Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo M-7400
with SuSE 9.0 - Kernel 2.4.21



I made a special guide for Kernel 2.6.x (SuSE 9.1)!

Please read also the SuSE 9.0 overview (in german!)





This notebook works with LINUX ™. I tried SuSE 9.1, SuSE 9.0 and SuSE 8.2.
Boot by CD-ROM or DVD, format the HD with ext2, ext3, ReiserFS or your preferred file system.



Amilo M


Technical Data (PDF)

With the AMILO M you are getting yourself a truly mobile notebook. Coming in an elegant, slim design but with a large display and integrated wireless LAN it strikes a perfect balance between mobility and performance. Thanks to Centrino technology it is optimised for low power consumption, thus enabling extended battery life. An S-Video out port, IEEE 1394 and 3 USB 2.0 interfaces are built-in as standard to connect to all your digital peripherals and multimedia devices.


Specific configuration and information about the implemented devices:


Tux = Operates
Skull = Does not work
Warning = Works partially
Stop = I did not try it yet
ToDo = Under development
Hardware Info = Hardware information (use the command lspci)

[§] = Windos Specification



Motherboard   Hardware Info

Fujitsu Siemens Computers
Mobile Intel® Pentium® M processor Centrino
1400 MHz

Intel 855GM+ICH4M Chipset


ACPI  Tux

Power System:
Li-Ion battery, 8 cells, 14.8V / 4400mAH
DC 19V, 3.42 A
Appr. 4:00 hrs battery runtime, depending on usage
Dynamic charge supported, ACPI 2.0 supported. External universal AC adapter: 110   240 V AC, 50-60HZ, output: 65W with 19V DC.
Operating conditions Operational: 5°C to 35°C (ambient temperature) 10% to 90% relative humidity, non-condensing AC input 100-240 V, 50-60 Hz.

ACPI functions: S1 standby (LCD off), S3 save to RAM, S4 save to disk, S5 soft off.

Read the actual temperature: cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature
Throtteling CPU: cat /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling
                                  MHz down: echo -n 1 > /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling
                                  MHz up: echo -n 0 > /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling
You can monitoring some other ACPI-Logs inside /proc/acpi/.

With KDE you will get »Laptop Battery - KDE Control Module«. You see an icon in tray. With this Battery Monitor Panel you can control some ACPI Features.
AKPI is also a nice tool for monitoring /proc/acpi/. aKpi provides a simple GUI frontend for acpi. It makes heavy use of Trolltech's QT library and for some parts some KDE specific library functions are used. For those who are not running KDE there is an option that disables all KDE library calls and makes aKpi a pure QT application.  Currently aKpi provides a browser that presents the content of /proc/acpi/ in a convenient way. Those values are update every X seconds (polling). Furthermore akpi provides an icon in KDE's tray-bar that shows the current capacity of the machine's battery and the AC power state.

CPUFreqd:
Using Tools like cpufreqd - http://sourceforge.net/projects/cpufreqd - or cpudyn will throttle the CPU according to current usage and available power (AC/Battery).
Thank's Stephan for this information.


Audio / Sound  ok

Cirrus logic CS4299-XQ, 2 built-in speakers, built-in microphone, microphone in, headphone out incl. S/PDIF support. 1 x volume regulator.

Cirrus Logic CS4299 rev. 4  -  Intel 8280 1DB-ICH4 (Duplex)
Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Audio (rev 03)
[§] Crystal WDM AC'97 Driver for ICH4; Resources: PCI-Bus 0, Device 31, Function 5

The OSS module is i810_audio and ALSA module is snd-intel8x0.


BIOS  Info

Phoenix
System BIOS Version: R01-SON
VGA BIOS Version: 2894
KBC Version: 02.13.29

IRQ Status CPU0 from /proc/interrupts:
  0:     156455          XT-PIC  timer
  1:       1138          XT-PIC  keyboard
  2:          0          XT-PIC  cascade
  8:          2          XT-PIC  rtc
  9:          0          XT-PIC  acpi
 10:       2658          XT-PIC  eth0, ohci1394, PCI device 104c:ac56 (Texas Instruments), Intel 82801DB-ICH4
 11:       2112          XT-PIC  ehci-hcd, usb-uhci, usb-uhci, usb-uhci
 12:      22051          XT-PIC  PS/2 Mouse
 14:      13968          XT-PIC  ide0
 15:         48          XT-PIC  ide1

Ettore wrote me: On many sold models out there people have often found impossible to get the CPU working at more than 600Mhz, even in windows. That's because a bug in the bios keeps speedstep frequency stuck at the lowest value. I used to have the same problem with bios release R01-S0R, but flashing it to version R01-S0T (July 03) I found on the Fujitsu-Siemens site solved such serious problem.


Dimensions and weight  Info

326mm x 270mm x 30mm
2.6 kg (with 15  XGA, Li-Ion battery, HDD, Combo drive)

Kensington Lock support


Display / Monitor - LCD / CRT   ok

To switch between the notebook display (LCD) and an external monitor (CRT) without booting, please use CRT out for i855 from Andrea Merello.

Andrea Merello wrote about the CRT out:
I own a amilo-7400 and i wrote a little userspace driver that should make possible manage crt out.
If you are interested in it is available on http://sourceforge.net/projects/i855crt. It's still very experimental and doesn't provide complete management of CRT out yet.
Another driver exist: 'i855switch', but mine is based on i855switch and should make something better (I hope...).
Thank you, Andrea, it works fine for me.  :-)


DVD / CD-RW   ok

Fujitsu MHT 2040AT
HL-DT-ST DVD+RW GCA-4040N

DVD+R/+RW DVD 8x / DVD+R 2.4x / DVD+RW 2.4x / CD 24x / CD-R 16x / CD-RW 8x

For viewing DVDs you must activate DMA (see rubric Harddisk)!

