Emachines M6807 Laptop

Insanity5902 · Posted: Wed Mar 03, 2004 1:57 pm Post subject:

that link doesn't work, just takes us to the main page.

isnogood · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jul 2003 Posts: 96

Damned thing - go to notebooks-hp pavilion notebooks-zv5000z series

roddog · n00b Joined: 02 Mar 2004 Posts: 2

Well having the nVidia card helps on the 3D front. Are these even out yet?

isnogood · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 09 Jul 2003 Posts: 96

They said it would ship by march 11 if I bought one.And yes the nvidia chip is what I am after - it's not the newest one around but all I want is less trouble not high speed gaming.

bbqBrain · n00b Joined: 02 Oct 2003 Posts: 9

Wow...1280x800 -> 1680x1050 for only $100?

I priced one out at $1474 with the high-res panel, 12-cell battery, and 1x512MB RAM (plus cost of a Prism wireless adapter). With free shipping, that's a helluva deal.

Who's going to buy one and review it? Maybe they'd send a unit for permanent review.

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nccuss17 · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 2 Location: orlando

I was wondering if somone had a .config file that worked with 2.6.3 with this laptop. (muru is 2.6.2, and screws up my cisco 802.11b card that I use, while the 2.6.3 compile I tried screws up the pcmcia modules).

In particular I would love to get my hands on the .config file they used for the emachines kernel that came with the latest version of the amd64 bit boot disk, as that kernel works great (but any 2.6.3 that worked would do).

brad_mssw · n00b Joined: 24 Dec 2003 Posts: 29 Location: Alachua, FL

OK
A lot of confusion has been going on, and people keep going
to muru.com, which definately has relevant information, but
that site is getting old, and no longer relevant to Gentoo/AMD64.

As long as you use gentoo-dev-sources-2.6.3-r2 or higher,
the kernel fully supports the emachines m680X laptops.
The kernel config you should be using is provided with new
'genkernel' releases. 'emerge genkernel' to install genkernel.
The kernel config is:
/usr/share/genkernel/x86_64/kernel-config-2.6-emachines

You must also pass 'pci=noacpi noapic' to the kernel, please
DO NOT reverse any of these letters. No typos are accepted here!
Look very very very closely! noacpi and noapic are different!

Ok, now that that rant is done with (you can tell too many people
have made this mistake), we can continue...

We recommend using a 'genkernel' compiled kernel to get you
started, here would be your procedure:

bswrchrd · n00b Joined: 27 Jan 2004 Posts: 16 Location: Nashville

Hey Brad,

Can you say POOF and make the wireless card work?

Vesentac · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 17

OK, i went back and followed the directions to the letter and did not try to customize options too much. There is something that prevents the ethernet from working. I'll chop at it some more.

Thanks brad, you are the da man!

TheSisko · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 2

There could a few things, are you talking hardwired or wireless?

During the install hardwired worked fine, using "#dhcpcd eth0"
if you using a wireless pcmcia card, its not under eth0, but rather eth1

Currently I do not believe the internal wireless one works unless using NDIS if that works...(refer to previous posts)

Check to make sure you have the correct modules in "#lsmod" "#lspci"
Check to make sure you have the correct network info in /etc/resolv.conf
is correct.

FOR People using other PCMCIA wireless cards in the 2004rc2 AMD64 distro:

Make sure you emerge pcmcia-cs and hotplugging.
I noticed I needed to modprobe orinoco_cs to get it working, it can
be different for the various types of cards though.
"#cardctl ident" will tell you if your card is identified yet.
finally I copied /etc/init.d/net.eth0 to /etc/init.d/net.eth1 (make sure it has the correct networking information in it though)
then I issued "#/etc/init.d/net.eth1 start" which got me running.

(that is a LinkSys WPC11 version3 if anyone has the same)

Does anyone have an XF86Config other than Muru's? I get a "no screen error" Any ideas?

TheSisko · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 2

It looks like ATI finally released updated drivers.
<a href="http://slashdot.org/articles/04/03/06/1436223.shtml"> ATI Drivers on Slashdot </a>

However, there is still no AMD64 ones that I am aware of.

Apterigo · n00b Joined: 07 Mar 2004 Posts: 2

I'm glad I found this forum. Lots of good information on the M6805/7. A couple things before I say anything. I run Debian and not Gentoo but I've had some interesting experiences with Debian Woody w/ X 4.3.0 and Kernel 2.4.24 and this laptop. I bought the laptop pretty much the day it was available - just perfect timing as I needed a laptop and 64-bit sounded wonder. My experienced below are all 32-bit-

I was able to get the via-rhine working without disabling ACPI. I used the "scyld" drivers from ftp://ftp.scyld.com/pub/network. Not that it makes much a difference but-

Also, I was able to get ndiswrapper loaded easily enough and get my wireless detected. I can make configuration changes to the wireless and bring up the interface but have not got anything web site wise- As this is my first experience with ndiswrapper it is likely an err on my part that I will remedy with a little bit of hacking. I did not run into any serious compiling problems with most of it, although I did have to rebuild the ndiswrapper and wireless-tools from source (complaints about V12 and V16 of the wireless extensions) before anything useful seemed to happen. I also happened to use the NDIS drivers from the M5310 (because I had already axed my windows partition). You'll hear from me again when I get wireless working

