Linux @ ECS G900

Overview




CPU: Intel Pentium IV 3.2GHz FSB:800MHz Cache L2:1M  HT
Display
 17" WXGA 1440x900
Touchpad
 Synaptics Touchpad
Keyboard
 German, with Hotkeys
Grafic card: ATI Radeon 9700 M10  128MB DDR-RAM   AGP 8x
HDD: 80 GB
RAM: 1024 MB  (2x512MB), DDR, 400MHz
Netrwork card: Gigabit-LAN 10/100/1000Mbps (DSL capable) Marvell 8001
Wireless LAN: RT2500 54 MB/s 802.11g
Modem: Fax/modem MDC V90 56k AC'97
Sound card: SIS7012 AC'97 Audio Controller
DVD-driver: LiteOn SOSW-852S DVD(+-)-RW dual layer CD R/RW
8x DVD+R  4x DVD-/RAM   40x CD
IrDA: Fast transfer
Akku: Li Ions 12x2400 mAh
Other:
  • Remote control
  • ACPI 2.0 supported
  • 395 x 285x 39mm /44 mm (front/back) ); 4,5 kg
  • Software- und Win drivers-CD`s (Easy CD & DVD Creator 6, InterVideo Win Cinema ...)
  • Audio DJ (Plays CDs without booting)
  • AMI BIOS
Connections:
  • Headphones
  • Microphone
  • 5.1 S/P-DIF port (Dolby digital)
  • IEEE 1394 (Firewire), 4pol.
  • SVideo TV Out
  • RJ-45 LAN
  • RJ-11 Modem
  • 2 x 2 x USB
  • Ext. Monitor
  • Optical fibers connection
  • PCMCIA type II
  • MCE (media center stuff)
  • 6in1 card reader (CF/MD/SM/MMC/SD/MS)
  • TV antenna input ( PAL, NTSC, SECAM card )
  • Power

General

Distributions tried: Mandrake 10.1 Mandriva 2005 Gentoo 2004.3 Gentoo 2005.0
Output of  lspci:
[root@Gigi leo]# lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS 645xx (rev 51)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0003
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS963 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 14)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
00:02.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] FireWire Controller
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev a0)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
00:08.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7133 Audio+video broadcast decoder (rev f0)
00:0a.0 Network controller: RaLink Ralink RT2500 802.11 Cardbus Reference Card (rev 01)
00:0c.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Yukon Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Adapter (rev 13)
00:0d.0 CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB1410 Cardbus Controller (rev 01)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]

CPU

Very fast, at least compared to anything I tried yet; there's only a problem regarding power consumptiom: lots of fans are always running and quite noisy (that can be an issue for using the laptop as a media center). The CPU fan input (on the back) sucks quite a lot of air -> dust, that tends to accumulate in the air duct, compromising cooling efficiency. From time to time I have to open the notebook and remove dust; be careful if you perform such an operation, IT CAN BE DANGEROUS, because it's not assured you will have again good thermal contact with the CPU; see img below for details.

Heat sink

Graphic card

Supprted by XFree and Xorg, without 3D accel. , but ATI releases drivers.
Download the radeon drivers from ATI website . To install them exit from graphic mode (init 3), install the RPM, run fglrxconfig to create the configuration file and decide the settings, then go to /lib/modules/fglrx and compile+install the modules, as root
[root@Gigi leo]# rpm -Uv --force --nodeps fgl(complete the name with your version).rpm
[root@Gigi leo]# init 3
[root@Gigi leo]# fglrxconfig
[root@Gigi leo]# cd /lib/modules/fglrx/build_mod/
[root@Gigi build_mod]# sh make.sh
[root@Gigi build_mod]# cd ..
[root@Gigi fglrx]# sh make_install.sh
Alternatively you can extract the files from the .rpm with rpm2targz and proceed  from the decompressed directory copying the important files: 
[root@Gigi ATI]# cp -R usr/X11R6/ /usr/
[root@Gigi ATI]# cp -R lib/modules/fglrx/ /lib/modules/
And then following the previous explanations (except the rpm command).

Then load the module (modprobe fglrx).

With the kernel 2.6.10/2.6.11/2.6.12 and XOrg 6.7 and the driver at ATI (August2005) I get with  glxgears 2412 FPS and fgl_glxgears 467 FPS (every new driver version is a bit faster than the previous).

TV-Out

Not tried yet; in principle it should be configurable with fglrxconfig.
In case of problems you can try to look for a program,  "atitvout", written by Lennart Poettering, downloadable here . Important: connect the TV before turnong on the computer. You shoud get (as root):
[root@Gigi leo]# atitvout detect
CRT is attached.
TV is attached via S-Video.
To TV mode: 
[root@Gigi leo]# atitvout -f t
Forcing Rage Mobility/Rage 3D Pro LT mode
Back to LCD-Modus : 
[root@Gigi leo]# atitvout -f l
Forcing Rage Mobility/Rage 3D Pro LT mode

HDD

[root@Gigi leo]# hdparm -i /dev/hda
 
/dev/hda:

 Model=FUJITSU MHT2080AT, FwRev=0022, SerialNo=NN5AT3C13B4W
 Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs }
 RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4
 BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16
 CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=156301488
 IORDY=yes, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}
 PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4
 DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2
 UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 *udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5
 AdvancedPM=yes: mode=0x80 (128) WriteCache=enabled
 Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 3a:

 * signifies the current active mode

Network card

Works without problems; should be seen as eth0.

