Debian GNU/Linux on HP-Compaq nc6000 laptops

The nc6000 is a 5-lb, 1"-thick Centrino notebook from HP. It's intended primarily for business users. This page will tell you how to get the nc6000 hardware working under Debian GNU/Linux.

Software:

• Linux kernel 2.6.9 (kernel config)
  • software suspend 2
  • madwifi (CVS version, 12/09/2004)

• XFree86 4.3.0.1 (XF86Config-4 file)
  • XFree86 Synaptics driver 0.13.6

• acpid

Working:

• Graphics (ATI RV350 Mobility Radeon 9600 M10, PCI 1002:4e50). Works fine with XFree86 4.3.0.1 using the radeon driver. XV support works fine. The kernel AGP works OK, but the open-source drivers don't support 3-D acceleration yet. The binary drivers probably do, but I have not tried them.

  Section "Device"
          Identifier      "Generic Video Card"
          Driver          "radeon"
  EndSection
  

  The Radeon framebuffer console (CONFIG_FB_RADEON) works fine. Use vga=791 on your kernel command line to get 1024x768 @ 16bpp.

• Network (Broadcom BCM5705M_2 Gigabit Ethernet, PCI 14e4:165e). Works fine with the tg3 driver.

• Sound (Intel ICH4 AC'97, PCI 8086:24c5). Works fine with ALSA intel8x0 driver. The "mute" LED comes on if you turn off the "External Amplifier" in any ALSA mixer, which also mutes the built-in speakers. If you want to use headphones, make sure "External Amplifier" is muted and "Headphones" aren't.

• Touchpad (Synaptics PS/2). The normal X mouse driver works with no extra tweaking, but if you want taps, drags, and scrolling, you'll need the Synaptics XFree86 driver. If you're running Debian, just install the xfree86-driver-synaptics package and configure your XF86Config-4 according to the instructions in /usr/share/doc/xfree86-driver-synaptics/README.Debian. I tweaked the configuration to disable horizontal and vertical scrolling and to decrease pointer sensitivity:

  Section "InputDevice"
    Driver        "synaptics"
    Identifier    "touchpad"
    Option        "Device"        "/dev/psaux"
    Option        "Protocol"      "auto-dev"
    Option        "LeftEdge"      "1900"
    Option        "RightEdge"     "5600"
    Option        "TopEdge"       "1800"
    Option        "BottomEdge"    "4300"
    Option        "FingerLow"     "25"
    Option        "FingerHigh"    "30"
    Option        "MaxTapTime"    "180"
    Option        "MaxTapMove"    "220"
    Option        "VertScrollDelta" "100000"
    Option        "HorizScrollDelta" "100000"
    Option        "MinSpeed"      "0.01"
    Option        "MaxSpeed"      "0.10"
    Option        "AccelFactor" "0.0007"
  EndSection
  

• USB (Intel UHCI and EHCI, PCI 8086:24c2, 8086:24c4, 8086:24c7, and 8086:24cd). Works out of the box.

• Wireless (Atheros AR5212 802.11abg, PCI 168c:0013). Works using madwifi (CVS version, 12/09/2004).

  You might want to set ath_pci up to load at boot time. Add ath_pci to the /etc/modules file, and add ath0 to your /etc/network/interfaces file:

  auto lo eth0 ath0
  ...
  iface ath0 inet dhcp
          pre-up /sbin/iwconfig ath0 essid <name-of-network>
  

  If you use several different networks and your wireless card supports ESSID scanning (the Atheros does), you can use my essid-pick script to choose from a prioritized list.

  iface ath0 inet dhcp
          pre-up /usr/sbin/essid-pick ath0 <network1> <network2> ...
  

• PCMCIA/CardBus (Ricoh, PCI 1217:7223). The Yenta CardBus driver recognizes it. I haven't tried plugging in any actual cards.

• IDE/ATAPI (Intel, PCI 8086:24ca). To enable DMA, use the Intel PIIX support.

• ACPI. ACPI works well enough to display battery status, detect special buttons (the power button and lid switch) and shut down cleanly. Suspend works using Software Suspend 2.0.0.78. Sleep (S3) fails miserably.

• Pentium-M SpeedStep. Works fine with the cpufreq driver. I'm using the "ondemand" scaling governor in the kernel to control the speed and gnome-cpufreq-applet to display the current speed.

• Mute, volume, and sleep keys, which come through as scancodes 160, 174, 176, and 223. Map them with xmodmap, and configure your window manager so that they run interesting shell scripts.

  xmodmap -e keycode 223 = F20
  xmodmap -e keycode 160 = F15
  xmodmap -e keycode 174 = F16
  xmodmap -e keycode 176 = F17
  

• The lock and presentation buttons. They generate the keyboard extended scancodes e00a and e008, which the kernel doesn't recognize. Use setkeycodes to map them to valid scancodes, use xmodmap to map those scancodes to X11 keys, and then configure your window manager to do something with those keys.

  sudo setkeycodes e00a 89 e008 90
  xmodmap -e keycode 123 = F18
  xmodmap -e keycode 128 = F19
  

  The wireless button doesn't seem to generate any key codes, but it does somehow disable the wireless hardware. Hit it again to re-enable the wireless, but you may have to ifdown/ifup to get it operational again.

Not working:

• ACPI sleep. It seems to sleep OK, but it never wakes back up.

• SD/MMC card reader (Micro OZ711Mx MultiMediaBay, PCI 1217:7110). Inserting an MMC card has no visible effect in dmesg or cardctl.

• The wireless LED. I have no idea how to light it.

Not tested:

• DVD/CDRW (model DW-224E-A).

• Modem (Intel AC'97, PCI 8086:24c6).

• Bluetooth support.

• IrDA support.