Linux on the Compaq Evo N400c: Hardware description

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3. Hardware description

Physical Dimensions: The Evo N400c is just 27.5 cm (10.8 inch) wide and 22.6 cm (8.89 inch) deep. But it is the 2.29 cm (0.9 inch) height and 2.91 lb weight that really likes me! The shell around the LCD panel is made of magnesium alloy, and is black with a shiny silver box on one side (Multiport).
System Overview: The Evo N400c has a 700MHz Intel Pentium III with SpeedStep technology. 100MHz external bus with 512KB of L2 cache.; It has 128MB, 100ns, EDO DRAM built in and is expandable to 512MB (two slots).; It has a 2.5 inch, 9.5mm, 20GB Compaq MK-2016GAP ATA hard disk.
System Busses: The Evo uses an internal PCI bridge Intel Corportation 440BX/ZX (66Mhz) and a Texas Instruments PCI1211 CardBus bridge.; It also has an internal ISA bus which goes to the hard disk and ESS Technology sound chip, and other system devices.
Video: The video chipset is an ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage P/M Mobility AGP 2x. This is an integrated PCI chip with 8MB of SDRAM built in. This all runs through a really bright 12.1 inch (diagonal) Active-Matrix (TFT) LCD panel capable of supporting 1024x768 resolution up to 16.7M colors.; This chip is fully supported by the Mach64 server included in XFree86 versions 4.1 and above.
Sound: The sound chipset is the an ESS Technology ES1988 Allegro-1. The Evo N400c has just a single built-in speaker, but has a stereo headphone jack and volume controli buttons, which is really nice.; In Linux it can work in native mode with the new 2.4.13 and later kernels' maestro3 driver.
Communications: The Evo N400c comes with an integrated PCI 56K (V.90) modem plus 10/100 NIC Combo.; Important for Linux users, this is a Lucent LTWinmodem, supported by kernels 2.4.x
Interfaces: The Evo N400c comes with the following interfaces: - 1 Enhanced Parallel Port EPP/ECP - 1 Serial Port - 1 External Monitor - 1 TV-out - 1 Headphone/Line-out - 1 Microphone in - 1 RJ-11 (modem) - 1 RJ-45 (NIC) - 1 Infrared Port (4Mb/s support) - 2 USB Ports
Ethernet: The integrated combo card NIC is an Intel EEPRO100 supported in the current versions of 2.4.x and 2.5 kernels (some old 2.4.x kernels and 2.5.x kernels would need a patch.
PCMCIA: There is one PCMCIA Type-II PC-Card slot on the N400c that supports both 32-bit CardBus and 16-bit PCMCIA Cards.; This slot use the Texas Instruments PCI1211 CardBus controller chip.
IrDA and USB: The Evo N400c includes a built-in IrDA 2.0 Fast InfraRed port and a standard USB port (UHCI).; I have not worked on the IrDA port so I do not know if it is supported by the current (2.4.x) linux kernel.; USB (UHCI) is supported in the 2.4.x kernels. The USB port is recognized and supported by linux drivers A lot of information can be found at The Linux USB Project Check out information in that web page for more details.
Floppy Drive: There is not floppy drive shipped with the Evo. There are two optional floppy drives available: - One USB floppy drive (I actually bought that one and it works under linux).i - One floppy drive which needs the MultiBay Optional accessory.
Mobile Expansion Unit(MEU): I do not have The MUE expander which allows you to add a DVD-ROM Drive, DVD/CD-RW Combo Drive, CD-ROM Drive, Optional floppy drive, etc... (all them sold separately).
Port Expander(Multiport): Integrated MultiPort expands functionality via user removable MultiPort Modules. MultiPort modules can provide integrated wireless communications and enhanced secutiry features. The MultiPort interface is based on the USB 1.1 Standard Specitification.
Battery and APM: The standard battery in Europe is a Lithium-Ion "Smart Battery", 14.8 V 1960 mAhr. The APM circuits in the machine can "talk" to the battery and get very accurate readings of charge from it.; This is fully supported under Linux, and really works well with apmd and KDE battery applets!
CD-ROM: There is no CD-ROM drive included with the computer. Compaq sells several DVD, CD-ROM, etc as an accessories. I have a Panasonic KXL-810A instead since it is a really nice CD player and uses a standard (and supported) PCMCIA SCSI Host Adapter. Apart from that I have an Adaptec 1480 SlimSCSI CardBus SCSI card which is also supported at linux.