Hi guys, Does anyone have this notebook? I have the PY416EA model - it is a Turion64 1.8ghz, with Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE). I'm having a few problems: 1. Onboard Wireless: Broadcom BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] - it doesn't have a linux driver. I set up ndiswrapper, and that works fine, but it is junk - poor reception, poor performance, unstable. But I can live with that, for now. The problem is, when I do network intensive stuff, like copy big files, the notebook sometimes reboot. Not reset, just a normal reboot as if I typed "reboot" in the cli. 2. Booting hangs at the "loading keymap" or something like that bit. When that happens I press the wireless/bluetooth button twice (switch off + switch on) and it continues to boot normally. 3. PCMCIA - doesn't work at all. It's a normal well supported controller, uses the yenta driver. But when you stick something into it, it simply doesn't pick it up. I really want to use my Netgear PCMCIA wireless card (see #1 above). I have verified with a knoppix CD that the socket does work. In SUSE, I've fiddled around, tried various combinations of inserting and removing modules and restarting coldplug, dbus etc and got it working once, but I could never repeat that. The relevant lspci info: CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller 4. ACPI doesn't work well. the CPU heats up to about 75 degrees celcius before the fan comes on. Sometimes the fan doesn't switch off. The different powersave profiles doesn't work correctly either. On "performance" it sticks to 1800mhz, on anything els it sits on 800mhz. I would expect that on "dynamic" it should raise the CPU speed if I compile something or do something CPU intensive, but it doesn't. I have fiddled endlessly with the options, modifying the profiles, to no avail. All of the above problems exist in both the 32bit and 64bit versions of SUSE 10.0. One more question: The notebook has a biometric sensor. Has anyone worked with such hardware? Could you please point me to good documentation? It would be nice to play around with this too. Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks Hans P.S. A few observations, for anyone in the market: this particular model is a lot of computer for the money. Display is 1400x1050 (only on the top model) and very clear. The modem is an ATI device and is supported (by alsa, of all things). Network is gigabit and works well. Performance is very strong, especially when compiling stuff. And lastly, the sound chip, also ATI, is by far the best sound I've heard from any onboard sound. It has the sweetness and roundness of the Soundblaster Live cards. Very very nice! If the wireless doesn't bother you (the only non-SUSE problem I have), it's a great buy, good value for money, and a very nice and solid notebook.
On 12/27/05, Hans du Plooy <hansdp-lists@sagacit.com> wrote:
Hi guys,
Does anyone have this notebook? I have the PY416EA model - it is a Turion64 1.8ghz, with Radeon XPRESS 200M 5955 (PCIE).
I'm having a few problems:
1. Onboard Wireless: Broadcom BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] - it doesn't have a linux driver. I set up ndiswrapper, and that works fine, but it is junk - poor reception, poor performance, unstable. But I can live with that, for now. The problem is, when I do network intensive stuff, like copy big files, the notebook sometimes reboot. Not reset, just a normal reboot as if I typed "reboot" in the cli.
Haven't got it to work "right" with ndiswrapper yet. Other projects required my time and had to set it aside for the time.
2. Booting hangs at the "loading keymap" or something like that bit. When that happens I press the wireless/bluetooth button twice (switch off + switch on) and it continues to boot normally.
I didn't have this problem with the laptops my company bought. Did have a problem with the Synaptic touchpad driver.
3. PCMCIA - doesn't work at all. It's a normal well supported controller, uses the yenta driver. But when you stick something into it, it simply doesn't pick it up. I really want to use my Netgear PCMCIA wireless card (see #1 above). I have verified with a knoppix CD that the socket does work. In SUSE, I've fiddled around, tried various combinations of inserting and removing modules and restarting coldplug, dbus etc and got it working once, but I could never repeat that. The relevant lspci info: CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx21/x515 Cardbus Controller
I'll have to get a PCMCIA card and try this. Don't really have a reason since most ports and devices I need are on the laptop.
4. ACPI doesn't work well. the CPU heats up to about 75 degrees celcius before the fan comes on. Sometimes the fan doesn't switch off. The different powersave profiles doesn't work correctly either. On "performance" it sticks to 1800mhz, on anything els it sits on 800mhz. I would expect that on "dynamic" it should raise the CPU speed if I compile something or do something CPU intensive, but it doesn't. I have fiddled endlessly with the options, modifying the profiles, to no avail.
