Linux on the Xeron Sonic Silent Laptop

Specs

Transmeta Crusoe TM5800, 256 MB RAM DDR, Hitachi IC25N030ATCS04-0 30GB HDD, QSI CD-RW/DVD-ROM SBW242B, 4xUSB (2.0), ALi M5457 AC97 Modem, Realtek RTL-8139 10/100 MBit/s LAN, AirVast Prism3 USB WLAN, SiS 315Pro Gfx, 14" XGA Display, Ali M5451 Sound.

This machine is also sold by EliteGroup Computer Systems - ECS as Desknote A530/A531. Check the other reports about the configuration. Only things that did not work out or additional information is found in this report.

BIOS

You may reach the AMI BIOS with DEL. Choosing another boot device is accomplished by hitting F8.

Installation

Testing (Sarge) was installed from a harddisk image by the help of Knoppix. Afterwards, kernels 2.4.25 (Debian) and 2.6.5 (custom: DSDT-initrd, laptop-mode, swsusp2 2.0.0.47 and iso9660-fix) have been set up.

ACPI

ACPI seems to run. But ac_adapter and battery do not provide any info in their respective directories in /proc/acpi. One error and three warnings got fixed in the DSDT, but that did not help. Get the DSDT from acpi.sf.net.

CPUFREQ

As ACPI is not able to provide necessary information, cpufreqd does not run. Fortunately, cpudynd does, though it may lack features, cpufreqd would have provided. Of course, you need the kernel module longrun.
There is also a tool called longrun to operate on the CPU.

SWSUSP

SWSUSP 2.0.0.47 runs quite stable, though it is impossible to start new clients under XFree86 after resume until the session is restarted. And, btw, the nice status screen on suspend/resume has vanished (did not check the current version 2.0.0.60, though).

Console

When switching from XFree86 to console, the screen is blanked and no more than a blinking cursor is to be seen. Either switch to another VT and back or just hit enter or type along, depending on the status of your console session.

WLAN

This adapter is attached to USB and although there exists some kind of USB driver for in-kernel orinoco, it does not work. Despite the news on the orinoco-usb page, their code is not integrated into current (0.15rc1) orinoco drivers. Being not in sync with these and the in-kernel sources (0.13e), it barfs about unknown modules when loaded.
So the driver prism2_usb from linux-wlan-ng was taken. It works, although it spits out several errors when loaded and when in use. Sometimes, a reload of the modules is necessary. Also remember to blacklist the module in /etc/hotplug/blacklist if you do not want it to load at boot.

Modem

It should work with the driver from SmartLink, but it does not with 2.9.6(-21March2004).
First, it was tried to get it going with the help of ALSA's snd-intel8x0m. Strangely, it was necessary to use ALSA hardware device 0 and not device 1 to get slmodemd to run. That disabled the sound completely until the next reboot. Nevertheless, it was impossible to dial a number. When trying to use the kernel module slamr the machine rebooted or oopsed when it was loaded. Using the snapshot from March 2004, it did not crash anymore, but did not want to load either.
Somewhere it was suggested to try to disable every serial stuff in the kernel, because it interferes with the modem. Having neither serial nor IrDA interface, it should not be a big disadvantage. That was not tried yet.

ls*

lspci

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Transmeta Corporation LongRun Northbridge (rev 03)
0000:00:00.1 RAM memory: Transmeta Corporation SDRAM controller
0000:00:00.2 RAM memory: Transmeta Corporation BIOS scratchpad
0000:00:05.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: ALi Corporation M5451 PCI AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
0000:00:07.0 ISA bridge: ALi Corporation M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge [Aladdin IV]
0000:00:08.0 Modem: ALi Corporation M5457 AC'97 Modem Controller
0000:00:09.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 315PRO PCI/AGP VGA Display Adapter
0000:00:0a.0 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:0a.1 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:0a.2 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 1.1 Controller (rev 03)
0000:00:0a.3 USB Controller: ALi Corporation USB 2.0 Controller (rev 01)
0000:00:10.0 IDE interface: ALi Corporation M5229 IDE (rev c4)
0000:00:11.0 Bridge: ALi Corporation M7101 PMU

lsusb

Bus 004 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 003 Device 003: ID 124a:168b
Bus 003 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

Other Resources

• Elitegroup laptops at TuxMobil.org
• Report about ECS Desknote A530
• Report about ECS Desknote A531

Credits

• Sebastian Henschel