Linux on the Samsung P28 XTM 1600 Laptop

Some hinges about the installation of Debian Sarge on a Samsung P28 XTM 1600.

Hinges

DSDT

Disassembling and recompiling produced a total of 14 errors and 2 warnings. The errors were mostly referred to as "Error 1094", which means "Missing ResourceSource string". In fact, this message is quite disleading, as actually, there are too many parameters, so some of them have to be removed. Reading the ACPI-FAQ brought the solution: Beneath the question "How do I report a CPU-to-PCI bridge (root PCI Bus) in the ACPI NameSpace?" (which obviously not really refers to the problems that occured) a bit further down, there are some examples, how the resources like WordBusNumber or DWordMemory have to look like. After looking closely at the values of the different elements, it occured, that every resource had 3 or more elements appended at the end, that don't meet ACPI-Specification.

In fact, all errors and warnings were caused by too many parameters appended at the end of the strings: ==Original:

	 WordBusNumber (ResourceProducer, MinFixed, MaxFixed,
		 PosDecode,
	         0x0000, // Address Space Granularity
        	 0x0000, // Address Range Minimum
		 0x00FF, // Address Range Maximum
		 0x0000, // Address Translation Offset
		 0x0100, 0x00,,)

SHOULD BE: ==Fixed:

         WordBusNumber (ResourceProducer, MinFixed, MaxFixed,
                 PosDecode,
                 0x0000, // Address Space Granularity
                 0x0000, // Address Range Minimum
                 0x00FF, // Address Range Maximum
                 0x0000, // Address Translation Offset
                 0x0100)

After applying the fixed DSDT into the kernel (easiest with a kernel >=2.6.9), all ACPI-Errors disappeared and even S3 (suspend to RAM) works perfectly.

To wake the system up, one needs to press the power-button, which is a rather uncommon way, but that button has no other use than turning on, anyway.

Here you may download a fixed DSDT for the Samsung P28 XTM 1600.

Volume-Control-Buttons (Mute, Volume up, Volume down)

Thanks to the lineakd-project, this problem was quite easy to fix. All I needed to do, was to add a definition to /etc/lineakkb.def:

	[SP28]
		brandname = "Samsung"
		modelname = "AT Translated Set 2 keyboard"
		[KEYS]
			mute		=160
			turndown        =174
			turnup		=176
		[END KEYS]
	[END SP28]

Now, calling lineakd -c SP28 as user creates a config-file ~/.lineakd/lineakd.conf, in which you can simply configure, what to do on those keypresses:

	[...]
	mute = aumix -w M
	turndown = aumix -w -
	turnup = aumix -w +
	[...]

In order to use those newly configured keys, you can either start lineakd from the commandline/terminal, or, with GNOME, there is the possibility to configure commands, that should be started at bringing up gnome, which is located in the session management menu. KDE-Users can use the autostart-mechanism provided by KDE.

GNOME-Users: don't forget to append an "&" to the commandline, otherwise, the Splashscreen won't go away by itself, but you have to do a mouseclick, to get rid of it. After a re-login, those keys should work without any further problems.

WLAN

Currently not useable with Linux.

Output from `lspci'

Attention this output is actually from a Samsung P28 XTC 1400c, besides the Celeron-M CPU this laptop is almost identical to the P28 XTM 1600.

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5830 (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5838
0000:00:14.0 SMBus: ATI Technologies Inc ATI SMBus (rev 18)
0000:00:14.1 IDE interface: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4349
0000:00:14.3 ISA bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 434c
0000:00:14.4 PCI bridge: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 4342
0000:00:14.5 Multimedia audio controller: ATI Technologies Inc IXP150 AC'97 Audio Controller
0000:00:14.6 Modem: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 434d (rev 01)
0000:01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc: Unknown device 5835
0000:02:03.0 Network controller: Lucent Microelectronics: Unknown device ab30
0000:02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c475 (rev 81)
0000:02:05.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02)
0000:02:06.0 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
0000:02:06.1 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB (rev 43)
0000:02:06.2 USB Controller: NEC Corporation USB 2.0 (rev 04)

You may use the description how to reveal PCI IDs.

This report is a courtesy for TuxMobil by Sven Grounsell.