When:
No information

Experience:
I have tested all Zeta versions.. from RC1 to Zeta R1.. Zeta works better than ordinary BeOS but it still has some hardware problems regarding this laptop, the most critical one is that the Ati driver don't output anything on the inbuilt laptop panel, you'l need to have an external monitor connected. RC1 actually gave me a working laptop panel but unsupported graphics.. just 8bit colors.. but the other Zeta versions just gives me a pitch black screen upon booting and it does not work changing the different modes in the screen-prefs app.

Update (2005-08-10):
After running Zeta a while with my external monitor it seems that the AC'97 driver makes the kernel go nuts sometimes.. It will go kernel panic some times and i think this is related to the ac97 driver but im unsure at the moment.. more information about this shortly..

I have also got a updated driver for the ATi Mobility 9700 chip, that worked even worse than the previus one :) Zeta didn't find it at all, could be a minor thing.. but i presume i will get another updated update soon :D

Update (2005-07-22):
I have now installed Zeta R1 and I still got the problem with the inbuilt laptop panel..

Hardware that does not work in R1

• Inbuilt 56k modem does not work.


• Ati mobility 9700 requires that an external monitor is connected in order to get a working screen, when a monitor is connected you'l get full 2D support though but the Laptop panel is still not working.


• USB mouse does not work


• Inbuilt WLAN does not work out of the box at bootup, although i will look futher into this since I should be able to get it working via ndiswrapper since it's working in Linux with this handy little tool.

Rating:

3/5

When:
No information

Experience:
Ordinary BeOS does not work very well on this laptop.. the Ati mobility 9700 card is unsupported, the driver might work if you modify the src and recompile it with the correct ID's but you'l still need to have an external monitor connected.. the panel just goes pitch black upon boot.

The soundchip is unsupported, the 56k modem aswell as the USB mouse.

I do not recomend installing R5 or lower versions of BeOS on this laptop!

However.. a little sunshine in the cloudy sky.. You can get networking up and running if you install the BONE beta and then grab the Broadcom NetXtreme Gigabit Ethernet 100mbit driver from BeBits.. not fun using BeOS in unsupported graphics mode though :)

Rating:

1/5