|
The CF-72 (I beleive my model is the Mark I, although I have no way of making sure) is an
excellent laptop and works great with Linux. I am using RH 7.3 on mine and here
are my tips for getting the most out of it. Battery life is good; suspend works like a champ.
My only gripe is that the PIIX4 SpeedStep interface is not documented so there is no
control over it. That means I always run at the
downstepped speed when I'm on battery power. This has not generally been a problem, but a
couple hundred MHz wouldn't hurt when I'm trying to compile something.
I don't have the touch screen or wireless options so I can't comment on their functionality.
For general tips on RH (like setting up TrueType fonts, which is a must) look at Ed Halley's
Micro HOWTOs.
Video
ATI 3D Rage Mobility, 8MB. This worked fine out of the box with the exception of XVideo. Go
grab the ati.2 driver from the GATOS
site and you'll have it kicking butt with motion compensation and hardware scaling in no time. I
recommend using the VESA framebuffer for better readability of the console: adding vga=0x318
to your kernel boot line in /etc/grub.conf will give you a crystal clear 1024x768 24bpp
console.
Sound
ESS Allegro. The driver that comes with 7.3 doesn't work, ALSA probably would, but I made a
quick patch to fix it. I'm using it with 2.4.18-4 and I sent the patch to RH, so hopefully
future kernels won't require manual intervention.
maestro3.gpio_pin.patch RH Bug ID:
66397.
Apply, rebuild the kernel, install, add options maestro3 gpio_pin=13 to
/etc/modules.conf. When you're recompiling the kernel it wouldn't hurt to enable idle calls
to help conserve battery power. Sound works great with suspend/resume, even with artsd
running.
The LinModem
The integrated modem is a Lucent WinModem. It's fully supported by
ltmodem, I'm using v8.22a3; the source
tarball includes an RPM build script and configuration tools. I've tested it out with PPP and
gotten excellent performance.
The TouchPad
The touchpad moves rather slowly by default, adding Option "Resolution" "600" to the
Input Device section of /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 will speed it right up. Adjust the value to
taste. I also added a second Input Device section to let me use my IntelliMouse Optical
as well. Add this to the ServerLayout section.
InputDevice "USB Mouse" "SendCoreEvents"
And add the following under the initial Input Device section.
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "USB Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "ImPS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
EndSection
LM Sensors
I setup lmsensors on the laptop and an adm1021 sensor chip was detected. Unfortunately the
values it returns seem to be meaningless. In addition it breaks USB when the modules are
loaded so I recommend that you don't bother with it. I haven't seen the sensor chip listed as
a feature of this laptop anywhere so I doubt I could find docs for interpretting the
information it returned anyway.
The DVD Rom
It works fine out of the box for everything but video playback. For Video, enable
IDE SCSI emulation. Just add hdc=ide-scsi to your kernel line in /etc/grub.conf, reboot
and fire up ogle, videolan-client, xine, mplayer or whatever your prefered DVD software is.
Accessories
So far my primary accessory has been a Lucent Orinoco Gold 802.11b card, just tweak the
configuration in /etc/pcmcia/wireless.opts to taste and you're in business. I have a few
different ethernet NIC's as well but haven't used them with this laptop yet, they've worked
with other Linux laptops so I doubt they will have any problems in this one.
|