Maven

I’m running PLD Linux on that notebook. It isn’t best model out there…

Now what we have on board (detailed lspci):

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133] (rev 80)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8363/8365 [KT133/KM133 AGP]
00:08.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
00:10.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 46)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8231 [PCI-to-ISA Bridge] (rev 10)
00:11.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT8233/A/C/VT8235
PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:11.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 1e)
00:11.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB (rev 1e)
00:11.4 Bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8235 ACPI (rev 10)
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 40)
00:11.6 Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. Intel 537 [AC97 Modem] (rev 20)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 51)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc. VT8636A [ProSavage KN133]
AGP4X VGA Controller (TwisterK) (rev 01)

Right now I’m running 2.6.0test10 kernel on it. See Dmesg for more information. Note that there is one USB device connected to my notebook – Logitech BJ69 optical mouse – and you’ll see messages about it in Dmesg.

XFree86

I was using various XFree86 4.3.x versions on this notebook but right now I’m using devel version – XFree86 4.3.99.15. Driver which should be used with this notebooks graphic card is savage. There were almost no problem with XFree configuration beside one. With default, autodetected HorizSync/VertRefresh I was getting only small resolutions. After adding

HorizSync 30-70
VertRefresh 50-90

to XFree86Config problems disappeared. See my Free86ConfigFile for details. VIA created their own drivers for video card used in this notebook (S3 ProSavage KN133 also known as TwisterK) even with DRI support but these drivers were for XFree86 4.2 so I never tested 3D part of them – 2D part was working quite well but no visible improvements over standard XFree86 savage driver. Recently there were huge 3D side savage driver updates in DRI tree. I’ve tried 20040426 binary DRI snapshots (savage+common tarball) with the following results:
[drm] Initialized savage 1.0.0 20011023 on minor 0: S3 Inc. VT8636A [ProSavage KN133] AGP4X VGA Controller (TwisterK)

mtrr: 0xd0000000,0×1000000 overlaps existing 0xd0000000,0×800000
mtrr: 0xd0000000,0×1000000 overlaps existing 0xd0000000,0×800000
mtrr: 0xd0000000,0×1000000 overlaps existing 0xd0000000,0×800000
agpgart: Found an AGP 2.0 compliant device at 0000:00:00.0.
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:00:00.0 into 0x mode
agpgart: Putting AGP V2 device at 0000:01:00.0 into 0x mode
mtrr: base(0xd2000000) is not aligned on a size(0×5000000) boundary
mtrr: base(0xd057e000) is not aligned on a size(0xa80000) boundary

(mtrr problems seems to be related to vesafb but there are not fatal)

(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] bpp: 16 depth: 16
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] Sarea 2200+872: 3072
drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
drmOpenDevice: open result is 5, (OK)
drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
drmOpenDevice: open result is 5, (OK)
drmOpenByBusid: Searching for BusID pci:0000:01:00.0
drmOpenDevice: node name is /dev/dri/card0
drmOpenDevice: open result is 5, (OK)
drmOpenByBusid: drmOpenMinor returns 5
drmOpenByBusid: drmGetBusid reports pci:0000:01:00.0
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] DRM interface version 1.2
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] created “savage” driver at busid “pci:0000:01:00.0″
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] added 8192 byte SAREA at 0xe09df000
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] mapped SAREA 0xe09df000 to 0x463a6000
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] framebuffer handle = 0xd0000000
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] added 1 reserved context for kernel
(II) SAVAGE(0): [agp] Mode 0x1f000201 [AGP 0x1106/0x0305; Card 0x5333/0x8d02]
(II) SAVAGE(0): [agp] 16384 kB allocated with handle 0×00000001
(II) SAVAGE(0): [agp] agpTextures microcode handle = 0xe0000000
(II) SAVAGE(0): [agp] agpTextures mapped at 0×00000000
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] aperture handle = 0xd2000000
(II) SAVAGE(0): [drm] Status handle = 0xe09e7000
(II) SAVAGE(0): [agp] Status page mapped at 0x463a8000
(II) SAVAGE(0): [dri] visual configs initialized
(**) SAVAGE(0): DRI is enabled

See GlxInfo for glxinfo output. glxgears show about 280FPS in 1024×768 in 16 color depth. I’ve played TuxRacer for a while without problems but there probably will be some with other apps.

Framebuffer

My framebuffer configuration (at lilo.conf) is following:

append=”video=vesafb:ywrap”
vga=0×317

That’s 1024×768 mode with ywrap enabled (gives faster scrolling). Of course nice boot penguin logo is there!

Sound

Modem
VIA Technologies, Inc. Intel 537 AC97 Modem*

It’s so called winmodem. It works fine with 2.4 kernel using slmdm (half open source, half closed binary) drivers. Unfortunately these drivers are not yet ported to 2.6. For more information see http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/resources.html, http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink/ or ftp://ftp.smlink.com/Update/linux/unsupported/.

Recently I got it working under 2.6, too using slmodem drivers. I’ve used 2.9.6 version of these on kernel 2.6.5. First it is not working at all when CONFIG_REGPARM is set, so you need to turn it off.

slamr: module license ‘Smart Link Ltd.’ taints kernel.
slamr: SmartLink AMRMO modem.
slamr: probe 1106:3068 VIA3058 card…
PCI: Setting latency timer of device 0000:00:11.6 to 64
slamr: mc97 codec is SIL22
slamr: slamr0 is VIA3058 card.

Example session using microcom:

[arekm@mobarm ~]$ microcom -D/dev/ttySL0
ATI1

SmartLink Soft Modem, 2.9.6
Smart Link Ltd.
OK
ATI3

/dev/slamr0
modemap driver
OK

IrDA

Driver for IrDA based on VIA VT8231/VT8233 IrDA was included in 2.6 kernel. To get it working you need irda-utils and then:

$ irattach irda0 -s

Loading of ircomm_tty module will also create /dev/ircommX devices which you can later use with userspace applications that want to communicate through some /dev device. My T68i mobile phone is discovered without any problems:

$ cat /proc/net/irda/discovery
IrLMP: Discovery log:

nickname: T68, hint: 0×9124, saddr: 0x8ef45fc7, daddr: 0x2212179f

To get notebook-t68 communication really working I needed to set some irda stack values in /etc/sysctl.conf (or /proc directly):

net.irda.max_baud_rate=115200
net.irda.min_tx_turn_time=1000
net.irda.max_tx_window=1

I’ve succesfuly transfered SMS messages from phone and uploaded pictures into phone using this setup.

FireWire

Don’t know if it’s working since didn’t test it (no hardware) but at least this is what’s reporting the kernel:

ieee1394: Initialized config rom entry `ip1394′
ohci1394: $Rev: 1203 $ Ben Collins
ohci1394: fw-host0: OHCI-1394 1.0 (PCI): IRQ=[9] MMIO=[dffff800-dfffffff] Max Packet=[2048]
ieee1394: Host added: ID:BUS[0-00:1023] GUID[00030d433412d22e]
ip1394: $Rev: 1198 $ Ben Collins
ip1394: eth0: IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet (fw-host0)so I have this IEEE-1394 IPv4 over 1394 Ethernet: 3: eth1: mtu 1500 qdisc noop qlen 1000
link/ieee1394 00:03:0d:43:34:12:d2:2e brd ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff:ff