Agree. The cpu fan does run constantly and this thing will drain the battery fast.
All of the above problems exist in both the 32bit and 64bit versions of SUSE 10.0.
One more question:
The notebook has a biometric sensor. Has anyone worked with such hardware? Could you please point me to good documentation? It would be nice to play around with this too.
As soon as my projects get finished (hopefully end of January) I'll get back to working with this laptop.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks Hans
P.S. A few observations, for anyone in the market: this particular model is a lot of computer for the money. Display is 1400x1050 (only on the top model) and very clear. The modem is an ATI device and is supported (by alsa, of all things). Network is gigabit and works well. Performance is very strong, especially when compiling stuff. And lastly, the sound chip, also ATI, is by far the best sound I've heard from any onboard sound. It has the sweetness and roundness of the Soundblaster Live cards. Very very nice! If the wireless doesn't bother you (the only non-SUSE problem I have), it's a great buy, good value for money, and a very nice and solid notebook.
Agree. This laptop is very good and my company was able to get them for under $1,000 ea. They came with a gig of RAM (shared with video) and 80GB hdd. My only real complaint is the display is rather dark and dull if you have ever used one of HP laptops with Brightview screen. Nice to know someone else is kicking this laptop around with Linux. When my projects finish up, I'll try SuSE 10 again and maybe Ubuntu as well. I had better luck with Ubuntu on my Sony Vaio when SuSE and Red Hat balked. John
On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 21:21 -0500, John Scott wrote:
Haven't got it to work "right" with ndiswrapper yet. Other projects required my time and had to set it aside for the time. It does work alright, as long as I don't tax it too hard. But my experience with Broadcom products have never been too good, so I don't think this is necessarily Linux related. I can send you my configs if you wish.
I didn't have this problem with the laptops my company bought. Did have a problem with the Synaptic touchpad driver. Oh yes, I forgot about that - sometimes after a while, it starts getting funny - doesn't register a click, for example. But I mostly work on a desk with a mouse plugged in, so that doesn't bother me too much.
Agree. This laptop is very good and my company was able to get them for under $1,000 ea. Geez, that's cheap. Is this the PY416 model (i.e. 1.8ghz with 1400x1050)? I paid the equivalent of around $1600 USD and that's a damn good price here.
They came with a gig of RAM (shared with video) and 80GB hdd. Mine came with 512 but thankfully they were thoughtful enough to use a singe module, leaving one slot open. My 1gb dimm is already on order...
My only real complaint is the display is rather dark and dull if you have ever used one of HP laptops with Brightview screen. I don't think mine has Brightview (at least it's not written anywhere on the notebook or in the included literature), but the screen is quite bright and crisp. Speaking of which, the screen is detected as a "LGPhillips" - any idea what that is?
Nice to know someone else is kicking this laptop around with Linux. When my projects finish up, I'll try SuSE 10 again and maybe Ubuntu as well. I'm actually planning to switch to Gentoo on this notebook. I use my notebook as a testbed for a lot of things, and I want to be able to keep it up to date without having to re-install every so often. I love SUSE, but when an installation gets too old and you try to keep things up to date, it gets a bit messy. At least at my level of spec file hacking :-)
One other thing that puzzled me is that the WinXP Pro included wasn't 64bit. Hans
On 12/29/05, Hans du Plooy <hansdp-lists@sagacit.com> wrote:
On Wed, 2005-12-28 at 21:21 -0500, John Scott wrote:
Agree. This laptop is very good and my company was able to get them for under $1,000 ea. Geez, that's cheap. Is this the PY416 model (i.e. 1.8ghz with 1400x1050)? I paid the equivalent of around $1600 USD and that's a damn good price here.
Edu pricing, gotta love it. It's the one with ML-30 processor.
They came with a gig of RAM (shared with video) and 80GB hdd. Mine came with 512 but thankfully they were thoughtful enough to use a singe module, leaving one slot open. My 1gb dimm is already on order...
