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thecas
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Joined: 28 Jul 2004
Posts: 22

PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 3:36 pm    Post subject: AMD64 laptop success/nightmare stories Reply with quote

Hi, my current laptop gets more hardware failures every day so it's time to buy a new one. But the biggest problem in choosing an amd64 laptop is that there just isn't much information out there, for example i know that the ACER 15xx serie does exist but on there own website they don't say a word about it. The ASUS website is even worser, though i know they also have AMD64 laptops.
So can you please tell me what your AMD64 laptop adventures are, I'm especially interested which parts you got to work/stuck and in which mode (64 or 32) they're running. Not only hardware but also things like reiser4, udev the love-sources are welcome.
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dangertools
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Joined: 29 Dec 2003
Posts: 278
Location: Saalfelden, Austria

PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 5:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

i am using an acer aspire 1501Lmi under 64bit.
http://acer.at/acereuro/page4.do?dau22.oid=4842&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=1&ctx1=AT&crc=247943745
This link points to the 1510 series on acer.at. i don't know why acer.com doesn't list something. stupid acer. i am running ma notebook now on 64bit after 4 months on 32bit gentoo. to run in 64bit i had to choose a different wlan-card. i have now a cardbus prism based on which works better than the built in broadcom. the broadcom wouldn't work in 64bit though there are no 64bit windows-drivers for ndiswrapper.

Some things that don't work:

Never buy something from ATI. i will never do it again :( so my tipp for you is to buy an aspire 1510 or 1511 which contain nvidia-chips. ati hasn't released 64bit linuxdrivers und the ones from 32bit are bad!

the cardreader doesn't work. it is from winbond and only works in windows.

The wlan-chip from broadcom. it can only be run with ndiswrapper in 32bit mode. on the forum there is a whole thread about this series of notebooks. the last post describes how to change the broadcom mini-pci with a prism based one.

and something for all the amd64 notebooks. the batterylife is very short. a friend of mine has a centrino travelmate and a battery with 4300 mAh and it runs for about 6 hours or so. my battery has 6600 mAh and runs about 2 hours, if compiling less than one and it is hot (about 80° when working).


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thecas
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Joined: 28 Jul 2004
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PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 8:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

Just found the ASUS L5000 series ( dutch site with more specs). Does anyone have one of these? Or know someone who let linux loose on it, I like ASUS because it has good linux support and especially this one because of the nvidia gfx card.
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True
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Joined: 10 Apr 2002
Posts: 125
Location: Vancouver

PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 9:29 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I have the Compaq Presario R3000 and so far it's played nicely with 64bit Linux. The only piece of hardware that's no use is the onboard Broadcom wireless NIC. It works with ndiswrapper but of course only using a 32bit install. That said, I've ordered the Netgear WG511 which I've heard should work. Otherwise it's all good - the powernow stuff works well, the nvidia card works (1200fps app.). Also this laptop didn't cost too much - $1700 Canadian from Radioshack. It's a little beefy though as it has a widescreen (1200x800res) but I don't mind that. Oh, and I haven't got the DVD burner to burn DVD's under 64bit yet as dvd-Pro doesn't seem to have setup properly.

BTW, I'm using resierfs(3) and udev without problems.

http://cmb.phys.cwru.edu/kisner/linux/compaq-r3000/ for more info.

lspci:
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 Host Bridge (rev a4)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 LPC Bridge (rev a6)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce3 SMBus (rev a4)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 1.1 (rev a5)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 1.1 (rev a5)
0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 2.0 (rev a2)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 Audio (rev a2)
0000:00:06.1 Modem: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 00d9 (rev a2)
0000:00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce3 IDE (rev a5)
0000:00:0a.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
0000:00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 AGP Bridge (rev a4)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV17 [GeForce4 420 Go 32M] (rev a3)
0000:02:01.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:02:02.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4306 802.11b/g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 03)
0000:02:04.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments: Unknown device ac54 (rev 01)
0000:02:04.1 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments: Unknown device ac54 (rev 01)
0000:02:04.2 System peripheral: Texas Instruments: Unknown device 8201 (rev 01)
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chief72
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Joined: 02 Aug 2004
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Location: Little Rock, AR

