HARDWARE HP 2133 Mini-Note PC

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] Introduction

Wikipedia has an article on:

HP 2133 Mini-Note PC

The HP 2133 is HP an inexpensive sub-notebook with the marketed intent of targeting the educational sector. It is an obvious competitor to similarly-designed notebooks such as the ASUS Eee PC.

It is small (10.04" x 6.5" x 1.05"), comes with a VIA C7-M processor and a 1280 x 768 8.9" WXGA display, and has either ample hard drive storage or 4 GB of Flash-based storage.

[edit] Hardware

There are five models of the HP 2133, all with very similar hardware configurations. In fact, two models differ only by their OS offering: Windows Vista or SuSE Linux.

[edit] Essential specifications

• Processor: 1.0, 1.2, or 1.6 GHz VIA C7-M ULV processor
• Memory: 512 MB, 1 GB, or 2 GB 667 MHz DDR2
• Storage: 120 or 160 GB hard drive at 5400 or 7200 RPM, or 4 GB Flash drive
• Display: 8.9" diagonal WXGA capable of 1280 x 768
• Graphics: VIA Chrome 9
• Audio: ADI1984HD, stereo speakers/headphones/line out, integrated microphone
• Networking: Broadcom BCM5788M Gigabit (10/100/1000) NIC, Broadcom 4311AG (802.11a/b/g) or 4311BG (802.11b/g) wireless, Bluetooth optional
• Touchpad
• Integrated webcam
• 3 or 6 cell battery

[edit] lspci

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 Host Bridge
00:00.5 PIC: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller
00:00.6 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 Security Device
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
00:02.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller (rev 80)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. P4M900 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. Device 5372
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b0)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b0)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev b0)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 90)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237S PCI to ISA Bridge
00:11.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8251 Ultra VLINK Controller
00:13.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A Host Bridge
00:13.1 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237A PCI to PCI Bridge
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. Chrome9 HC IGP (rev 01)
02:00.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4312 802.11a/b/g (rev 02)
07:03.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5788 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 03)
80:01.0 Audio device: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA High Definition Audio Controller (rev 10)

[edit] Installation

[edit] Installation media

The HP 2133 does not have an optical drive, so this will be a little exciting. The easiest Gentoo method is to build a 2008.0 (beta 1, at time of writing) LiveUSB disk and boot with that. Thankfully, this is amazingly easy!

A script exists as an attachment to https://bugs.gentoo.org/show_bug.cgi?id=208499 that automates converting the LiveDVD ISO to a bootable format direct to a disk. At time of writing, the only suitable media is livedvd-i686-installer-2008.0_beta1.iso, so a large USB drive is necessary.

A couple steps are necessary to prepare the disk, but nothing major. The below steps assume you have a USB disk of at least 4 GB in size.

Partition your USB disk:

fdisk /dev/sdX

In fdisk, delete ('d') all existing partitions on your target USB disk, create one new ('n') primary partition of type FAT32 (type b), mark it active ('a'), and write ('w') the partition table.

Download the script linked from the bug (the author of this wiki page used the attachment dated 2008-03-03 18:34) and start it:

./liveusb.sh --format livedvd-i686-installer-2008.0_beta1.iso /dev/sdX1

This will go through the long process of copying the necessary files to your USB disk.

Your USB disk should now be bootable. Plug it into the side of your HP 2133, turn it on, and press F9 to get to the boot menu. Select the USB drive (it will be named as the device, but it is likely the middle option of the three) and you should see the familiar grub shell.

You must enter the grub commands to boot by hand, unfortunately:

kernel /boot/gentoo root=/dev/ram0 init=/linuxrc dokeymap looptype=squashfs \
       loop=/image.squashfs cdroot vga=791
initrd /boot/gentoo.igz
boot

From this point on, you can continue as you would any normal Gentoo installation. Caveats, or HP 2133-specific notes, are all that appear below, so use the Gentoo Handbook!

[edit] Core Gentoo installation

[edit] Chapter 3

The 2008.0 beta 1 media does not seem to support the wireless (bcm43xx?) so one must install either with the wired connection (which works automatically) or via a networkless install.

[edit] Chapter 4

The hard disk is /dev/sda1. It may be partitioned as desired.

