FreeBSD on an HP Pavillion ze4530us

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I searched all over the Internet for information on running *NIX on a ze4530 series Hewlett Packard laptop to no avail. So, I decided to try my luck at getting it to work.

I began with a standard installation, selected everything to be installed and installed the ports collection. The installation went fine and the network interface was detected and properly configured with no problem.

Then I installed X and began to configure it. I ran XFree86 -configure, which automatically detected most of the settings that I needed and created a configuration file. I moved that file it generated into /etc and renamed it to XF86Config. I did startx and the touchpad would not work. So, I looked at the configuration file and remembered from a previous install on a different model that I had to add two important lines to my configuration file.

to the XF86Config file, add:

Option   "CorePointer"
Option   "ZAxisMapping"  "4 5"

By adding the above two lines to the XF86Config it allows you to use the Synaptics Touchpad without a driver for it :)

I haven't tested the modem(winmodem), serial port, parallel port, etc. My goal was simply to get the touchpad and X to work without the synaptics driver and a bunch of tweaking for X.

When you boot the laptop into FreeBSD you will want to choose the boot option "Boot without ACPI (option #2)". If you do not boot with ACPI disabled, there will be a conflict between your touchpad and ACPI. The touchpad will not function with ACPI enabled. I have yet to test it with APM .. I'll update as soon as I get around to giving that a try.

Any feedback on this article can be sent to: phx2600 [at] gmail [dot] com