PostPosted: Mon Aug 02, 2004 10:18 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'm running an emachines M6809 - Athlon64 3200+, 512mb PC2700, 80 gb (4200rpm,bleh) hard drive, Radeon 9600 (64meg, bleh again), Broadcom 802.11g, 15.4 widescreen. (Kernel is 2.6.7-rc11.)
This was my first experience with Gentoo, and one of my few experiences with Linux in particular. The BIOSes on the earlier versions of this laptop, the m6805/7, were apparently EXTREMELY buggy - kernels wouldn't load without fifteen switches or a dozen patches, ACPI problems all over the place. Apparently most were fixed for the m6809 and up - I used the emachines kernel on the 2004.2 x86_64 LiveCD (although I bet I could have gotten away with default) and finished the whole install (Stage 1's a good learning experience 8) ) with no problems. (Anyone with a m6805/7 who doesn't already have the new BIOS, go here. Actually, I did inadvertently hose my root partition on my first install, but I think that was my fault.
Anyway, everything's working fine except for two problems identical to the guy with the Acer. The Radeon doesn't work in 3d since ATI doesn't have 64bit drivers, and the Broadcom wireless card doesn't work because the drivers and ndiswrapper are 32bit. (Note: I have not tested the memory card reader, and I'm using ext3 since I heard about problems with reiser and A64s, and I'm not experienced enough to go looking for bugs.) Aside from that everything's peachy.

I'm starting college in the fall, and I got this laptop as a graduation present since I didn't want to haul my huge PC up to a tiny dorm room. It has a couple of drawbacks - 64mb VRAM, slow hard drive - but with the price ($1400!), the performance I get (hell, it's still a 2ghz A64 with a nice laptop gfx chip), and the fair upgradeability (I'll probably get a gig of RAM and a faster HD next summer), I'm extremely happy with it, emachines though it may be.
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Ian
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Joined: 28 Oct 2002
Posts: 834
Location: Somerville, MA

PostPosted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 12:13 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

I'll second the Compaq R3000.

I just got mine back from Tech Support, somehow, putting Gentoo on it the first time killed it (I think a bad solder joint somewhere, wouldn't reboot), but now that I got it back, I'm reinstalling Gentoo, and it seems to be working great. Bootstrap finished while I went out to dinner with my dad (gone less than an hour) :-D.

Word of warning, the mouse and keyboard are quirky if not set up correctly, check out http://www.plausible.org/r3000z/ for some more info if you do purchase a R3000, it tells how to solve all the problems (save for the Broadcom NIC, but oh well...).
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thaldyron
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Joined: 25 Sep 2002
Posts: 227
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PostPosted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 7:23 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

dangertools wrote:
i am using an acer aspire 1501Lmi under 64bit.
http://acer.at/acereuro/page4.do?dau22.oid=4842&UserCtxParam=0&GroupCtxParam=0&dctx1=1&ctx1=AT&crc=247943745
and something for all the amd64 notebooks. the batterylife is very short. a friend of mine has a centrino travelmate and a battery with 4300 mAh and it runs for about 6 hours or so. my battery has 6600 mAh and runs about 2 hours, if compiling less than one and it is hot (about 80° when working).

Now this is interesting. I've got exactly the same notebook and my battery lasts 3h when doing normal work (text editing, compiling). Are you running cpufreq?
My temperatures:
Code:

# cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRS/temperature
temperature:             54 C
# cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRC/temperature
temperature:             58 C
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dangertools
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Joined: 29 Dec 2003
Posts: 278
Location: Saalfelden, Austria

PostPosted: Tue Aug 03, 2004 10:38 am    Post subject: Reply with quote

perhaps it runs three hours too. i don't know exactly but i don't think that it runs so long when compiling something half the time. my temperatures when idle and with running cpudynd (cpu runs at 800 mhz now) :

Code:
cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRS/temperature
temperature:             50 C
cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRC/temperature
temperature:             58 C


dangertools
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