There is no need to shrink your Windows partition. On the other hand, this will wipe out everything currently on your hard drive, but it's not so bad if you haven't installed a lot of stuff yet.

There are easier ways to do this all in Linux, but I'll do this from a Windows viewpoint to start out.

1. On a computer with a floppy drive and CD burner, insert the first Averatec recovery CD. Copy everything to your hard drive.

2. Using rawrite (google it) or another disk image utility, burn the BOOTIMG.BIN file to a floppy. Now you can see what files are in there, and edit them.

3. Open up the OEMLOCK.EXE file in a hex editor or Wordpad. Scroll through looking for a bunch of plaintext. You'll eventually find some command lines for running GHOSTOEM.EXE, and there is a password after the "-pwd" parameter. Write it down, it's about 9 characters...I'm not going to put it here, because it's what protects the Ghost images of the recovery install.

4. Open up the AUTOEXEC.BAT file and delete the last line that runs OEMLOCK.EXE.

5. Now burn all the data back onto a bootable CD, using the floppy disk as a boot image. Make sure the disk label is "OEMCD001". You now have the Ghost image password and a modified recovery disk that will let you run GHOSTOEM.EXE the way you want to. For now, let's move on to the Linux install.

6. Get your favorite distribution CDs. DON'T LET THE INSTALL GO TO GRAPHICAL MODE! This is a problem for distros like Redhat. Also, you can't run the install in the default text mode, it'll get all garbled up. For an install like Redhat 9 or Fedora Core, type "linux text video=0x305" and run the install. You will want to have a small boot partition in front, a swap partition of about 512MB, a root partition (I chose around 10 gigs), and then set the remaining space to HPFS/NTFS for your Windows partition.

7. When the install finishes, DON'T REBOOT ONTO THE NEW INSTALL YET! Fedora Core wants to start up with X, that will lock the computer up at this point. Instead, load the first CD or rescue CD using "linux rescue video=0x305" and open /etc/inittab and change "id:5:initdefault" to "id:3:initdefault". Now you can reboot onto the hard drive.

8. Log in as root. One more thing to do before you can run X. Go to http://www.winischhofer.net/linuxsisvga.shtml which is the definitive site for Linux SiS video drivers, such as the one that is in the Averatec 3500. Find the downloads and get the binary for your version of X, or the source if you want it. You can do this in lynx, or if you're installing Fedora Core 2 like I did, simply type "wget http://www.winischhofer.net/sis/sis_drv.o_xorg_gcc3_200804-1.tar.gz". Then type "tar zxvf sis" then hit TAB to complete the line, then hit Enter. Now "cp sis_drv.o /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers/sis_drv.o" and choose y to overwrite.

9. Go to /etc/X11 and open XF86Config or xorg.conf (in vi or something) and all you should need to do right now is go to the "Device" section and change the Driver entry to "sis". Now you can run X, not really 3D accelerated, but snappy enough! From here on out I haven't done any more tweaking of the Linux install, there are other things to look at such as the Digital Edge drivers which may work with the digitizer, the wireless card, etc. There is also a control panel on the SiS driver page listed above, which might get you the ability to do multi-monitor and TV-out stuff.

10. Ok, now back to Windows. Reboot onto the first recovery CD which you modified. You'll now be looking at a DOS prompt. Type "Q:" to go to the CD-ROM drive. Type "cd bin" and then run "ghostoem". You'll now be looking at the Ghost tool with Averatec's name slathered onto every possible crevice. Click OK, then click Local, then Partition, then From Image. Go up a directory, go to the Files folder, and click IMAGE.GHO. Now type the password you found earlier. Click OK. Click OK again. Select the NTFS partition you reserved for Windows. Click OK to start the image load. When the first CD is done, it will ask you for the next one; you can use the regular Averatec recovery CDs and just find the images in the Files folder if it doesn't automatically find them. Now you have a bootable image on disk.

11. So now you need to set up the bootloader to run that partition. If you're using GRUB, go into Linux and edit the /boot/grub/grub.conf file. Add a section at the end with the lines "title Windows XP Tablet PC Edition" and "rootnoverify (hd0,3)" and "chainloader +1". If you have your Windows partition somewhere other than the fourth, change the (hd0,3) accordingly. Now when you reboot, you will be able to choose between Windows and Linux. If you want Windows to be default, change set "default=1" in grub.conf. When you start Windows, it will be just like the first time you turned the computer on. You'll have to reinstall SP2 and all that.

Ok, so I hope this has been helpful to someone. When you find a neat tweak or driver that works well, please post it here; eventually we will be able to put together a nice optimized install configuration here. I recommend a 2.6 distribution like FC2 because the hardware is supported better, the USB chipset for example.

Great info!

:lol: :lol: :lol: :lol:

also if you know what you are doing, which once i get a chance i will right something up, you can create a tabletpc install cd since the i386 dir from the cd is located at c:\windows\i386

Linux Functionality Update for Averatec 3500

I will be adding more of these updates as functionality is tested.

CD Burning: in Fedora Core 2 using K3B, works out of the box on the 3500's CD burner with one caveat: set to TAO (track-at-once) instead of Auto or DAO (disc-at-once). K3B allows you to easily set this burning mode as the default.

Sound: running the Soundcard Detection utility in System Settings will correctly detect the sound card. Sound mixers work correctly, and the microphone is operational.

