Laptop Asus A2500H

Linux on Asus laptop A2500H (A2H/L)

by Dorian

The knoppix is a distibution based on sarge Gnu/Debian,you can boot the knoppix directly without do an install on Hard disk,this stuff is pretty cool isn't it ? ;-) but you can also install the knoppix on your HD and in 5 minutes you have 3Go of free programme installer AND configured ! When I bought My laptop (without M$ on It ! -> No M$ Taxes !! :-D) I was very busy and off course haven't time to Configure a new system so the choise was very fast! weel I stop talking about me here is what I have done for a betteer working laptop (that's good I english ???) .

You can find the Knoppix here : http://www.knoppix.org the configuration may work whit other distro (I suppose )

In the first time i find The knoppix to working fine but some stuff don't work very well indeed.

Hardware

• CPU P4 2,66GHz
• DVD-ROM combo CD-RW
• RAM 256Mo upgradable to 1Go
• HD 40Go
• a beautiful suicase for the laptop and a usb mice ;-))

Touchpad

The touchpad is the first think you want to work very well,the knoppix assume a standart touchpad but the A2H is a SYNAPTICS touchpad,thus a best suited drivers can be found here : http://w1.894.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/index.html

• the driver seems to work well with gpm.
• the two scrollbar work with programe who use them :
  • mozilla
  • mplayer

ACPI feature

I recomand using ACPI insteed of apm since many feature must be controled by ACPI and NOT by apm hopefully the comming soon af the 2.6.0 kernel will stabilise the acpi management(I read in this way) a good start point : http://sourceforge.net/projects/acpi4asus with this driver you will be do do think like :

• 4 user button may be programmed
  • the power button me be programmed to to swith down properly your laptop
  • Vol up, down mutt
  • unfortunaly with kernel 2.4.X the suspend is IMPOSSIBLE but with the 2.6 it will be !
• LCD/TV output may be programmed to
  • command to switch LCD/TV, to put your laptop on your TV and watch a good DiVX ;-)
    • simply do (in X mode): echo 6 > /proc/acpi/asus/disp
    • and in frame buffer mode : echo 4 > /proc/acpi/asus/disp

SiS5513: IDE chipset

I try to watch a DVD on my laptop but without succes until I find the cause of this problem I don't know why but the sis driver don't use DMA with /dev/dvd (/dev/hdb) the first think to do is to put in your lilo.conf : append="idebus=66" and in a post-start-up script( this is not a beatifull way I know .. but no time for do a good stuf right now , juste a little time to pu my poor knowledge on the wiki ;-p )
put the line : hdparm -d1 /dev/hdb (will activate DMA on DVD)
with this stuff you will watch a good DVD on your laptop

• some benchmark :
  • DVD befor 1Mo/sec after 5Mo/sec (estimation by rippind my favorite DVD)
  • HD , hdparm -tT /dev/hda

Links http://gyver.homeip.net/sis5513/

Wifi: Broadcom Corporation BCM4301 802.11b (rev 02)

the first driver I found is the linuxant (not free) drivers http://www.linuxant.com/driverloader/ after a while I found hazardously (??) this drivers : http://ndiswrapper.sourceforge.net/ the driver is not realy a drivers it's a M$ XP drivers loader (yes you have read it !) it use the Xp drivers directcly .. Central problem of different students is their worry of using some new issues like papers writing services! We do not need to be scared to buy college research paper in the web! Innovations can really help us! of course you cannot do all the think you do with a native driver think like put the driver in promiscuous mode is NOT possible anyway (if you find a way to do i let me know !),and d'ont try iwspy/kismet it's simply impossible right now :(( but the drivers seems to be good for a normal connection to a hot-spot or in ad-hoc mode

PCI

lspci show like this :

'00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 650 Host (rev 80)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS 530 Virtual PCI-to-PCI bridge (AGP)
00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 85C503/5513 (rev 14)
00:02.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] FireWire Controller
00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Intel 537 [56k Winmodem] (rev a0)
00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7012 PCI Audio Accelerator  (rev a0)
00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7001 USB Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7001 USB Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7001 USB Controller (rev 0f)
00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS7002 USB 2.0
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 90)
00:0a.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
00:0c.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4301 802.11b (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS650/651/M650/740 PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter'

Video

for TV output see ACPI section

Added Software

• Mplayer
• laste version of OpenOffice

If you have questions, comment etc ... feel free to drope me a E-mail : dorian at be.linux.org