Compaq 3000 Laptop

fcgreg

I think I know what may be causing your "black screen" issue with the nVidia drivers. This one was a little hard to find...

First, add the following line to the "Device" section for your nVidia card in your X/Xorg config:

xante · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 229

Hail to the fcgreg, you have discovered the problem. Thank you so much. My annoyance level with my laptop has dropped 10000% today...got my burner, video and my touchscreen fully configured.

xante · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 229

Okay, so I am new to this whole wireless thing and I have a few more questions for those that have it working.
I followed a few help guides and got dmesg to output my broadcom card. Shortly after that I did an iwlist wlan0 scan and it output 2 wireless networks in my area (the second one was a bonus

) but I fiddled around and somehow I lost both of them in the scanning process. I know I should have at least one access point through my home router. My question is, can anyone help me clear any settings i may have set unintentionally to not show these (the only ones i remember typing are "iwconfig wlan0 key 12345123451234512345123451" and "iwconfig wlan0 channel 11" and "iwconfig wlan0 essid network1")

fcgreg · Posted: Fri May 13, 2005 8:23 pm Post subject: Reboot will drop the settings

xante · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 229

Okay, so my next question is (I have rebooted and lost all settings etc...) how would I scan or find my wireless router?
And how would I set that up...or is this to off topic.

fcgreg · Posted: Sat May 14, 2005 1:26 am Post subject: Nothing special is required

Aside from setting up the Broadcom wireless drivers, there is nothing special needed to get your wireless configuration working. In other words, use the procedures in the Gentoo-Wiki or earlier in this thread to get it working like normal. For example, see the section labeled "Configuration using wpa_supplicant" on this page:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Wireless_Configuration_and_Startup

Regarding the Broadcom drivers:

Use NDISWrapper (in Portage) to load the 64-bit drivers for your Broadcom wireless (internal) card. There is good information on how to do this all over the place (in the forums and I think also in the Gentoo-Wiki).

You can find the drivers in many places (like from Linuxant) -- just make sure to use the 64-bit version.
_________________
Greg T.

xante · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 229

The drivers are loaded, it says they work fine...I figured out that the button on the front to control wireless does turn it on and off through hardware...so I had to turn it back on. I followed the wiki guide for wpa_supplicant, and iwlist scan outputs 2 available networks, one with a key and one without. As for your "just work" method, it does not work here. Can anybody help?

tamarian · Posted: Sun May 15, 2005 12:07 am Post subject:

I thought this might be of interest to HP notebook owners:

http://www.tomshardware.com/hardnews/20050512_124421.html
http://linux.slashdot.org/linux/05/05/14/2047250.shtml?tid=173&tid=106

fcgreg · Posted: Mon May 16, 2005 5:37 am Post subject:

xante · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 229

The "just work" comment was from earlier in this thread. But you are right, its not the hardware im looking after. I know the AP works cause my friends windows wireless connects just fine. Im not sure how I would go about even starting to connect to the access point though. In all the documentation Ive read they show that if you specify an essid name on the command line like I have (posted up further), it shows it when you run iwconfig <device>. Mine doesnt seem to do that...So either Im extremely stuck on that part of the configuration, or Im overreacting on an insignifcant detail.

EDIT: Okay, so decided to go with what you said about disabling the wep key...It works wonderfully (in fact im getting a faster ping from google with the wireless than with wired. So...now how would I make a wepkey work with this?

fcgreg · Posted: Tue May 17, 2005 10:25 pm Post subject: Almost there -- you need WEP now

Excellent! I'm glad we've gotten this far. Now all we need is a working WEP configuration and all should be well.

Steps to completion:

These commands differ slightly depending on your AP setup. However, it should give you the basic idea.

- First, you need to re-enable WEP on your AP.

- Second, you need to associate your wireless interface with the AP by setting the "essid" in the configuration. The command should be something like the following:

xante · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 229

I followed your examples...and they failed.
When I try to set an essid with an encryption key, it never sets it...but when they dont have an encryption key, the essid is set nicely...example:

fcgreg

Actually, the first thing you're seeing is normal. When you enter the "essid" of an encrypted AP, listing the configuration will NOT show the essid yet. This is because you actually aren't associated with the AP -- the encryption key hasn't yet been entered. All you've done so far is notify the wireless config that it should be associated to that particular network.

The proper essid only displays when your card is successfully associated with the AP. In other words, after you enter the proper encryption key (after step #1), and the wireless card properly associates with the AP, you will see the essid populated properly during a config dump.

Therefore, it appears there is a problem with the WEP key you are entering. Or there may also be a problem with the security configuration on the AP, but I doubt it since it was working with other clients. Almost always when this happens it is caused by you entering the WEP key incorrectly in your config.

By default you are supposed to be entering the key in Hex format. If you need to enter it in ASCII format (although this is slightly unusual), you need to enter it with an "s:" at the beginning. For example:

xante · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 229

Thanks a bunch...I'll post elsewhere from here on in. I do have a question about these presarios regarding hardware...There is a connection on the right hand side of the laptop by the onboard ethernet port that I have no idea as to what it is. Im not talking about the svideo plug, but the other one. Does anyone know what this connection is for?

fcgreg · Posted: Thu May 19, 2005 8:10 am Post subject: That is for the docking station

If you're talking about the thin, wide plug on the middle-right side of the Presario, this is the docking-station interface. The HP docking stations are designed for an angled presentation, allowing you to use the laptop display as an elevated monitor/display. Therefore, they've gone to the interface style that you see on the side, with a cable/plug system that is relatively easy to attach/detach and move around, if needed.
_________________
Greg T.

xante · Apprentice Joined: 23 Aug 2004 Posts: 229

Does anyone have a splash image coming up _with_ boot? If so...how did you do it? When genkernel failed saying that it couldnt compile a bzImage so large, I tried manual kernel configuration which went smoothly until I find that it does not load the image until /etc/init.d/splash sets it up after boot (when the login has already been displayed).
Ill post my grub.conf when I get home.

grub.conf