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Subsystem |
Status |
Updated |
Info |
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5/20/2003 |
Working. |
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6/8/2003 |
Works fine. No problems here |
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5/23/2003 |
Fully functional with ALSA drivers. |
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5/23/2003 |
Should work with 2.4.21 kernel, have not patched yet |
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5/20/2003 |
See above |
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5/23/2003 |
Works fine in 1400x1050 resolution |
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5/2/2003 |
Stock driver works out of the box |
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6/2/2003 |
They say it’s a winmodem… |
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5/23/2003 |
USB1.0 and USB2.0 work great |
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4/30/2003 |
People actually use this? |
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5/30/2003 |
TrueMobile 1300/1400 has no driver! Neither does Intel |
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4/30/2003 |
No problems here |
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5/1/2003 |
I don’t use this feature. Untested. |
[ Green - Working/tested ] [ Yellow - Partly
working / tested ] [ Orange - Untested ] [ Red - Not working ]
First, let me acknowledge that this page is almost a
direct rip off of Mike Hardy’s and Graeme Wilford's page for RedHat 9 on
Inspiron 8500 laptops and RedHat
9 on Latitude D800s. In grand Free Software tradition I liked his format a
lot so I blatantly copied it(even this sentence about copying it). This page
has, of course, been modified with information specific to the D600 but much of
it can also be applied to the D800 and Inspiron models 600m and 8500 as the hardware is similar. Not
just the style, but some of the words are definitely still his, so they should
get most of the credit. Thanks Graeme and Mike!
Some information also came from a D600
page from Martin List-Petersen that is much more in depth, check it out. Of
special interest is the bluetooth section - he's done the work to get bluetooth
working with his cell phone for GPRS internet access. He's also got the
Truemobile 1150 card working (since the 1300 and 1400 have no drivers) as well
as the IR.
This guide (currently a work in progress) might help you
to get the most out of your Inspiron D600. Mine arrived with Windows XP installed
which was for the most part, useless to me. I installed RedHat 9 initially, but
then decided to give JAMD a chance, and I’m glad that I did. JAMD (www.jamd-linux.com)
is a desktop version of Linux based off of RedHat 9. Basically, it is RedHat with some much-needed improvements. It comes with everything needed for the
desktop user, including the glaring gaps in RH9 such as Mplayer and the
XMMS mp3 plug-in. Yes, I know RH’s
policy on open source software etc, but if I’m going to install them anyway I
might as well have them pre-installed.
The only glaring oversight in JAMD is the decision not to include GCC,
which for me is a must have. For a
complete list of packages go to http://www.distrowatch.com/table.php?distribution=jamd. Although this was written for JAMD/RedHat,
most of this is distribution independent.
The D600 is a great machine; it's relatively light, looks good, comes packed
with technology, and is supposed to run well on a battery. Mine has these
configurable components:
· 1.6GHz Pentium-M, 512MB RAM
· 40GB 5400rpm Hitachi ATA100 udma5 disk
· 1400x1050 active-TFT panel
· 32MB ATI Mobility M9
· DVD-ROM/CD-RW drive
These are the main on-board components:
· PCMCIA slot (1x)
· mini-pci slot (1x) (with TrueMobile 1300 802.11b/g)
· USB 2.0 ports (2x)
· bluetooth
· serial, parallel, vga connectors
· winmodem
· 10/100/1000 ethernet
· AC'97 soundcard
· TV/video/SPDIF out
· mic in, stereo headphones out
This was easy for me - I really didn't care for windows at all, and knew what the hardware on the machine was, so I simply started installing linux...
This install went fine; first it boots anaconda (yup, same
as RH9) and then dumps you into X. The graphical install works fine, the
installer correctly recognized my video card as the M9 and let me set the
resolution after the install. Don't panic if you see horrible lines across the
screen for a few seconds, it takes a little while for the VESA graphics driver
to kick in and initialize properly.
I let JAMD partition the disk itself, and the install went more quickly then
the RH9 install. You don’t get a
package choice, but you can add/remove unnecessary packages at the end of the
base install.
Once the install gets going, the first thing you notice is how slow it is. The packages I choose to install took about 45 minutes for 2 gigs of data! Here's why...
The JAMD out-of-the-box kernel (2.4.20-9) does not
recognize the IDE chipset and this means that although your disk will work, it
won't use (U)DMA. Without DMA, you get about 3Mb/s depending on hdparm options!
Pretty poor showing.
DMA can be enabled manually by editing the /etc/sysconfig/harddisks file and
uncommenting the lines for USE_DMA = 1, EIDE_32BIT = 3, and LOOKAHEAD = 1. This should get your hard drive working at
just under 29 MB/s.
NOTE: UDMA is not available with 2.4.20.
You can verify that the patch worked and your IDE chipset is being recognized
using hdparm. The specific command that will give you the timings is `hdparm -t
/dev/hda`. You should run it a few times to make sure its stable, and you
shouldn't have anything else running on the computer.
No real problems here. JAMD did not recognized the drive as /dev/dvd which was a problem for Mplayer. This was solved by linking /dev/dvd to /dev/cdrom with the command ln –s /dev/cdrom /dev/dvd run as root.
Burning works fine with XCDroast. CD playback works fine with xmms.
Again, no issues here. The card was recognized during the install and works fine. The headphone and speaker jacks work as well, all out of the box.
Have not worked much with this yet. Others report that it can be done with patches/kernel updates.
Although X worked out of the box, JAMD only identified an 800x600 resolution option. This was the one discrepencie I found between the JAMD and RH9 installs. RH asked me for monitor and resolution settings while JAMD just auto-configured. This can be easily fixed by modifying the X86 config file to include the 1400x1050 resolution. Reboot and you are golden.
Ethernet works out of the box with the stock driver
from 2.4.20-9.
Works fine with USB 1.0 and 2.0 devices.
Untested.
There is no known driver for Dell TrueMobile 1300/1400 cards. Please email me
if you find one! I'd love to have built-in 802.11b/g working. If you are
getting one of these laptops, DO NOT GET AN 802.11A or 802.11G CARD. Broadcom
and Intel produce most of these chipsets and they both have drivers. But
broadcom won't release theirs except for embedded use, and Intel won't release
theirs until theres either.
Its been rumored that this is because the 'a' and 'g' chips are fully
programmable radios and thus frighten the FCC a fair amount. The bottom line is
that there doesn't seem to be much hope of getting a driver in the near future.
Default kernel yenta-socket works great. I'm using an 802.11b linksys card in it for network access, and it worked out of the box and without any errors.
I haven't tried to do anything with bluetooth at all, sorry.
· Linux on Dell Laptops list FAQ
· http://www.tuxmobile.org/dell
This page is maintained by Michael J. Pflug, mpflug@max.cs.kzoo.edu
Updates:
8-7-2003:
Page created