Overview
First off, I just want to say that this is a really nice machine. The display is beautiful and the keyboard isn't nearly as small as it looks in the picture. The only annoying thing I've come up with is that the Fn key is where Ctrl goes, but you get used to that. The casing doesn't scratch easily, the latches have held up to six months in my backpack, the wristrest area doesn't grease stain (french fries at work...), the touchpad actually works, sound could be better, but that's what the 200A5 and the extra $1000 gets you.
So, like I said, this page is all about running Linux on this thing. It came pre-packed with XP Home installed and I left that on there about long enough to make sure it would turn on.
Vital Stats
| Processor: | Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 2.20GHz |
| Memory: | 512M |
| Kernel: | Linux version 2.6.8 |
| Distro: | Debian GNU/Linux -- Testing |
| Video: | nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go 32M] (rev a3) |
| Sound: | ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02) |
| Ethernet: | National Semiconductor Corporation DP83815 (MacPhyter) |
| Modem: | ALi Corporation M5457 AC'97 |
| USB: | VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 50) |
| FireWire: | Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link) |
| IDE: | ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4) |
Basic Setup
Starting with the NetInst CD pretty much everything Just Works (tm), however some things could use some tuning.
Video
The nVidia driver shipped with XFree86 does great for simple desktop work, but it doesn't work well with the weird resolution of this display, nor does it handle things like OpenGL, SDL, and various other hardware accelerated operations. On the bright side, nVidia stepped up to the plate a couple years ago and released Linux drivers. The commercial drivers are also avaliable as packages but I don't recommend it. If you want to keep as true to Debian automation as possible, the process is described here. `xf86config` should be able to handle your simple configuration. The display automatically scales 1024x768 to look proper on the screen, however, the corporate driver supports natively running at the proper 1280x854. If you don't know what I'm talking about, grab my XF86Config-4.
Sound
The ALi 5451 is supported directly by the ALSA branch in kernel 2.6.x. This module is built and detected by the default setup but if you roll your own kernel, make sure you enable the proper module:Device Drivers -> Sound -> ALSA -> PCI Devices -> ALi PCI Audio M5451
Ethernet
Just like the sound setup, this should just work. The natsemi has solid support. In case you roll your own kernel, make sure you enable:Device Drivers -> Networking support -> Ethernet (10 or 100Mbit) -> EISA, VLB, PCI and on board controllers -> National Semiconductor DP8381x series PCI Ethernet support
IDE
By default, the hard drive runs at udma2. This really isn't a bad thing. However, the VPR can do better. First off, you need to append 'ide0=ata66' to your kernel boot line. This is in your lilo.conf or menu.lst. Secondly, install hdparm. Once you've read that, you'll understand why you should put:hdparm -X udma5 -c 1 -k 1 /dev/hda
into your boot scripts. Fully accelerated, I see the following performance:pyth:/home/rcw# hdparm -tT /dev/hda /dev/hda: Timing cached reads: 1216 MB in 2.00 seconds = 607.18 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 64 MB in 3.07 seconds = 20.82 MB/sec
Links
Other DownloadsRed Hat on the VPR Matrix 220a5
TuxMobil - Linux on laptops, notebooks, PDAs and mobile phones.
Last updated: Sunday, 20-Sep-2009 16:55:45 CDT
Contact me at randall dot will at gmail dot com
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