Laptop Mitac

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Description

Description Switches & jumpers User Manual
Seems to be exactly the same as:
- Topline 3900 Amicus from Tulip User Manual BIOS update Specs Amicus 3900 (C 1000).htm Example
  - Memory: 144 pins SD (PC100/133) one slot, 128Mb on-board upgradable max to 384Mb
  - HD upgradable max to 40Gb
- Targa Visionary P User Manual BIOS update Specs Example
- LAM 7521T BIOS update
- Hyperdata MediaGo 2750/KH60T/KH60T
- Isaam Smartbook i-7521T
- Lion serie 7521T Example
- Workstation Workbook 7521T ?
Celeron 1GHz 128Mb 512k cache
HD 16383 cyl 16H 63S 10.05Gb 4200rpm IC25N010ATDA04-0
Sound SiS7018 AC97 PCI Trident 4D-Wave?
Ethernet SiS900 10/100M
Battery 14,8V 3600mAh Li-ION
Modem SiS7013 sw
Video SiS630ST ultra AGP
- 16Mb 1024 XGA 32b
- CRT -> 1600 16b
- TV -> 800 32b
if any problem to boot on a kernel, append video=vga:off

cf also KnoppixToDebian

Hardware: SiS 630 based laptop

Links:

Computers with the same chipsets:

Samsung 8100XTC laptop (cf http://www.8ung.at/stingray0481/linux/)
Mitac 7321: http://bongolia.org/linux/mitac7321.php

BIOS

Phoenix NoteBIOS 4.0 Rev6.0
SystemBIOS 1.01
KBC Keyboard BIOS 1.03
cf http://www.phoenix.com/en/products/phoenix+cme+firstbios/system+firmware/products/notebios.htm

Prepare hibernation partition: http://www.procyon.com/pda/lphdisk/ (apt-get install lphdisk)
- Prepare a partition with fdisk and assign type=A0
- Recommended partition size is = standard RAM + Video RAM + 2M
Upgrade BIOS:
- Targa gives a BIOS update for the Visonary P (download)
  - It will upgrade the System BIOS from 1.01 to 2.01 (13/12/2001 DEVEL21T)
- Tulip gives a BIOS update for the 3900 Amicus (download)
  - System BIOS is only 1.01 but you can only update the Keyboard BIOS from 1.03 to 1.04
  - Changelog: Adjust shutdown point and throttle control point for Tualatin 1.2G CPU
- KBC 1.04 is also available from Mitac (download)
- Original System BIOS 1.01 is available from Mitac (download)

PCMCIA

Usual pcmcia tree didn't work for me (apt-get install pcmcia-source;cd /usr/src ; tar -xvzf pcmcia-cs.tar.gz)
So I compiled the kernel-pcmcia

SiS5513: IDE chipset

cf http://gyver.homeip.net/sis5513/
Driver included in the last 2.4.20 kernels %%Add "idebus=66" to LILO. Doesn't seem to give a big improvement...

Modem

56Kbps V.90 Smart Link 56K Voice Modem on SiS chipset
Windows drivers refer to PCTEL HSP56MR
SiS7013 = HAMR5600 Winmodem = Intel 537

http://pctelcompdb.sourceforge.net/
Sources
Mini-HOWTO
wget http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/pctel-linux/pctel-0.9.6.tar.gz
Apparently doesn't work with sound drivers enabled at the same time
be sure to have set PNP & ISAPNP in the kernel configuration
./configure --with-hal=sis
make
make install

APM

From file:///usr/src/linux/arch/i386/kernel/apm.c :

        apm=on/off                          enable/disable APM
            [no-]allow[-_]ints              allow interrupts during BIOS calls
            [no-]broken[-_]psr              BIOS has a broken GetPowerStatus call
            [no-]realmode[-_]power[-_]off   switch to real mode before powering off
            [no-]debug                      log some debugging messages
            [no-]power[-_]off               power off on shutdown
            bounce[-_]interval=<n>          number of ticks to ignore suspend bounces

http://www.famkos.net/dukebernd/linux/progs/myapm.html

ACPI

Infos on:
OSPM is deprecated
kernels 2.4.x are unable to suspend to RAM or disk (?)
apt-get install acpi acpid