CD/DVD-Laufwerk

Reading data, playing DVD (xine or mplayer), ropping (dvdrip, grip) and burning (k3b) works out of the box.

IrDA

The remote control works without tuning; the letters/symbols in the remote control are read as if they were entered from the keyboard.


PCMCIA/USB

PCMCIA not tried yet.
For the USB the  UHCI/EHCI drivers work, giving USB2.
Installing Gentoo 2004.3 the usb froze the boot; you can circumvent it by passing at boot the option nousb. Version 2005 works without tweaks.

WLan

Works with the GNU driver released by realtek and and developed now at sourceforge, r2400/rt2500 project. There are thou some issues, like conflicts with SMP.
Download, unzip/tar and (if you have like me the driver versio 1.1.0):
[root@Gigi leo]# cd rt2500-1.1.0/Module/
[root@Gigi Module]# make
[root@Gigi Module]# make install
 I prefere to start the wlan manually, with a script (wlan.pl):
#! /usr/bin/perl -U
system("/sbin/modprobe rt2500;");
sleep 2;
system("/sbin/iwconfig ra0  key restricted <here your key> channel <your channel n.> ;");
sleep 1;
system("/sbin/ifconfig ra0 up ;");
sleep 2;
 system("/sbin/iwlist ra0 scan ;");
sleep 6;
 system("/sbin/iwlist ra0 scan ;");
sleep 6;
system("/sbin/dhcpcd  ra0;");
sleep 2;

And switch it off with another one (wlan_down.pl):
sleep 2;
#!/usr/bin/perl -U
 system("/sbin/ifconfig ra0 down ;");
 sleep 2;
system("/sbin/rmmod rt2500 ;");


Maybe it's not a clean solution but it works for me.

Modem

It works finally.
Download the drivers from smlink (I tried the version slmodem-2.9.10), and the patch slmodem-2.9.10-abby.diff from www.ok--computer/linux/asus/news_en.html or from me. Copy it into the directory patches and, from the main directory of SmartLink driver (slmodem-2.9.10), apply the patch with patch -p0
Maybe you need to create a symbolic link:
ln -s /dev/ttySL0 /dev/modem
and don't forget to
modprobe slamr
In the previous link you can download also a small script to automate the loading and configuration of the driver. If you do so you may want to change the script 'slmodemd',to you country settings, changing 'ITALY' at line 36 with the name of your country.

Multicard reader

Not working for now.
Kernel USB and SCSI options should be ok, however I don't see a drive in /dev, as with other USB HDD or USB flash keys.
cat /proc/bus/usb/devices says ,between all other stuff:

T: Bus=02 Lev=01 Prnt=01 Port=00 Cnt=01 Dev#= 2 Spd=12 MxCh= 0
D: Ver= 1.10 Cls=00(>ifc ) Sub=00 Prot=00 MxPS=64 #Cfgs= 1
P: Vendor=0d8c ProdID=5000 Rev= 1.00
S: Product=USB Card Reader
C:* #Ifs= 1 Cfg#= 1 Atr=80 MxPwr=500mA
I: If#= 0 Alt= 0 #EPs= 2 Cls=ff(vend.) Sub=ff Prot=ff Driver=(none)
E: Ad=81(I) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms
E: Ad=02(O) Atr=02(Bulk) MxPS= 64 Ivl=0ms

Hotkeys

They work (except maybe the volume controls and monitor size/TVout accessible through the Fn modifier key) if  on the BIOS you set the coding as expected from Windows Media Center, otherwise they are associated to a strange combination of keys.
I installed xbindkeys, and created the file .xbindkeysrc in my home dir;take a look at it and modify as you like. then you can autorun it for ex. on kde with a file (AS.sh) in $home/.kde/Autostart

TV card

Since kernels 2.6.10 there's support for the TDA8275/TDA8290 tuner modules.
Download the kernels from http://www.kernel.org and the kernel patches and video4linux snapshot from http://linux.bytesex.org, decompress and untar them in /usr/src, apply the patch and compile the kernel (there are enough infos around on that) and the modules, and then the video4linux snapshot (make && make install).
The card (with kernel 2.6.10) is not automatically recognized, you have to modprobe saa7134 card=39, or for example enter the correct value in Mandrake with harddrake2->saa7135->configure module.
The TV then works. The audio works if you have the mixer (kmix) set as below; other settings may also work.

    
If you install the new kernel sources instead of the Mandrake/Mandriva ones, you most probably will loose supermount capabilities; before compiling you can patch  the sources with the supermount patch here or here, but probl. for newer kernels you'll have to use autofs.

Various

Before you start complaining: the audio master doesn't work. There's no master amplifier with regolable volume (cheap card), so either you use mplayer & co. with esd or arts, or you try to find a software mixer (in windows it's part of the driver); alsa should have a plugin of that sort.
You can download my Kernel-configuration Version 2.6.10 , Version 2.6.11 or Version 2.6.12.5 and the  XF86Config-4 (on Mandrake 10.1 it is used for XOrg) or xorg.conf (Mandriva 2005), modified to allow the use of a wheel mouse (I have a USB logitech).
Please note that all the internal links point to the same zipped file c.zip .
Also, I had problems compiling the WLAN and video4linux drivers with kernel 2.6.12.5; maybe it's only due to the new kernel numbering.
The scripts are all tarred and zipped, 'cause geocities doesn't like files different from *.jpg, *.zip and similar (tar? what's that?).

Questions?   leodp_(at)_yahoo.com

Listed @ and repair4laptop   


Document updated: 30/08/05 L. Della Pietra

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