So I’ve continued my work on my laptop this last week. Fiddling around a bit and I found a few bits. First off that no matter what I do, I cant possibly get a USB drive working because the udev package for debian requires me running 2.6.12 or better (And I’m at 2.6.8 ). Of course if I upgrade, I loose my precompiled ndiswrapper drivers. Regardless of that, I decided that I would upgrade to the latest and greatest (2.6.14.3).
First was a new kernel. Semi-following the debian howto . I downloaded the kernel and unpacked it to /usr/src/linux-2.6.14.3 . I had to install a few packages so I could use make menuconfig (its what I’ve always used, and I didnt have the QT crap for make xconfig). I selected all the stuff I needed, which boilded down to: ALSA, USB (and hotplug), NVIDIA stuff, VIA support (for my sound card), wireless network, wired network — and a few other assorted pieces which I cant remember. Then when in that directory I ran make-kpkg -rev Custom.1 kernel_image (You can change Custom.1 to what ever you like).
Installing the kernel. Wasnt quite as easy as I thought it would be. Ran dpkg —install /usr/src/kernel-image-XXX which installs the kernel, but due to some strangeness with 2.6.14+ it didnt create an initrd image. Debian-Administration.org had a good article on this which boils down to: Install “yarid” package (I had no problems on my machine which runs testing). Run mkinitrd.yaird -o /boot/initrd.img-2.6.14.3 2.6.14.3. Then update-grub and its all set.
I’ll document getting ALSA/ESD working next time. If your intrested the kernel package I made (that seems to be working really well for my Averatec 6100 / 6130HS (what ever the exact model is) with support for SMP/HT/Pent4 and the averatec hardware) is posted and downloadable right here.