HARDWARE Asus A7T

From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] Introduction

This guide is about how to install Linux on the Asus A7T laptop. My configuration has an AMD Turion64 X2 Tl-52, so I use 64-bit linux for AMD64.

[edit] Overview

[edit] lspci

00:00.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 0 (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 1 (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 5 (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 4 (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:00.6 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 3 (rev a2)
00:00.7 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation C51 Memory Controller 2 (rev a2)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:03.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:04.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation C51 PCI Express Bridge (rev a1)
00:09.0 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Host Bridge (rev a2)
00:0a.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 LPC Bridge (rev a3)
00:0a.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation MCP51 SMBus (rev a3)
00:0a.3 Co-processor: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PMU (rev a3)
00:0b.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0b.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation MCP51 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:0d.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 IDE (rev a1)
00:0e.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation MCP51 Serial ATA Controller (rev a1)
00:10.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation MCP51 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
00:10.1 Audio device: nVidia Corporation MCP51 High Definition Audio (rev a2)
00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
01:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. Unknown device 001c (rev 01)
03:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation G70 [GeForce Go 7600] (rev a1)
04:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
04:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832
04:01.1 Generic system peripheral [0805]: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19)
04:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01)
04:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a)
04:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05)

[edit] /etc/make.conf

Relevant settings:

CHOST="x86_64-pc-linux-gnu"
CFLAGS="-march=athlon64 -msse3 -O2 -pipe"
CXXFLAGS="${CFLAGS}"
MAKEOPTS="-j3"
VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia"
INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse synaptics"
ALSA_CARDS="hda-intel"

SSE3 is called pni in /proc/cpuinfo. This is a dualcore cpu so MAKEOPTS="-j3" is set.

[edit] Kernel Configuration

[edit] CPU

Enable dual core support for this Turion64 X2.

Processor type and features  --->
    Processor family  --->
        (X) AMD-Opteron/Athlon64
    [*] Symmetric multi-processing support
        [*]   Multi-core scheduler support
    (2) Maximum number of CPUs (2-256)

Enable CPU Frequency scaling. I use sys-power/cpufreqd to control the CPU frequency.

Power management options  --->
    CPU Frequency scaling  --->
        [*] CPU Frequency scaling
            <*> AMD Opteron/Athlon64 PowerNow!
            <*> ACPI Processor P-States driver

[edit] Hard Disk Drive & Optical Disk Drive

Device Drivers  --->
    Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers  --->
        <*> ATA device support
             <*>   NVIDIA SATA support

The TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L632D drive has broken firmware, causing sys-apps/hal - hald-addon-storage to use all cpu and lock up the system (Gentoo Bug 168033). Here are a two possible fixes:

1. Disable hal polling

hal-disable-polling  --device /dev/hdc

2. Crossflash the drive firmware: https://bugs.launchpad.net/linux/+bug/75295/comments/97

[edit] GPU

[edit] 2D/3D

I use the ~amd64 proprietary NVIDIA drivers: x11-drivers/nvidia-drivers.

Section "Device"
    Identifier         "nVidia GeForce Go 7600"
    Driver             "nvidia"
    VideoRam           262144
    Option             "NvAGP" "1"
    Option             "AddARGBGLXVisuals" "true"
    Option             "AllowGLXWithComposite" "true"
    Option             "DPMS" "true"
EndSection

Section "Extensions"
    Option             "Composite" "enable"
EndSection

[edit] Framebuffer

Use VESA for framebuffer support. Do not use nVidia framebuffer or Riva, they don't work. I Added 'vga=792' as boot option, it tells kernel to boot in 1024×768×24 framebuffer.

Device Drivers  --->
    Graphics support  --->
        <*> Support for frame buffer devices
            <*> VESA VGA graphics support
                VESA driver type  --->
                    (X) vesafb
            < > nVidia Framebuffer Support
            < > nVidia Riva support
            Console display driver support  --->
                <*> Framebuffer Console support

[edit] Ethernet

Device Drivers --->
    Network device support --->
        [*] Network device support
        Ethernet (1000 Mbit) --->
            <M> Realtek 8169 gigabit ethernet support

[edit] Wireless

Works with the x11-drivers/madwifi-ng module.

Loadable module support  --->
    [*] Enable loadable module support
        [*]   Automatic kernel module loading
Device Drivers --->
    Network device support --->
        [*] Network device support
            Wireless LAN (non-hamradio)  --->
                [*] Wireless LAN drivers (non-hamradio) & Wireless Extensions
Cryptographic options  --->
    [*] Cryptographic API

[edit] Audio

Device Drivers --->
    Sound  --->
        <*> Sound card support
        Advanced Linux Sound Architecture  --->
            <*> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
            PCI devices  --->
               <M> Intel HD Audio

module configuration:

alias snd-card-0 snd-hda-intel
alias sound-slot-0 snd-hda-intel
alias char-major-116 snd
alias char-major-14 soundcore
alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss
alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss
alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss
alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss

[edit] Webcam

Works with syntekdriver. Make sure you have videodev-support in kernel or module.

Device Drivers --->
    Multimedia devices  --->
        <M> Video For Linux

Check if webcam is attached:

$ lsusb |grep 174f:a311
Bus 001 Device 005: ID 174f:a311

[edit] Official Driver

Download from Gentoo Bug 178946 - media-video/stk11xx new ebuild

[edit] Development Driver

Download stk11xx svn ebuild

[edit] TV/DVB-T tuner

Use driver from this location: http://mcentral.de/hg/~mrec/v4l-dvb-experimental/ With this at least the TV part works (you can watch TV in quite nice quality).

[edit] Left Infrared

Issue the following commands to use with lirc

setserial /dev/ttyS2 uart none
modprobe lirc_sir io=0x03f8 irq=4

[edit] Front Infrared

Issue the following commands to use with lirc

modprobe lirc_it87