My only real complaint is the display is rather dark and dull if you have ever used one of HP laptops with Brightview screen. I don't think mine has Brightview (at least it's not written anywhere on the notebook or in the included literature), but the screen is quite bright and crisp. Speaking of which, the screen is detected as a "LGPhillips" - any idea what that is?
Not really. I'll have to look at it again. I might have a different driver loaded which might be affecting my perception of it.
Nice to know someone else is kicking this laptop around with Linux. When my projects finish up, I'll try SuSE 10 again and maybe Ubuntu as well. I'm actually planning to switch to Gentoo on this notebook. I use my notebook as a testbed for a lot of things, and I want to be able to keep it up to date without having to re-install every so often. I love SUSE, but when an installation gets too old and you try to keep things up to date, it gets a bit messy. At least at my level of spec file hacking :-)
One other thing that puzzled me is that the WinXP Pro included wasn't 64bit.
Hans
Probably because there isn't a whole lot of stuff that's 64-bit in the Windows world. Very few drivers (most are beta) and even less software. This is an area where Linux has Windows beat period. No questionable whitepapers or comments from people like The Yankee Group. Linux has more 64-bit ready apps and drivers than Windows. How long remains to be seen though. Installed a beta of Winxp 64-bit on my AMD64 at work. It went on, lasted an hour, came off. Most of my hardware wasn't supported. I was surprised that it even installed. Linux on the other hand, no problem. John
On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 22:39 -0500, John Scott wrote:
One other thing that puzzled me is that the WinXP Pro included wasn't 64bit.
Probably because there isn't a whole lot of stuff that's 64-bit in the Windows world.
Well, as far as an excuse from them goes, I don't buy it because they have desktops availabe with WinXP_64. But yes, it's probably just that. A client of mine bought a whitebox PC that had the Intel 64bit CPU and came with 64bit windows. The one thing I could not find a driver for was her HP laserjet... Hans
On 12/27/05, Hans du Plooy <hansdp-lists@sagacit.com> wrote: I have the same model as you. Very nice machine.
1. Onboard Wireless: Broadcom BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] - it doesn't have a linux driver. I set up ndiswrapper, and that works fine, but it is junk - poor reception, poor performance, unstable. But I can live with that, for now. The problem is, when I do network intensive stuff, like copy big files, the notebook sometimes reboot. Not reset, just a normal reboot as if I typed "reboot" in the cli.
I have not managed to get it to work at all. Can you maybe send me a few pointers on how you did it?
2. Booting hangs at the "loading keymap" or something like that bit. When that happens I press the wireless/bluetooth button twice (switch off + switch on) and it continues to boot normally.
Hmm.. I have not had this problem at all. Originally installed SuSE 9.3, then did a partial upgrade to OpenSUSE 10 RC1. Then re-installed with SuSE 10 when that came out. All were 64-bit versions. I had major CPU fequency problems with SuSE 9.3, never this problem with the keymap.
3. PCMCIA - doesn't work at all. It's a normal well supported controller, uses the yenta driver. But when you stick something into
Never tried using it.
4. ACPI doesn't work well. the CPU heats up to about 75 degrees celcius before the fan comes on. Sometimes the fan doesn't switch off. The different powersave profiles doesn't work correctly either. On "performance" it sticks to 1800mhz, on anything els it sits on 800mhz. I would expect that on "dynamic" it should raise the CPU speed if I compile something or do something CPU intensive, but it doesn't. I have fiddled endlessly with the options, modifying the profiles, to no avail.
The BIOS have some MS compiled stuff in it that causes ACPI problems. There is a way of fixing it by fixing the errors and recompile it. I have not had time to do that yet. But my CPU frequency scaling work perfectly. It ranges between 800MHz and 1800 MHz. Normally sits at 800 and then when I run some CPU-hogging app, it will shoot up to about 1200 and then 1800, but will come down soon again. The temperature stayes around 40 deg. The fan very seldom comes on. If it does, (at around 75 deg) it soon cools the machine down to the 60's and shuts off again. But that is rarely required.
One more question:
The notebook has a biometric sensor. Has anyone worked with such hardware? Could you please point me to good documentation? It would be nice to play around with this too.
