Debian on Fujitsu Siemens Amilo A1667G
- Sound: WORKS
- Modem: WORKS
- Wireless: WORKS
Laptop Cons
The laptop doesn't have Bluetooth, IR and PCMCIA.
AMD64 cons
The following problems are not specific to this laptop but to the AMD64 architecture as a whole. It is the usual problem of (mostly) proprietary software not supporting AMD64:
- Sun Java - AMD64 only supported by Java 1.5, but browser plugin still not available so you can't run applets from 64bit firefox.
- Flash - browser plugin not available for AMD64, free implementations usually don't work (nothing is displayed).
- Openoffice - only version 2 supports AMD64 arch.
Disk
hda: ST9808210A, ATA DISK drive
hda: max request size: 1024KiB
hda: 156301488 sectors (80026 MB) w/8192KiB Cache, CHS=16383/255/63, UDMA(100)
Some more info on the performance:
# hdparm -tT /dev/hda
/dev/hda:
Timing cached reads: 1940 MB in 2.00 seconds = 968.21 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads: 92 MB in 3.02 seconds = 30.46 MB/sec
CD-RW
hdc: HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GWA-4082N, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
hdc: ATAPI 24X DVD-ROM DVD-R CD-R/RW drive, 2048kB Cache, UDMA(33)
No problems recording CDs and DVDs with cdrecord and growisofs.
Power saving
CPI: Processor [CPU1] (supports C1 C3, 16 throttling states)
powernow-k8: Found 1 AMD Athlon 64 / Opteron processors (version 1.00.09b)
powernow-k8: 0 : fid 0xa (1800 MHz), vid 0x4 (1450 mV)
powernow-k8: 1 : fid 0x8 (1600 MHz), vid 0x6 (1400 mV)
powernow-k8: 2 : fid 0x0 (800 MHz), vid 0x16 (1000 mV)
powernow-k8: cpu_init done, current fid 0x0, vid 0x16
As seen from the dmesg output, power saving is supported by the powernow-k8 kernel module. There is only three states available, and you will probably only use the first and the last one. I use powernowd for switching between 800 MHz and 1800 MHz based on the load.
Wireless
ndiswrapper version 1.10 loaded (preempt=no,smp=no)
ndiswrapper (load_pe_images:573): fixing KI_USER_SHARED_DATA address in the driver
ndiswrapper: driver bcmwl5 (Broadcom,02/11/2005, 3.100.64.0) loaded
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:0a.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
ndiswrapper: using irq 18
wlan0: vendor: ''
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:90:4b:e6:a1:41 using driver bcmwl5, 14E4:4318.5.conf
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP; TKIP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK; AES/CCMP with WPA, WPA2, WPA2PSK
Supported by ndiswrapper + 64bit windows driver. Some more advanced settings can't be done using iwconfig but wpa_supplicant usually works (WEP, WPA networks).
Sound card
Sound card is supported by the ALSA snd_via82xx driver. I haven't tested SPDIF but everything else seems to work (speakers, mic, line in, line out).
Remote control
The laptop has a cute remote in Express Card slot that can be used together with the IR port on the front to control the laptop. Note that this IR port is not general purpose (you can't use it to communicate with your mobile phone etc.) Instead, the buttons on the remote control are directly mapped to different keyboard keys like arrows or power-on button. Therefore, the remote doesn't need special drivers to work, you only need to create appropriate mappings for the keys. Use xev to discover keycodes and xmodmap to map the keys.
WinModem
Supported by sndvia82xxmodem ALSA driver. In Debian testing you can get it by compiling alsa-source package (worked for me with 1.0.10-3+2.6.8-14). Apart from the driver, a user mode daemon is also required. Although there is a package sl-modem-daemon for i386 arch, that one didn't work for me. I downloaded a newer version (slmodem-2.9.11-20051101) and compiled it with alsa support in i386 chroot. This is required because daemon contains a binary file that only works on i386. If you try to compile it for amd64 you get an error like this:
[slmodem-2.9.11-20051101] $ cd modem
[modem] $ make SUPPORT_ALSA=1
...
gcc -o slmodemd modem_main.o modem_cmdline.o modem.o modem_datafile.o modem_at.
o modem_timer.o modem_pack.o modem_ec.o modem_comp.o modem_param.o modem_debug.o
homolog_data.o dp_sinus.o dp_dummy.o dsplibs.o sysdep_common.o
/usr/bin/ld: warning: i386 architecture of input file `dsplibs.o' is incompatible with i386:x86-64 output
[modem] $ file dsplibs.o
dsplibs.o: ELF 32-bit LSB relocatable, Intel 80386, version 1 (SYSV), not stripped
You start it in chroot (/proc and /dev/pts need to be mounted):
[modem] # ./slmodemd --alsa --country GERMANY
SmartLink Soft Modem: version 2.9.11 Aug 30 2006 18:48:48
symbolic link `/dev/ttySL0' -> `/dev/pts/2' created.
modem `modem:1' created. TTY is `/dev/pts/2'
Use `/dev/ttySL0' as modem device, Ctrl+C for termination.
Now the /dev/ttySL0 can be used as a normal modem by pppd. I get a stable connection and download rates around 4.8kB/s which is quite ok.
lspci output
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.5 PIC: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller
0000:00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device b999
0000:00:02.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller
0000:00:03.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller
0000:00:03.2 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller
0000:00:08.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
0000:00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
0000:00:0a.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
0000:00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
0000:00:11.6 Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 80)
0000:02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility X700 (PCIE)