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I have had different issues when installing gentoo on this laptop.

Contents 1 Installation 2 Ethernet 3 Wireless Card 4 Graphics Card 4.1 xorg.conf

[edit] Installation

There has been different issues due to the fact that the hardware is quite new and the drivers are being build at the moment.

• Ethernet and wireless cards did not get recognised, so a usb wireless stick was used to be able to install gentoo.
• Because of the wireless card, if you want madwifi support you should follow the Gentoo Linux x86 Handbook
• In case you have issues getting the hard disk recognised by the gentoo live CD, you can follow the handbook using another live CD (like SystemRescueCd, based on Gentoo).

[edit] Ethernet

The patch for the SiS191 driver is included in the 2.6.24-r4 kernel. 

Note: The following steps were written for old kernels without the patch. This is kept for historical reasons as an example on how to solve similar issues.

This is taken from this thread in the gentoo forums. The ISA bridge and ethernet card:

# lspci 
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 191 Gigabit Ethernet Adapter (rev 02)
# lspci -nn 
00:02.0 ISA bridge [0601]: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS968 [MuTIOL Media IO] [1039:0968] (rev 01)
  

The ISA bridge device number of the board does not appear in /usr/src/linux/drivers/net:

# grep -C 10 isa_bridge sis190.c 
  isa_bridge = pci_get_device(PCI_VENDOR_ID_SI, 0x0965, NULL); 
         if (!isa_bridge) 
                 isa_bridge = pci_get_device(PCI_VENDOR_ID_SI, 0x0966, NULL); 
         if (!isa_bridge) { 
                 net_probe(tp, KERN_INFO "%s: Can not find ISA bridge.\n", 
                           pci_name(pdev)); 
                return -EIO; 
        }

There is a patch solving this issue (see this thread) that will be included in the kernel. Meanwhile, you should download the Francois Romieu's patch from the thread and save it in /usr/src/linux. Apply the patch and recompile the kernel.

patch -p1 -i name of the file

[edit] Wireless Card

See the Atheros 5xxx article.

[edit] Graphics Card

There is no 3d driver for the SiS 771/671 PCIE VGA.

# lspci 
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter (rev 10)

I have used the vesa driver with some minor issues. Nevertheles, I have contacted the developer of the driver and I have received a 2d driver. This is the answer:

It is very sorry that although I am the developer of
SiS671 linux 3D driver, I have no rights to send it to
you right now. If you want to get 3d driver, please
contract your mother board vendor or SiS. I will also
keep asking SiS to release linux driver on our website. 

Here is our 2d driver for ubuntu 7.10, you can try it
first. 
Please move sis_drv.* to /usr/lib/xorg/modules/drivers/ 
And modify your Xorg.conf from vesa to sis

I have followed the directions and the 2d driver works quite well.

You can get the driver by contacting the author or following the links in this post.

There seems to be a 3D driver, see this post

Some threads with information that needs to be tested:

• SIS 671 XOrg driver
• Mandriva

[edit] xorg.conf

Included the relevant parts of xorg.conf. I am able to get a resolution of 1280x800 and to control the screen with x11-misc/sisctrl. DRI is disabled as it is not possible to have it with this card.

Section "Device"
       Identifier      "Device0"
       Driver          "sis"
       VendorName      "Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]"
       BoardName       "771/671 PCIE VGA Display Adapter"
       BusID           "PCI:1:0:0"
       Option          "EnableSiSCtrl" "yes"
       Option          "DRI" "off"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
       Identifier "Screen0"
       Device     "Device0"
       Monitor    "Monitor0"
       DefaultDepth     24
       SubSection "Display"
               Viewport   0 0
               Depth     24
               Modes   "1280x800"
       EndSubSection
EndSection

There is a section in the HOWTO Dual Monitors with an example on how to get xinerama with this card.