Re: [gentoo-user] Dell Linux desktop

On Tue, Jul 08, 2008 at 09:12:53AM -0400, Matthew R. Lee wrote
> I'm thinking of buying a dell Ubuntu desktop (Inspiron 530MT) for my lab. The
> university has an arrangement that can get me a discount. I have a question,
> has anyone bought one of these and installed gentoo on it?  I sure it will
> work, I'm just wondering if there are any tweaks that dell have made to the
> Ubuntu install to make certain components work, that may be more difficult to
> replicate with the gentoo install.  I'm going for the default set-up plus
> extra memory, that's a Pentium dual-core processor E2180 1MB 2GHz, 2GB RAM,
> 250GB SATA, 20" widescreen, Integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3100,
> Integrated 7.1 Channel Audio
> Any comments would be appreciated

  I have a couple of Inspiron 530 machines.  Both came with Vista.  One
major tweak was necessary, namely the BIOS boot setup.  Out of the box,
Windows ran, but the Gentoo install CD couldn't figure out any of the
CD/DVD/harddrive, and the keyboard doubled each character *LITERALLY*,
so that you could not type in any recognizable commands.  Both of these
problems were solved with the following actions which I cut-n-paste from
a post I made to this list last summer...

***WARNING***
You will *NOT* be able to boot Windows Vista in the following setup
(One... Two... Three... awwwwwwwwwwwwww)

- reboot and go into BIOS setup ({F2} key)
- go to "integrated peripherals"
- change sata mode from IDE to RAID
- save and reboot ({F10} key)
- go into BIOS setup ({F2} key). Yes again.
- comment; if you watch carefully during the boot, you may notice the
  "AHCI BIOS installed" message.
- go into "boot device configuration".  It will behave slightly differently
  thanks to "AHCI BIOS" being installed.
- set boot device priority.  Note; if you have more than 1 CD/DVD, you need
  to specify them separately, if you want to be able to boot off both of
  them. There are only 3 available slots, so I sacrificed the floppy.  This
  left me with the 2 CD/DVD drives and the hard drive as the boot order
- save and reboot ({F10} key)

  Now run the usual install.  One thing to note in kernel settings (I
use "make menuconfig").

Device Drivers  --->
< > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support  --->
<*> Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers  --->
<*>   AHCI SATA support

  The 3 items above
  1) turn off ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support, which is no longer needed
  2) open up the ability to select SATA support
  3) supports the AHCI BIOS that is installed in RAID mode

  The most recent Inspiron 530's are OK for their built-in ethernet
chip.  My newest Dell 530 uses the e1000e driver.  You may notice a
thread by me about some problems with eth0.  Ignore that thread, it's
for the older Dell machines.

-- 
Walter Dnes <waltdnes@××××××××.org>
-- 
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