DVD Playback: due to "problems" most major distributions don't ship with a DVD player. For some reason it doesn't sit well with certain people in the movie industry that you should be able to play a DVD that you own. Anyway, if you download and "rpm -U" the latest version of yum from http://apt.freshrpms.net and then run "yum install videolan-client" you will get a DVD player. This plays DVDs smoothly on the 3500, with working menus and subtitling.

Linux Functionality Update for Averatec 3500

Power Saving: Still rough around the edges. A conflict exists in the graphics driver, which will lock the computer up when coming off standby. There is also no mechanism to dim the LCD to save power; the hotkeys only work in Windows. Some sleuthing might uncover the method of controlling the LCD backlight, as has been done on other laptops. The Cpufreq adjustments work; the AMD Powernow features allow frequencies of approximately 1667MHz, 1400MHz, 1167MHz, and 400MHz. With the appropriate cpu-load monitoring utility you can automatically adjust the CPU speed. It is also possible to set the speed manually (details to be added later). There is a significant power savings when the CPU is running at reduced speed. At the full 1667MHz, Linux reports approximately 3400 BogoMips and there is a total current drain on the battery of nearly 3.3A!!! Needless to say that will only get you an hour or so. When the speed is reduced to 400MHz, Linux reports approximately 760 BogoMips and the current draw reduces to about 1.8 amps. This will get you about two hours without suspending and while running at full LCD brightness. Surprisingly there is not much of a noticeable slowdown when running at 400Mhz, when using standard office-type applications. On heavy applications like rendering OpenGL screensavers in software, the speed difference is readily apparent.

Wireless Adapter: Ralink supplies a Linux driver, both in binary and source form. First attempt at binary installation failed; source installation wanted configured and built kernel. After rebuilding the kernel, the rt2500 module does load, sees nearby wireless networks, and can be configured with their included utility. Unfortunately my current setup is unstable and I was not able to actually test connectivity at this time. However it should be a matter of adjusting the kernel correctly and adding the right parameters in the init and network scripts.

Maladroit: I sent you a PM, but either you didn't notice it or were too busy to reply. And that's OK.

My question is about the location of AUTOEXEC.BAT (Step 4). It's not on the CD, unless it's in some disk image file that I don't know about. Does that mean I have a faulty copy of the CD? Would that mean it should work the way it is, because it doesn't automatically run OEMLOCK.EXE? Or does that mean they updated the recovery CD so that you can't do this?

I'm going to try the CD the way it is. I doubt it will work, but it's worth a shot.

You used rawrite to put the bootimg.bin file on a floppy? and then modified the autoexec.bat file on the floppy? Try to see if it's hidden, it should definitely be in there,

If it boots to DOS, but doesn't run OEMLOCK automatically, then you're OK. Just look through the OEMLOCK file until you get the password you need, and run GHOST manually.

Oh... riiiiight. I'm such a n00b.

Thanks Maladroit. I appreciated the jolt in the head.

I couldn't get my parents' CD writing program to work (Roxio...blech), so I just booted from a USB floppy drive.

It's copying the image to the partition as we speak.

Thank you, tabletquestions.com!

So you've set up multiple partitions, and were able to find the Ghost password, and have the image being transferred to a partition instead of a drive, correct? Just want to make sure it's doing what you think it's doing...good one with the USB drive there, too. I haven't picked up one myself, but I'm beginning to find instances where it could be handy.

Yes, everything is working perfectly! Thank you so much. I've got my WinXP Tablet on one partition and my Linux on the other. It was the whole recovery disk thing that kept me from putting *nix on my 3500 from the start.

It makes me want to invest in a USB floppy drive as well. I was lucky enough to have it, being at my parents' house for Thanksgiving.

Just an FYI, I have successfully installed SuSE 9.2 on my 3500. I did a writeup to submit to linux-laptop.net it can viewed on my website

Rob S

__________________
Rob at robsell.com

Nice little write-up you've got there. Can't wait until we get tablet drivers for Linux!

Ubuntu worked without ANY special set-up. I just ran with the default settings and it worked like a charm! Incredible! I am in love with Ubuntu (so far)!

Tablet Driver: I'm not sure if this will help any, but I the company that makes the actual screen for the 3500 is UC-LOGIC. (http://www.uc-logic.com/). Most people probably already knew that. But I thought it might help in case you haven't. I haven't poked around the entire site, but if you go here you can get some technical specifications. Looking at the INF file averatec gives you, it looks like it's using the serial port connection, even though the name of the file is "UCSerUSB.inf." It does do something with ACPI, I'm not entirely sure what, though, it looks like it has something to do with the pen:

; ACPI
[UCPenACPIInst.NT]
CopyFiles = UCPen.NT.Copy, UCPenSerial.NT.Copy

[UCPenACPIInst.NT.HW]
AddReg = UCPenACPI.NT.HW.AddReg, SerialInst.NT.HW.AddReg

[UCPenACPIInst.NT.Services]
AddService = UCPen,0x00000002,UCPenServiceInst,UCPenEventLogIns t
AddService = Serial,,SerialServiceInst, SerialEventLogInst

Looks like it's using an NT service. I don't know how well those work out on Linux. You might take a look at the INF file yourself; I've never looked at one before and I'm pretty shaky when it comes to knowing exactly what's happening there.

Adobe Illustrator: Version 10.0 Worked perfectly for me, following the instructions here. It seems to be a little sluggish but nothing you can't work around. I assume Photoshop and other Adobe products would install just as easily, but I haven't tried any yet.