Linux on the DELL Inspiron 2650 Laptop

The machine features a Pentium-4m CPU and these I/O ports: serial, parallel, VGA, USB, PCMCIA, modem, LAN. There are an in-built floppy and CD-RW drive.

Installation

The DELL 2650 was delivered with pre-installed MicroSoft-WindowsXP. I have done an installation of Novell/SuSE 8.1 Professional.

X11

I have taken the latest driver from NVIDIA for the GeForce2Go graphics card. .

Resolutions work up to 1024x768@16.

Console

With the NVIDIA driver the console is completely unusable, because it flickers, or shows stripes or looks very dark.

TouchPad

The touchpad works with /dev/psaux. The synaptics driver doesn't work.

NIC

The network interface works with the 3COM kernel driver.

Modem

The modem is an Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem (rev 2)., I downloaded the pctel-0.9.6.tar.gz pctel driver and compiled the modules using:

./configure --with-hal=i8xx
make
make install

loaded the modules, but it doesn't work.

ACPI

Works only partly (all modules load without errors, and /proc/apci shows up, but all else fails, e.g. putting the machine into sleep mode). But you can even switch the processor frequency

cat /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/performance
state count:             2
active state:            P0
states:
    *P0:                  1700 MHz, 20000 mW, 250 uS
     P1:                  1200 MHz, 10000 mW, 250 uS
.
echo 1 > /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/performance
.
cat /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/performance
state count:             2
active state:            P1
states:
     P0:                  1700 MHz, 20000 mW, 250 uS
    *P1:                  1200 MHz, 10000 mW, 250 uS

And the performance changes!

CD-RW

The CD-RW drive works fine on /dev/hdc. See CD-Writing-HOWTO from The Linux Documentation Project - TLDP for details. No time to check the DVD with xine or mplayer yet.

i8k Utilities

Novell/SuSE 8.1 provides the i8k Kernel module. But the i8k utils work only partly, the fan state can be changed.

Survey PCI Devices

Output from lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset Host Bridge (rev 05)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82845 845 (Brookdale) Chipset AGP Bridge (rev 05)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #1) (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM USB (Hub #2) (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corp. 82801BAM/CAM PCI Bridge (rev 42)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corp. 82801CAM ISA Bridge (LPC) (rev 02)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corp. 82801CAM IDE U100 (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM SMBus (rev 02)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio (rev 02)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Modem (rev 02)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 Go] (rev b2)
02:01.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
02:04.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller

You may also use the description how to reveal PCI IDs and the survey of miniPCI Ports in Laptops with Linux .

Add-Ons

Kerri Warner <kerri_at_sapphire.no-ip.com> wrote: "You said the console is dark/flickers with nvidia driver loaded - this is only the case when the bios is set to simul mode for video output, turning on both the vga and lcd. With it set to lcd only, it works fine. Also, the synaptics driver works fine for me. I also got modem drivers to load, but never work. Also, I should mention a problem I've had with mine- sound starts to crackle when processor speed changes. It happens at other times too.. depending on the program, pausing and unpausing resolves. Also, pretty much every device on the board is routed to IRQ 10. Sound, nic, cardbus slot, usb, video, and I think some other stuff too. This makes my wireless nic (netgear wg511) fail consistently with lost interrupt messages."

Other Resources

• Unix Laptop Survey
• TuxMobil - hardware section
• Linux Mobile Guide - Installing, Maintaining and Tuning of Linux on Mobile Computers
• Debian Laptop Proposal