Jacek Pliszka's page about HP Pavilion ZE4100

First look to my main page about notebooks Many hints from my ZE4101 may be applicable to ZE4100 as well.

This is a very technical page with hints how to get better video speed http://www.hussar.demon.co.uk/linux/hpze4125.htm This is another useful page about ZE4100 and some other, potentially interesting pages:

I like ZE4100 despite no HP Linux support (though they at least tried to answer some questions, Toshiba did not try even that). Mine has wonderful 15" 1400x1050 screen - very nice, worth the extra $125 I paid. Also it has a lot of things on-board: ethernet, modem, S-video out, firewire (working in Linux!) and contrary to many modern notebooks it has parallel, serial and ps2 ports!! I am especially happy about PS2 port as many devices require power from it (USB 2.0 2.5" cases or USB 2.0 cardbus cards). The only thing I really dislike is the occasional noise.

I suggest newest kernel (at least 2.4.20 or 2.5.63 or newer) as there are some fixes for ALI chipset. Try it out and let me know (I do not have time recently).

Shortly:

Problems:

after upgrading 2.4.20 to try firewire PCMCIA stopped working ... This is O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller - strange it worked, same with ZE4101 did not. It works for this guy with 2.4.21-pre3-ac4.
For some reason screensaver does not work for me
- this is in Windows: while on battery, DirectDraw does not work

Working:

video: ATI IGP 340M, use at least 4.3.0, recent kernel with ATI IGP support (I have 2.4.25). Here is my XF86Config. You may have to install radeon_drv.o for X (it is different from the kernel one!). I have 2D acceleration, full-screen, Xvideo support. To have for example Kohan AG full screen I run another X server like this:
```
\rm -rf /home/pliszka/.kohan/wineserver-kubus.grambling.net
export DISPLAY=:1.0
(X -layout 1024x768 :1 & ); sleep 1; kohan_ag
```
USB 1.1
PS2
touchpad (turns off if mouse in PS2 port) - from synaptics, scroll/wheel works - just pick Microsoft Intellimouse with no 3rd button emulation - works great for both touchpad and my wheeled Logitech mouse
sound - works. though mixer settings are not remembered/set well. In order to use volume keys I did the following, I added these two lines to my .Xmodmap:
```
keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume 
```
and then assigned these keys under GNOME to /usr/bin/auxmix -v-3 and /usr/bin/auxmix -v+3 respectively. Works fine for me.
Modem AC-link HSF Conexant, Linux drivers - gett older ones if you want 56K - newer free ones are 14K only.
Extra keys - the keys at the top can reprogrammed under Linux to do something - I tried two: globe and envelope and they worked more info see here
USB floppy - works fine, you can boot Linux from it!
ACPI - I can get battery info with 2.4.25. Just cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/state
firewire is working with kernel 2.4.21-pre5-ac2 !!! TI TSB43AB21 chip. It works fine with a cheap USB2.0/firewire case, 21MB/s speed. However I can not get my Cendyne/Pioneer DVD-R DVD burner to work with it - but I just tried once for 2 minutes. Also - be very careful the way you connect as I noticed that in order for the enclosure to work during the first connection I have to:
1. ensure ohci1394/sbp2/sd_mod are not loaded
2. connect the enclosure and turn it on
3. load ohci1394, sbp2 and sd_mod
When I first load the drivers, then connect - I am getting some error messages and nothing works.
Irda - works with 2.4.23 kernel, All I had to do was to set the correct port in /etc/sysconfig/irda: the port is /dev/ttyS1 (though previously I had to do some setserial command I do not remember). Then I use gammu to connect to my cell-phone.

Not tested:

parallel
serial
ACPI suspend-to-RAM, software suspend-to-disk etc.
special touchpad driver here (This was formerly Mobilix but due to stupid German courts and greedy Asterix&Obelix lawyers it was forced to change its name, please do not buy any Asterix&Obelix products as the money you pay to them are used in a bad way)

Red Hat 7.3 installation hints

At the initial Linux text screen enter: "linux nopcmcia" - this is just for installation. During X configuration pick Generic VESA driver and 1280x1024 resolution, you will configure 1400x1050 later - manually.

Also there is a project with various utilities for HP notebooks here

some folks on the discussion lists suggested adding idebus=66 as kernel option. But I do not see any improvement - hdparm -tT gives exactly same result with and without it.

For other, possibly useful hints see ZE4101 page.

Jacek Pliszka

Last modified: Fri Mar 12 23:53:12 CET 2004