[plug] New toy closer to being usable

[Richard Meyer]

On Sat, 2006-05-27 at 21:05 +0800, Bernd Felsche wrote:
> Richard Meyer <meyerri at westnet.com.au> writes:
> 
> >I know here are some of you following my travails with my new Dell
> >6400. 
> 
> >I've got the Radeon drivers installed and what a toil! It's not nearly
> >as easy as doing Nvidia drivers with SUSE Linux, where you just click to
> >install on the first YOU update.
> 
> Bug in the distro. I can see how those things can slip through even
> beta-testing and the first two attempted escapes (release
> candidates; for the politically correct).

Nope they don't supply Radeon drivers, and maybe with this release they
don't supply Nvidia drivers either ..
> 
> >Anyway, I got SUSE 10.1 installed and it's rather nice - lots of
> >bleeding edge software - they've changed a few things, like online
> >updates are done by Red Carpet rather than Yast Online Update. This
> >*fails* when it tries to install the first upgrades, but you can use
> >YAST to start off YOU manually and it works as it always did.
> 
> >Anyway - after I installed, I had these huge bloated fonts and screens.
> >I could tell Sax2 to change from 800x600 to 1280x800, but it was a waste
> >of breath. Eventually I used this page
> >http://www.novell.com/coolsolutions/feature/17340.html to install the
> >drivers. There is one caveat - when I tried to run that long incantation
> >of theirs about: sax2 -r -m 0=fglrx
> >-b /usr/share/doc/packages/fglrx/sax2-profile - it failed - I eveutally
> >found a README file that said to leave off everything after the
> >"0=fglrx" part, and then it worked brilliantly - glxgears gave me 1550
> >frames/sec, from a laptop chipset, so I'm happy.
> 
> Ludicrous. Who can *see* 1550 fps?

*blush* frames/min - ok a slip of the finger..
> 
> >Now to play with sound ...
> 
> >Btw - out of the box it identified the wireless chipset, and it
> >complained that it couldn't find the firmware - so a download and a "cp"
> >and I'll be there - it identified and installed the ethernet Broadcom
> >4400. Disk partitions are all /dev/sd* and the DVD writer is /dev/sr0
> 
> SATA internal drive?

Actually. from what I can find a PATA on a SATA controller.
> 
> >It does *not* see the Ricoh 5-in-1 card reader at all - no messages in
> >dmesg whatsoever.
> 
> Not supported, sadly. No drivers. No documentation available to
> write drivers. Cheaper to get a 22in1 reader from Wollies for less
> than $25. That also works as a USB-powered light.

Yup, didn't expect it to do much, but since it's part of the machine, I
decided to se whether Linus and co had found a way to tickle it into
replying ....
-- 
Richard Meyer <meyerri at westnet.com.au>