ACPI instead

I have ACPI working on the 185B5 vice using APM. It is pretty easy to get it up and running with Debian if you compile your kernel with patches from the ACPI project and enable ACPI in you kernel config. The patches are available at: http://sourceforge.net/projects/acpi

I am running Debian unstable with a 2.4.20 kernel patched with acpi-20021212-2.4.20.diff and the acpid daemon monitoring events. Seems to work like a champ... temperature, power switch, lid switch, battery, AC adapter... all report events as advertised and are in /proc/acpi.

If you're running GNOME the only ACPI battery applet I've found is under GNOME2.2 (which, I should add, once up and running is a vast improvement over it's predecessors)."