The only control that seems to work is the throttling:

T0:00% T1:12% T2:25% T3:37% T4:50% T5:62% T6:75% T7:87%

Throttling is sort of enforced CPU power management: Even when the system is highly active, the CPU is "put to sleep" for short amounts of time. This is done when the temperature is critically high, or, by request of the user, when the system shall use less power to allow longer system usage when on battery.
The first line has to be executed to be able to control the throttling:

echo -n 0:7 > /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/limit
echo -n 4 > /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling (for 50% performance)

To be checked with a speed test
For sleep states: http://acpi.sourceforge.net/documentation/sleep.html
cat /proc/acpi/sleep: S0 S3 S4 S4Bios S5
To write: echo x > sleep (with x being replaced by the sleep state number)

S3 - "Suspend to RAM" ...Because it requires a high degree of coordination between the cpu, chipset, devices, OS, BIOS, and OS device drivers, this system state is the most prone to errors and instability.
S3 is currently not supported by the 2.4.x kernel series in Linux.
S4 - "Suspend to Disk" ...A variation called S4BIOS is most prevalent, where the system image is stored and loaded by the BIOS instead of the OS. Because the contents of RAM are written out to disk, system context is maintained. For example, unsaved files would not be lost following an S4 transition.
S4 is currently not supported by the 2.4.x kernel series in Linux, but you might have good luck with SWSUSP. Some machines offer S4_BIOS whose support is considered to be experimental within ACPI4Linux.
- echo 4 > /proc/acpi/sleep is for swsusp
- echo 4b > /proc/acpi/sleep is for s4bios

SWSUSP

http://swsusp.sourceforge.net/
cd /usr/src/linux; patch -p1 < ...
General Setup section -> Power Management and Software Suspend (plus the suspend options if you want them).
...Swap partition should be at least 30% larger than your RAM. It has to be formatted by mkswap and used as a swap area through /etc/fstab configuration file. You don't need a partition specifically set aside for suspending. You must set the resume kernel option to the swap partition you want to use for suspension. If your partition is, for instance, the third primary one on first ide disk (/dev/hda3) you have to append "resume=/dev/hda3" as a kernel parameter in your lilo.conf file.
http://swsusp.sourceforge.net/Software-suspend-3.html

Extra keys

Maybe only via ACPI in the future?
Maybe Funkey could work... (or better these patches)

Video

cf http://www.winischhofer.net/linuxsis630.shtml
Driver included in the last 2.4.20 kernels
The one on the Mitac seems to be a 300 serie
The CRT2 bridge is apparently a Chrontel 7005 (support resolutions up to 800x600)

Attention:

The Chrontel 7005 has one more issue. Due to a hardware bug, it sometimes reports a TV connection although no TV is actually connected. Since TV has the highest priority among the CRT2 devices (if ForceCRT2Type is missing in the configuration file), this is inconvenient on laptops as the LCD panel will go blank. To avoid this, set this option to LCD even if LCD is the only CRT2 type available.

I had the problem
Passing the following option to LILO fixed it:

append="video=sisfb:mode:1024x768x16,mem:12288,forcecrt2type:LCD"

DRI/DRM issue: cf http://www.winischhofer.net/sisdri.shtml

Update:

Now there are Debian packages, add these lines to your source list:

deb http://www.winischhofer.net/sis/debian/unstable ./
deb-src http://www.winischhofer.net/sis/debian/unstable ./

Then:

apt-get install sisxdriver
apt-get install sisctrl

If you happen to upgrade to a newer version of Xfree86 (eg. from 4.1 to 4.2, or from 4.2 to 4.3), run dpkg-reconfigure sisxdriver

cf also http://www.winischhofer.net/sis/XF86Config-4.example

Misc

WebCamPhilips
SMC2632W: read /usr/share/doc/linux-wlan-ng/README.Debian.gz
- Wifi SMC: edit /etc/modutils/linux-wlan-ng
- apt-get source linux-wlan-ng
- mv linux-wlan-ng-0.2.0 /usr/src/modules