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Re: [LUG] A couple of problems with my lappy...

 

On Thursday 20 January 2005 23:25, Grant Sewell wrote:
Hi all.

Since we've a semi-topic about laptops on at the moment, I thought I'd
throw my small problem in the hat.

I have inherited a reasonable laptop.  It's a Mendocino Celly @ 300MHz,
256Mb RAM, 20Gb HDD.  It functions perfectly, albeit it runs slightly
slower than that to which I have become accustomed on my desktop machine. 
However, speed is not the issue here - afterall, I only really use it for
classes at College... more on that later.

First thing first, though.  The system comes with an ESS1869 sound
controller.  Try as I might, I can't get this thing to work without it
causing a complete kernel freeze at some point or other (usually if I try
using mplayer with it).  I can't get the ESS module(s) to work at all, and
the SB module is the only things that works... but then causes the freeze. 
It's picked up nicely with *lspnp* but isn't listed with *pnpdump* (infact,
nothing is listed with pnpdump).  Anyone got any ideas?

Secondly.  College use a lot of "interactive whiteboards" (Promethean
ActivBoard).  Hence, I use them a fair bit.  The room in which I take most
of my classes (if not all) has the VGA splitter in the far corner of the
room.  This makes it really quite hard to have a smooth-running class...
having to keep going back to the laptop in order to move something that's
projected onto the board.  It would be really nice if I got use the IWB as
it should be used.  Obviously the placement of the PC to which the IWB is
normally connected isn't a problem... guess which system that runs on?

Now, the IWB connects to the PC using a standard serial connection (9pin). 
I have tried connecting to both the serial port on the laptop and to a
USB->Serial adaptor I bought (originally purchased to facilitate easy
access to the routers in the labs), and I have tried all of the
driver/protocol combinations that I could find for serial "mice" under X. 
All to no avail.

Finally getting to my point: has anyone had any experience with these IWBs?
 Any thoughts on how I might be able to get it to work?  I've been onto
Promethean about it, and have a guess what the response I got was! 
Surprisingly it wasn't "sod off, we don't support Linux", but the guy
thought that I might like to consider using VNC to project the Linux
session but use Windows for interactivity.  I don't.

Ok, I'm guessing a bit here.
ESS audio chips normally work pretty well with Linux systems.
I've found the oddest post wrt this 
http://www.linuxquestions.org/questions/archive/25/2003/06/4/68666
The 1869 chip has been around for a long long time (in computing terms). I'm 
pretty certain they are pci audio chips.
What I'm thinking is that possibly your laptop has an early APCI 
bios/motherboard. APCI can be used to implement IRQ allocations and other 
resources (at least that's how I understand it) and is used a lot in laptops. 
Older laptops will still work without ACPI enabled (some newer ones won't) in 
your kernel. I'd be tempted to check your kernel config and try turning off 
ACPI if it's set. You may be able to just boot with kernel option ACPI=off - 
you'll need to check the exact option.
NOTE, when turning off ACPI be carefull to check that the cpu fan in the 
laptop still comes on when it should or you can trash your machine :) - I 
have an old laptop (P233 I think) where I had to set the fan to run 
continuously - I can't remember how I did it though.

HTH
Jon

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