[I sold this machine in a spasm of cleaning up old seldom/never used computer junk right after I retired. I never moved beyond Debian Eitch on it.]
I purchased this machine to replace the 390 as a 'spare' machine. The natuve OS was Windows 98 or 2000, but it came with Windows ME™ installed, and I have decided to keep that, for now. (Call it nostalgia, or masochism.) I did make room for a small PC-DOS setup, and of course, a Linux partition. I am again using the old BootMagic™ program as a boot manager. Debian Etch (as of 12/06) boots from LILO installed in the local partition. The machine came with a grab bag of extras, including a small USB 10/100 ethernet plug, which turns out to be a Realtek 8150 chip, and works fine, but most of the time for ethernet I'm using a Linksys WPC11 version 3. (The machine also came with a version 4 card, which works fine in Windows™ but not at all in any out-of-the-box linux.)
The key reason I chose this machine is that the separate Ultrabase™ makes the unit very versatile. The CPU by itself is very light, but has no spindles. There is a custom floppy port for an external drive (which I have added) and there is a space for either a floppy or second battery in the Ultrabase™. There is another bay in the base which can hold a CDROM or a DVD or a CDRW/DVD combo. Mine came with a CDROM and I've bought a DVD. Since the PII runs at 366 Mhtz, it should be able to play DVD's OK. The video is basically the same as the 390, but the audio works much more cleanly on the CS46XX. XOrg and ALSA work out-of-the-box, and MPlayer and other goodies from the debian-multimedia.org site seem to confirm the little devil's chops as a multimedia system.
APIC seems to work as designed on this system. The initial initrd boot image seems to load very slowly (much more slowly than on the 390, for example) but after that, everything behaves as expected. The only other quirk is that the dreaded Windows ME™ seems to fail every time on first boot, maybe because I'm not hibernating? On the other hand the first linux boot after Windows™ isn't always clean, either: Sometimes the ALSA seems to step on the PCMCIA and the WPC11 won't come active.
The biggest physical liability is that the screen bezel is cracked a bit at one corner and the hinge connection is a little flaky, so you have to play with the screen hinge a bit to find a stable position where you don't get various psychedelic manifestations flashing on the screen. All in all, however, the light weight (without the base), full VGA screen and borderline-but-sufficient CPU make this much more useful 'spare' than the 390 is/was. Not bad for $81 on eBay.
version
Linux version 2.6.17-2-486 (Debian 2.6.17-9) (waldi@debian.org) (gcc version 4.1.2 20060901 (prerelease) (Debian 4.1.1-13)) #1 Wed Sep 13 15:56:30 UTC 2006
cpuinfo
processor : 0 vendor_id : GenuineIntel cpu family : 6 model : 6 model name : Mobile Pentium II stepping : 10 cpu MHz : 365.072 cache size : 256 KB fdiv_bug : no hlt_bug : no f00f_bug : no coma_bug : no fpu : yes fpu_exception : yes cpuid level : 2 wp : yes flags : fpu vme de pse tsc msr pae mce cx8 sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr up bogomips : 730.92
pci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX Host bridge (rev 03) 00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 440BX/ZX/DX - 82443BX/ZX/DX AGP bridge (rev 03) 00:02.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1450 (rev 03) 00:02.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1450 (rev 03) 00:05.0 Multimedia audio controller: Cirrus Logic CS 4614/22/24 [CrystalClear SoundFusion Audio Accelerator] (rev 01) 00:06.0 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ISA (rev 02) 00:06.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 IDE (rev 01) 00:06.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 USB (rev 01) 00:06.3 Bridge: Intel Corporation 82371AB/EB/MB PIIX4 ACPI (rev 02) 00:07.0 Communication controller: Agere Systems WinModem 56k (rev 01) 01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Neomagic Corporation NM2200 [MagicGraph 256AV] (rev 20)
modules
Module Size Used by ipv6 211424 14 nvram 7304 1 uinput 7936 1 button 6544 0 ac 4868 0 battery 9220 0 nls_iso8859_1 4224 3 nls_cp437 5888 3 vfat 11520 3 fat 45852 1 vfat dm_snapshot 15772 0 dm_mirror 17616 0 dm_mod 48696 2 dm_snapshot,dm_mirror loop 13832 0 hostap_cs 52116 0 hostap 97796 1 hostap_cs ieee80211_crypt 5376 1 hostap orinoco_cs 15748 1 orinoco 34452 1 orinoco_cs hermes 7296 2 orinoco_cs,orinoco snd_cs46xx 75336 0 gameport 13448 2 snd_cs46xx snd_ac97_codec 82336 1 snd_cs46xx snd_ac97_bus 2304 1 snd_ac97_codec snd_pcm_oss 35616 0 snd_mixer_oss 15616 1 snd_pcm_oss pcmcia 33468 2 hostap_cs,orinoco_cs firmware_class 9344 1 pcmcia snd_pcm 71432 3 snd_cs46xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss snd_seq_dummy 3844 0 snd_seq_oss 27392 0 shpchp 33816 0 snd_seq_midi 8096 0 snd_rawmidi 21792 2 snd_cs46xx,snd_seq_midi snd_seq_midi_event 6656 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi snd_seq 42576 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq_midi_event pci_hotplug 26420 1 shpchp mousedev 10400 0 tsdev 7360 0 snd_timer 19716 2 snd_pcm,snd_seq snd_seq_device 7692 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq i2c_piix4 8464 0 i2c_core 19216 1 i2c_piix4 irtty_sir 7552 0 sir_dev 14724 1 irtty_sir nsc_ircc 20240 0 yenta_socket 23948 4 rsrc_nonstatic 11904 1 yenta_socket pcmcia_core 36368 5 hostap_cs,orinoco_cs,pcmcia,yenta_socket,rsrc_nonstatic snd 45668 10 snd_cs46xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_seq_oss,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq,snd_timer,snd_seq_device evdev 8960 0 soundcore 8800 1 snd irda 155324 3 irtty_sir,sir_dev,nsc_ircc intel_agp 21020 1 snd_page_alloc 9480 2 snd_cs46xx,snd_pcm agpgart 29232 1 intel_agp crc_ccitt 2176 1 irda 8250_pnp 8704 0 psmouse 34184 0 rtc 11444 0 pcspkr 2816 0 floppy 52868 0 parport_pc 31524 0 parport 31944 1 parport_pc serio_raw 6276 0 ide_generic 1408 0 [permanent] ide_disk 14976 6 piix 9220 0 [permanent] generic 4356 0 [permanent] ide_core 107940 4 ide_generic,ide_disk,piix,generic uhci_hcd 19464 0 usbcore 108544 2 uhci_hcd thermal 12680 0 processor 21440 1 thermal fan 4484 0
interrupts
CPU0 0: 31181 XT-PIC timer 1: 332 XT-PIC i8042 2: 0 XT-PIC cascade 4: 181 XT-PIC pcmcia0.0 7: 2 XT-PIC parport0 8: 1 XT-PIC rtc 9: 1 XT-PIC acpi 11: 40 XT-PIC uhci_hcd:usb1, yenta, yenta, CS46XX 12: 149 XT-PIC i8042 14: 2094 XT-PIC ide0 NMI: 0 LOC: 0 ERR: 0 MIS: 0
Document maintained by rgm at fabbnet.net. last update: September 25, 2009