Linux on the Uniwill N351S1 Laptop

I installed RedHat 9 (RH9). Working components include: Hard disk, floppy drive, VGA LCD monitor mode, touchpad, 1024x1400 X Windows, IrDA serial port, parallel port, USB, ieee1394, built-in ethernet, sound, APM standby, DVD R/CD RW, SL (Linmodem). Untested hardware includes: single-slot PCMCIA, S-video port, built-in microphone, external (dual) monitor, programmable hot keys. Not yet working or broken hardware includes: Suspend either to RAM or disk, battery information in APM. Using 2.6.4 kernel with ACPI battery information does work.

Hardware and Software Experience

Floppy drive - works - RH9

Hard disk - works - RH9

touch pad - works RH9 with standard PS2 driver, In 2.6.4 I use

video driver - "nvidia" Downloaded from http://www.nvidia.com/view.asp?IO=linux_display_ia32_1.0-4349. Note: The XFree86 supplied 'nv' driver failed to allow me to shut down X cleanly. The LCD displayed only white fuzz afterward. The 'nvidia' driver from the above site installed cleanly and fixed this problem. However, it may be responsible for the APM problem below.

sound driver - alsa? or alsa supplied oss? Note: RH9 intel810 sound driver only worked for playing CD music. After alsa-driver, alsa-lib, and alsa-utils were installed from binary RPM, and /etc/modules.conf modified all sound from ogle, xine, and XMMS playing ogg vorbis files worked.

DVD CD R/W - "ogle" and "xine" both work. Software downloaded from http://www.dtek.chalmers.se/groups/dvd/redhat.shtml Wrote a CD-R with cdrecord RH9. Note: Since 2.6.? CD record is best done using the IDE driver and not the ide-scsi driver.

1394 (firewire) test - Downloaded "dvgrab" from http://www.kinodv.org/. Notes: had to run 'modprobe raw1394' manually. had to specify dvgrab '--format dv2' option because dvgrab's default format, dv1, could not be interpreted by xine.

APM - unsatisfactory. Notes: When running on battery, 'apm' program reports erroneously "AC on-line". Hardware suspend mode (to DVRAM) works when not running X. Ethernet is disabled during the suspend and correctly reenabled coming out of suspend. When X is running the Suspend mode is 'vetoed' and notebook locks up. Reboot is then necessary. NVidia admits APM is not supported with their driver. My BIOS says it is ACPI 2.0 as well as APM 2.0 and PnPBIOS compliant.

Ethernet - works RH9

Modem - I looked at my /proc/pci file and found this: Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 56k Winmodem (Smart Link HAMR5600 compatible) (rev 160). I did a google search on smart link hamr5600 linux drivers and eventually found www.smlink.com where I downloaded slmdm-2.7.14.tar.gz. Since I use RH9, I found the ability to create RPMs nice. So with just the 2 small "fixes" below I was able to create the rpms and install, via rpm -i, the slamrmo and slmdm drivers. BTW and FWIW, they have a USB driver too for linux. Smart link's instructions to generate the rpms had a small error, instead of "rpm -ta ..." it should read "rpmbuild -ta ..." The only other thing I needed to manually do was create the symbolic link: "ln -s /usr/src/linux-2.4.20-8 /usr/src/linux" I tested with minicom and kppp and it works! :-)

IrDA/FIR - (2.6.x kernel) Add to /etc/modprobe.conf: 'alias irda0 nsc-ircc'. Then type: 'modprobe irda0' [ optional > typing 'dmesg | grep irda0' should yield: "IrDA: Registered device irda0" ] 'irattach irda0 -s' will attach the IrDA device to /dev/ircomm0. Then if a ppp link to the client device is desired, enter 'pppd /dev/ircomm0 noauth My_IP:Client_IP ktune ms-dns DNS_Server passive'. [ optional > 'ifconfig irda0' should yield good info. ]

USB - USB 1.0 works RH9. PFU keyboard recognized and configured by kudzu. (2.6.0) SanDisk 128Mbyte micro drive worked. Upon insertion, messages file reported the /dev/xxxx device detected. Simple mount command made the file system immediately accessible. USB 2.0 8-in-1 San Disk card read/writer was recognized. Both read and writes were tested. Speeds indicated USB 2.0 is operational.

PCMCIA - untested

parallel port - (2.6.0) After manual 'modprobe lp' my HP 870 Cse printer is working.

PCI Bus List

Output of lspci:

00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS645DX Host & Memory & AGP Controller (rev 01)
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] SiS962 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 14)
00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0016
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 91)
00:08.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6912 Cardbus Controller
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 440 Go 64M] (rev a3)

This report is a courtesy to TuxMobil by Harry Rockefeller <harryr_at_ssd.fsi.com>.
March 19, 2004, Version 1.1