Apterigo

thither · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Posts: 32

Longshotnm · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 3

I have been talking to Emachines about getting the buggy code in their bios fixed. They do not appear to be interested. We all may need to call Emachines and hound them to fix the bios so the kernel maintainers don't have to write patches to get around the bios code.

doubledizown · n00b Joined: 17 Feb 2003 Posts: 9

I successfully installed a 2.6.3-r2 kernel....emachines, genkernel, did everything per the instructions..
everything worked perfectly (and still does) but grub is being a little kooky.

for some reason, no matter how I modify grub.conf (and I know that i'm properly doing it because I can successfully modify the options for my XP boot), it refuses to recognize a line of the file upon boot and I have to manually type it in each time.

the line that begins with "kernel (hd0,1) etc" is omitted. Just not even there. I go into command line mode and load up my grub.conf off /dev/hda1, and still, it will not recognize it. The following line, "initrd (hd0,1) etc" is in tact, as is the "root (hd0,1)" line. Can anybody explain why?

It's strictly for convenience issues but it's a real pain in the neck.
Thanks, everything else is great.
-Ryan

Vesentac · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 17

Space between kernel and (hda0,1) right?

grub is picky like that, need a space like, taking arguments.

if you can post your grub.conf here...

doubledizown · n00b Joined: 17 Feb 2003 Posts: 9

Insanity5902 · Posted: Thu Mar 11, 2004 2:31 pm Post subject:

doubledizown - did you get the wireless working.
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thither · n00b Joined: 04 Feb 2004 Posts: 32

Another thing that's driving me nuts about gentoo on this laptop is that the time changes every time I boot from WinXP to Linux. I've tried setting the "CLOCK" variable to UTC and local in /etc/rc.conf to no avail. What I'd like to do is, if possible, have both Windows and Linux leave the hardware clock the heck alone - anybody know a good way to do this?

doubledizown · n00b Joined: 17 Feb 2003 Posts: 9

Let me just tick everyone off real quick by saying that I've only used mandrake in the past and am pretty clueless... but willing to learn. Anyway, here goes:

Is anybody willing to walk me through installing xfree/kde on here? I haven't had much time to deal with the idiosyncracies nor do I (school is a hassle) for the time being, at least for a couple weeks... I have the latest amd64 livecd with emachines support all installed and working perfectly, except for the wireless nic. But i'm less concerned with that as of right now than just getting kde installed, i need a gui

but anyway, please reply, thanks.

-Ryan

scottymace · n00b Joined: 15 Feb 2004 Posts: 29

SyN/AcK · n00b Joined: 13 Mar 2004 Posts: 7 Location: Kalamazoo MI

So basically where we are right now is that:

1.) Built-in Wireless does not work. Period. I've heard people trying to use the wrappers, alas, with no luck.
2.) There is no 64-bit ATI Driver support and will not likely be for some time yet.

But, the good news is that this can be installed in 64-bit mode, the built-in NIC card works, sound aparently works, the media card reader appears to work (or has been reported to work), the touchpad will work, and it appears that the Gentoo developers are being good to us with the emachine kernel image on the new live cd (has anyone tried this yet??).

So, if we can get those two above issues resolved, I will be a very very happy person. As it stands, I have everything working but those, and am very pleased with the performance. There have been some strange issues for me, including problems getting Gnome and jackstart-audio-kit to build, but I at least resolved the Gnome problem.

scottymace · n00b Joined: 15 Feb 2004 Posts: 29

tejesh83 · n00b Joined: 14 Mar 2003 Posts: 7

I'd really like to get wireless working under linux. My attempts with a few distros both 32bit and 64 have failed. I did get some hardware activity (using ndiswrapper and linuxant) in 32bit MDK 10, but I had no success connecting to my home network. This has kept me from extensively using the laptop under linux. After a couple hrs of frustration in linux trying to get wireless up, I reboot back to Windows.

What steps should we take next to get the above posted hw/sw issues resolved?

EDIT: I contacted eMachines support, here is the reply:
"I suggest you contact the manufacturer of the software or visit your favorite search engine for details and downloads for your software".

From what I've read on Google groups, broadcom does not have any open source drivers for wireless nor any plans to produce them. The drivers section on Broadcom's website says to "please contact either the PC or board manufacturer for technical support." since they do not sell the product directly to customers.

I guess we may have to wait for ndiswrapper or linuxant to support AMD64 or replace the wireless with something supported natively.

nccuss17 · n00b Joined: 04 Mar 2004 Posts: 2 Location: orlando

for those of you wanting to get wireless working and don't want to use ndis (or didn't get ndis to work), there is a nother project at http://prism54.org which supposedly works with the broadcom mini-pci card (the supported cards page lists only 2 people that tried, but they both were supposedly sucessfull).

Also it looks like they may have some of their code in the next kernel (already in the beta versions of 2.6.4).
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