Urgent help requ'd: HP Compaq nx9105 and Knoppix

[WoofDeF]

:?: Hi & Seasons Greetings to all

I need to buy a new laptop urgently and am considering the HP Compaq nx9105 with AMD 3000+ processor. It's on sale and appears to be good value by European price standards.

But they won't even boot it up in the store on WinXP, let alone allow me to boot from a Knoppix livecd - it's a buy-it-in-the-box job, or not at all (12-month warranty). Options are limited where I am.

Can anyone tell me if they have successfully booted Knoppix on this machine?????

Google reveals that it will apparently run SuSe 9.1, Mandrake10, Gentoo, and Gentoo livecd (albeit with considerable tweaking and hacking in some cases). However I can find nothing about Debian or Knoppix running on it.

Really appreciate any help if you have access to one of these laptops.

EDIT: It is said this is basically an R3000Z-series laptop with 64-bit disabled and less on-chip cache. There is anecdotal evidence that R3000Z will boot Knoppix here: http://home.gagme.com/greg/linux/compaqr3000z-fc3.php

And R3000 can definitely be coaxed to run Debian http://cmb.phys.cwru.edu/kisner/linux/compaq-r3000/

But is this good enough to assume Knoppix will boot on nx9501 -- after all it is not exactly the same machine?

Info on running SuSe, Mandrake etc on nx9105 is here: http://www.linuxquestions.org/hcl/showproduct.php?product=1563

Specs are here http://www.hp.se/includes/library/19609.pdf

[j.drake]

I have't tried Knoppix on an HP laptop, but I have run it successfully (live CD and PMI) on HP desktops. One HP oddity that you need to be aware of is that HP sets up a recovery partition, to enable reimaging back to factory specs. Oddly enough, the recovery partition is hda1, and the Windows C: partition is hda2.

jd

[WoofDeF]

I tried knoppix-3.2-MiB-11b livecd on this in the store and it wouldn't even boot into failsafe - I'm really pissed off as I want this laptop.
Any suggestions?

[j.drake]

A lot has changed since 3.2. The boot process changed with 3.4, so try something more recent. Kanotix has great hardware detection. I would burn a BHX disk and try it before giving up.

jd

[WoofDeF]

Yes I noticed elsewhere that Kanotix is said to boot on another AMD XP-M laptop -- so it might conceivably work.

On the r3000 forum someone said that Knoppix up to 3.6 would definitely not boot on this, but another poster said 3.7 might.

[rgarden]

I downloaded a Knoppix 3.7 distro on December, and I really like it. What I like best is that I put the CD into my dell CPXI laptop with an Orinoco Classic Gold "B" pcmcia wifi card, and 3.7 saw everything except for a small usb mouse I travel with. If Knoppix did not automatically see everything, I wouldn't be using it. Which is more important to you, the PC, or the OS ? TRY BEFORE YOU BUY !!!!

8)