Fedora Core 3 x86_64 Linux on the ASUS A4B00D Laptop
I did upgrade my A4000 up to FC4 and this page just a legacy of the past.
Specs
CPU: AMD Athlon64 3200+ (1 MB
L2-Cache)
Chipset: nVidia nForce3
Graphics: ATI Mobility Radeon 9200
Display: 15.4" TFT @ WSXGA+
resolution (1280x800)
RAM: 512 MB DDR
Harddisk: Hitachi IC25N080ATMR04-0
Travelstar 80GN 2,5", 80,00 GB, 4200 RPM, 12 ms, UDMA100, 8 MB
Cache
Optical: built-in DVD-RW drive
TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L532A
Network: 1 GBit/s LAN (Yukon
Gigabit Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Adapter), 802.11g WLAN Silicon Integrated Systems Corp. (SIS162u)
Modem: nVidia nForce3
Audio: nVidia nForce3 AC97,
Head-Out & Mic-In (Head-Out socket allows you to control
speakers, basically depending from plug position you have two
options either keep speaker on while head set connected or switch
off the speakers. Cool!)
Built-in Speakers/Microphones
IrDA
Parallel port
VGA and TV-Out
Firewire: 1 small port IEEE1394a
USB: 4 ports USB 2.0
PC-Card: 1 slot
Weight (including battery): 3.5 kg
haven't check actually
Useable as CD player without
booting an Operating System
See the product
page
BIOS
You can reach the BIOS via F2. Hitting <ESC> on startup lets
you choose between several boot devices (hard disk, CD, DVD or memory
cards).
Installation
The machine is installed with Fedora
Core 3 Linux 64-bit which worked quite well without any serious
problems. During installation at some stage, most probably at text
console mode, the screen were flicking, but after installation
complete that gone. How ever X was working terribly slow and take
25-35% of CPU. Right after installation I did remove rhn and up2date
RPMs being at runlevel 3 and update the system by yum. Afterwards,
system start working well.
Screen
X.org
Due to licence-issues, the
standard X-server for Fedora Core 3 is now x.org.
As expected, x.org runs out of the box for the codebase of XFree86
and x.org is still quite the same. Because of the display-dimensions,
the default-resolution inside /etc/X11/xorg.conf is 800x600 and
should be changed as following:
That was the best option for me.
TouchPad
The Synaptics Touchpad
worked absolutely fine out of the box. No additional steps were
needed to use full functionality.
Console
Framebuffer works fine and
no other problems were experienced.
TV-Out
You may switch the TV
display type between NTSC and PAL in the BIOS. I don't know, if it is
useable with linux. I haven't try it yet.
VGA-Out
It shows the same content as
the internal display. An annoyance could be, that it uses the same
resolution as the TFT-display. According to the ASUS support-hotline,
it should be possible to define a different resolution for the
external VGA in a sort of "extended mode". I guess, this is
done via TwinView. I haven't try it yet.
Cards
PC
Cards
PC
Cards seems to work, did not experience any direct problems yet. I
did install 3Com OfficeConnect Wireless 11g PC Card 3CRWE154G72 and
it works fine.
SD/MMC
CardReader
Does
not work. According to lspci,
it seems to be produced by Ricoh.
Network
LAN
The network-interface works
fine with sk98lin.
WLAN
WLAN support implemented based on USB build-in SIS chip.
$ lsusb
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 0457:0162 Silicon Integrated Systems Corp.
Linuxant has released DriverLoader
2.20
and this new version adds support for the x86_64 architecture. A x86_64 Microsoft-Windows driver is required for x86_64 support. They promise to inform me
when sis162 x86_64 Windows XP driver will be released.
Power
and Configuration Management
ACPI
ACPI seems to work, did not
experience any direct problems yet. Values given in the files in
/proc/acpi seems reasonable, although battstat_applet-2 is not
included in x86_64 distribution. Looking for the solution...
Standby
S1 has only been tested briefly and it does not seem to work. The machine
gets to sleep but does not wake up. It is necessary to pull out the battery and put it back in to get the machine to boot afterwards.
Suspend-To-RAM
S3 has only been tested briefly as well and it does not seem to work, too.
The kernel prints an oops and then requires a cold start.
Suspend-To-Disk
SWSUSP2 does not compile on 64bit-architecture and initiating S4 with SWSUSP
does not have any effect on the system, the request seems to be ignored.
CPUFreq
The
module powernow-k8 should be chosen. The user-space daemon cpufreqd
runs with it, but errors as following appear: "powernow-k8: vid trans failed, vid 0x3, curr 0x4"
Hotkeys
A
modprobe asus_acpi
brings
the play-/pause-/prev-/next-keys to work.
Sound
Sound
works with Advanced
Linux Sound Architecture - ALSA
driver snd-intel8x0, although it is an nVidia chipset.
Modem
The
driver slmodem (slamr) from SmartLink
, some later version than 2.9.11 could work. 2.9.11 is not useable in
64-bit mode, it even fails to compile.
IrDA
Not
tested yet.
DVD-RW
The
drive works well on /dev/hdc
for both, reading and writing DVD-RWs.
USB 2.0
No problems were experienced
so far. HP3380, Motorola A780, USB Memory sticks are working just fine. I haven't
try yet to boot system with attached USB storage-devices, will do it
later
FireWire
The
ohci1394
module loads fine, though FireWire was not really tested yet.
Survey
PCI Devices
Output
from lspci:
00:00.0
Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 Host Bridge (rev a4)
00:01.0
ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 LPC Bridge (rev f6)
00:01.1
SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce3 SMBus (rev a4)
00:02.0
USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 1.1 (rev a5)
00:02.1
USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 1.1 (rev a5)
00:02.2
USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 2.0 (rev a2)
00:06.0
Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 Audio (rev
a2)
00:06.1
Modem: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 00d9 (rev a2)
00:08.0
IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce3 IDE (rev a5)
00:0a.0
PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:0b.0
PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 AGP Bridge (rev a4)
00:18.0
Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1
Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
Address Map
00:18.2
Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM
Controller
00:18.3
Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron]
Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0
VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc M9+ 5C61 [Radeon
Mobility 9200 (AGP)] (rev 01)
02:00.0
Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Yukon Gigabit
Ethernet 10/100/1000Base-T Adapter (rev 13)
02:01.0
CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3)
02:01.1
FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev
08)
02:01.2
Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0822 (rev 17)
02:01.3
System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0592 (rev 08)
Resources
Credits
Note:
Brown text indicate some paragraphs that I have just copied from Sven
Grounsell report without checking. Keep looking the link for updates.