I would also be interested in some docs. THis is all I found up to now: http://www.amc.com.au/lca/loopback/papers/Alexander_Reeder/Alexander_Reeder.... -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~
On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 10:41 +0200, Andre Truter wrote:
I have not managed to get it to work at all. Can you maybe send me a few pointers on how you did it? Pretty much just followed /usr/share/doc/packages/ndiswrapper/README.SUSE The only tricky part was finding the correct Windows driver - seeing as the notebook came with 32bit Windows instead of 64bit I couldn't just copy from my windows partition. I think I used one of the ACER notebooks driver downloaded from their site. I can send you my config and the relevant files if you like.
major CPU fequency problems with SuSE 9.3, never this problem with the keymap. It only happens from time to time - not too big an issue.
4. ACPI doesn't work well. OK, after some more fiddling, it now behaves with the SUSE kernel, but if I try a vanilla kernel, its not happy.
The BIOS have some MS compiled stuff in it that causes ACPI problems. Please explain?
Hans
On 12/29/05, Hans du Plooy <hansdp-lists@sagacit.com> wrote:
On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 10:41 +0200, Andre Truter wrote:
I have not managed to get it to work at all. Can you maybe send me a few pointers on how you did it? Pretty much just followed /usr/share/doc/packages/ndiswrapper/README.SUSE The only tricky part was finding the correct Windows driver - seeing as the notebook came with 32bit Windows instead of 64bit I couldn't just copy from my windows partition. I think I used one of the ACER notebooks driver downloaded from their site. I can send you my config and the relevant files if you like.
I have downloaded some ACER drivers and it loaded with ndiswrapper, but I still could not get WiFi set up. I would appreciate it if you could send me your config and relevant files.
The BIOS have some MS compiled stuff in it that causes ACPI problems. Please explain?
It is the DSDT that is buggy. Here are some more info: http://www.suseforums.net/index.php?showtopic=13893&pid=80209&mode=threaded&... Thanks -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~
On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 13:20 +0200, Andre Truter wrote:
I have downloaded some ACER drivers and it loaded with ndiswrapper, but I still could not get WiFi set up. I would appreciate it if you could send me your config and relevant files. Attached find my ifcfg-wlan0 - just put it in /etc/sysconfig/network/
When you start the wlan0 interface, it has to identify it like this: wlan0 device: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller If it doesn't, it means the driver doesn't work properly. Hint: I've encouneterd some cases where the SSID is case sensitive. I don't know if that is determined by the client or the AP. Hans
On 12/29/05, Hans du Plooy <hansdp-lists@sagacit.com> wrote:
On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 13:20 +0200, Andre Truter wrote:
I have downloaded some ACER drivers and it loaded with ndiswrapper, but I still could not get WiFi set up. I would appreciate it if you could send me your config and relevant files. Attached find my ifcfg-wlan0 - just put it in /etc/sysconfig/network/
When you start the wlan0 interface, it has to identify it like this:
OK, I followed the instructions in the /usr/share/doc/packages/ndiswrapper/README.SUSE file. I managed to load the Windows driver. # ndiswrapper -l Installed ndis drivers: bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present Then I try to load the ndiswrapper module and it cannot find it: # modprobe ndiswrapper FATAL: Module ndiswrapper not found. So, where do I get the module? -- Andre Truter | Software Engineer | Registered Linux user #185282 ICQ #40935899 | AIM: trusoftzaf | http://www.trusoft.za.org ~ A dinosaur is a salamander designed to Mil Spec ~
On Thu, 2005-12-29 at 15:02 +0200, Andre Truter wrote:
Then I try to load the ndiswrapper module and it cannot find it:
Make sure you have the km_ndiswrapper (or something like that) package installed - it is the source for the kernel module. Do a make cloneconfig, and then make prepare Then, in /usr/src/kernel-modules/ndiswrapper do make and make install. That should put the ndiswrapper module in /lib/modules/2.6.13-15.7-default/extra/ modprobe ndiswrapper and try starting wlan0 - make sure the module gets loaded on boot. Hans
participants (3)
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Andre Truter -
Hans du Plooy -
John Scott