Hercules eCAFE EC-800-H20G/S
This page describes the Hercules eCAFÉ EC-800-H20G/S netbook/UMPC and how to use it with Debian GNU/Linux.
This was a relatively cheap netbook ca. 2009 (170€ - 190€ or so), while still being somewhat versatile and useful for the price point.
Specification
- Geode LX 800
- 512MB DDR RAM
- 20GB hard disk (1.8" IDE/PATA)
- 8" LED-backlit LCD screen, 800x480 (1024x600 interpolated)
- ...
HOWTO
Installing Debian
The standard Debian installer (booted from a USB thumb drive) works fine. I used the Debian wheezy (7.8.0) i386 netinst image.
It correctly detects/installs the -486 Linux kernel image variant, though after a dist-upgrade to Debian unstable the -586 kernel variant/package is used (Linux 3.16.0-4-586 currently).
Console
The text console doesn't work properly out of the box. You have to add vga=806 to the Linux kernel cmdline. You can do that in the GRUB menu temporarily, or put it into the GRUB config permanently:
In /etc/default/grub:
GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX_DEFAULT="vga=806"
Then:
$ update-grub