[edit] Chapter 5

The processor in the HP 2133 is a VIA C7-M. As per Safe Cflags, the below /etc/make.conf options are appropriate:

CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=i686 -mmmx -msse -msse2 -msse3 -O2 -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"

[edit] Chapter 7

You should grab at least gentoo-sources-2.6.25-r2, as 2.6.25 has better support for the wireless driver, and 2.6.25.1 (included in gentoo-sources-2.6.25-r2) has a compatibility fix specific to the b43 on VIA hardware. Accept the ~x86 keyword for the package, if necessary.

sys-kernel/gentoo-sources

[edit] Finishing

There's nothing special left to do to get a basic install running. Further components will be set up from your working installation, so reboot into your newly installed Gentoo!

[edit] Support

It's easier to install support for a number of items after you've booted and are off the Gentoo LiveUSB. Install these at your leisure.

[edit] Sound

[edit] Output

The card is an HDA VIA VT82xx and is supported by ALSA in the kernel, but seemingly only by the generic Intel HDA driver, so not much is available. Instead, use the development drivers provided in Portage:

=media-sound/alsa-headers-9999
=media-sound/alsa-driver-9999

media-sound/alsa-headers **
media-sound/alsa-driver **

emerge alsa-driver
/etc/init.d/alsasound start

This should enable master, PCM, microphone, and speaker mixers, with a couple input sources. See general ALSA/sound documentation to proceed.

[edit] Input

Untested.

[edit] Touchpad

The touchpad is your basic Synaptics touchpad. Use the HARDWARE Synaptics Touchpad guide to configure it. Additionally, the button under the spacebar to disable the touchpad should work out of the box.

[edit] Video

[edit] Framebuffer

VIA has their own open source drivers supporting the chipset in the HP 2133 (VN896), but the author could not get them to work, and they may conflict with the openChrome drivers (which may be significant if planning on running X). The generic vesafb driver in the kernel will suffice; vga=791 is a suitable argument in this case.

[edit] X.org

The 2D portion of the graphics chipset is supported in X by x11-drivers/xf86-video-openchrome, so select 'via' as your video card for X:

VIDEO_CARDS="via"

The driver name to use in xorg.conf is "openchrome". Note that openchrome does not yet support 3D on the chip, so DRI and DRM are not yet functioning — dragging windows in X may be slow at times, etc.

A custom mode line for the laptop panel may need to be provided. The following is care of http://en.opensuse.org/VIA:

Section "Modes"
  Identifier "modes"
  Modeline  "1280x768" 92.15 1280 1352 1488 1696 768 769 772 799
EndSection

...

Section "Monitor"
  Identifier "Monitor"
  ...
  UseModes "modes"
EndSection

[edit] Wireless

net-wireless/b43-fwcutter is a firmware tool necessary for the HP 2133 wireless. At time of writing, it is masked ~x86, so add an exception if necessary.

net-wireless/b43-fwcutter

Install it.

emerge net-wireless/b43-fwcutter

Now that the firmware extraction tool is installed, you must get the firmware. The firmware must be extracted from the Windows drivers, and this cannot be automated, due to the nature of Broadcom license. You can download it from legal sources by visiting http://linuxwireless.org.

Follow the 2.6.25 (or greater) version's directions for the b43 driver, since support for the HP 2133's BCM4312 is more mature, akin to the following:

mkdir /lib/firmware
export FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR="/lib/firmware"
wget http://mirror2.openwrt.org/sources/broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
tar xjf broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5.tar.bz2
cd broadcom-wl-4.150.10.5/driver
b43-fwcutter -w "$FIRMWARE_INSTALL_DIR" wl_apsta_mimo.o

Keep tabs on this site, you may have to do this more than once when kernel drivers update.

If you reboot or re-modprobe ssb and b43, you should see the following in your kernel log:

b43-phy0: Broadcom 4311 WLAN found
...
Broadcom 43xx driver loaded [ Features: P, Firmware-ID: FW13 ]

Congratulations, you now have wireless. It is wlan1, configure it as you would any wireless device. It supports a number of encryption methods, so you should be able to throw it at a number of 802.11b/g routers (802.11a is currently unsupported by b43). Remember, the switch on the right side of the front of the machine activates/deactivates the wireless, so you may need to press the switch to start it. Recent userspace tools should allow you to bring up/down the interface purely with the switch.

[edit] Outstanding issues

[edit] Sound

• Are all mixers there now?
• Input totally untested

[edit] Video

• Never got official VIA framebuffer driver to work
• X.org openChrome driver does not support DRI/DRM.
• Webcam entirely untested

[edit] Links

• http://h18000.www1.hp.com/products/quickspecs/13009_na/13009_na.html — HP 2133 specifications page
• http://www.wikipedia.org/wiki/HP_2133_Mini-Note_PC — HP 2133 at Wikipedia