Writing DVDs (DVD+RW)  ok


FireWire / i.LINK® / IEEE 1394   ok

02:03.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Lucent Microelectronics FW323 (rev 61) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
    Subsystem: Unknown device 1734:1033
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 96, IRQ 10
    Memory at e0202000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
    Capabilities: [44] Power Management version 2

[§] OHCI-compliant IEEE 1394-Hostcontroller; Resources: IRQ 10, PCI-Bus 2, Device 3, Function 0

I can't try the FireWire port, because I do not have FireWire devices.
Somebody told me: It seems to work just fine ever FireWire. I use firewire disks at home so you can add that support for firewire works on this laptop.


Floppy Drive  Hardware Info

Not hard coded. This laptop does not have an internal floppy drive.


Graphic / VGA / Display  ok

Shared memory, integrated in Intel 855GM chipset, up to 64MB.
Delivers intense, realistic 3D graphics with sharp images and enables balanced memory usage between graphics and system for optimal performance.
Optimised internal clock gating for 3D & display engines. Reduces chipset power consumption by intelligently clocking 3D & display engines based on application needs.
Image rotation, ability to rotate the screen image.

Display: 15" TFT XGA, 1024 x 768 pixel

Which Graphic Controller do you have?  cat /proc/pci | grep -A 1 VGA
VGA compatible controller: PCI device 8086:3582 (Intel Corp.) (rev 2). IRQ 11.
[§] Intel® 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller; Resources: IRQ 11, PCI-Bus 0, Device 2, Function 0
[§] AIM 3.0 Part 01 Codec Driver CH-7009-A/CH-7011; Intel AIM 3.0 Codec; Intel® 82852/82855 GM/GME Graphics Controller

Requirement (package) for 3D features: Download the dripkg RPM package from Intel® Centrino Drivers for Linux.
Open your /etc/X11/XF86Config with your favored editor (e.g. vi) and add at the end of the file (if not already there):
             Section "DRI"
                Mode 0666
            EndSection

Install it on runlevel 2 (init 2) or reboot after installation. rpm -Uhv dripkg-...

Open a shell/console and do a test with the command
/usr/bin/gears or /usr/X11R6/bin/glxgears
the acceleration. In case of a Pentium III 500 with Geforce2MX the output should be approx. 800 Fps.
5887 frames in 5000 seconds = 1177.000 FPS is a minimum.


Harddisk   Hardware Info  ok

Fujitsu MHT2040AT
Zyl. 0 - 4863 = 37.2 GB

[§] Intel® 82801DBM Ultra ATA Storage Controller - 24CA; Resources: PCI-Bus 0, Device 31, Function 1
[§] Primary IDE: Ultra-DMA-Mode 5; IRQ 14; Secondary IDE: PIO-Mode; IRQ 15

 Maybe you have to enable DMA for optimal performance. You can activate DMA with YaST2 (»IDE DMA Mode«).
For viewing DVDs you must activate DMA!

Review the performance with »hdparm -T -t /dev/hda«

Deactivate DMA with »hdparm -d 0 /dev/hda«:
  /dev/hda:
   Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.21 seconds =609.52 MB/sec
   Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  3.02 seconds = 21.19 MB/sec

Activate DMA with »hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda«:
  /dev/hda:
   Timing buffer-cache reads:   128 MB in  0.20 seconds = 640.00 MB/sec
   Timing buffered disk reads:  64 MB in  17.64 seconds = 3.63 MB/sec

For your comfort you can put it into /etc/init.d/boot.local:
/sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/hda &> /dev/null
(Avoid error messages while booting with '&> /dev/null'.)
Do the same for DVD:
/sbin/hdparm -d 1 /dev/hdc &> /dev/null


IrDA   Skull

National Semiconductor

BIOS Configuration: FIR Enabled - Mode: FIR, Base I/O address: 2F8, Interrupt: IRQ 3, DMA channel: DMA 3
[§] Intel® 82801DBM LPC Interface Controller - 24CC; Infraredreceiver A: IBM SC-20H2987; Infraredreceiver B: SIR-Transceiver; Max. connection rate: 4000000 bps
[§] Resources: IRQ 03, DMA 01, Intput/Output Range 02F8-02FF

IrDA is started with the command rcirda start. After starting you can check if everything is running correctly with irdadump. If everything goes as planned you should receive the following monitor-output every 3 seconds:
earth:~ # irdadump
13:42:57.118679 xid:cmd d04496e2 > ffffffff S=6 s=0 (14)
13:42:57.208957 xid:cmd d04496e2 > ffffffff S=6 s=1 (14)
13:42:57.298645 xid:cmd d04496e2 > ffffffff S=6 s=2 (14)
13:42:57.388923 xid:cmd d04496e2 > ffffffff S=6 s=3 (14)
13:42:57.478670 xid:cmd d04496e2 > ffffffff S=6 s=4 (14)
13:42:57.568914 xid:cmd d04496e2 > ffffffff S=6 s=5 (14)
13:42:57.658705 xid:cmd d04496e2 > ffffffff S=6 s=* earth hint=0500 [ PnP Computer ] (23)

Sad to say that irdadump works fine, but it will not find any device (like cellphone). So, it do not work.

Dial to the internet via IR:
rcirda start
rm /dev/modem
ln -s /dev/ircomm0 /dev/modem
Possibly you have to change a dialin modem command. Remove »ATZ S109=2« from Initialization String 0.

Links:
Infrared Data Association / IrDA
Linux IrDA Project
Infrared-HOWTO (Tuxmobil)



Keyboard  Hardware Info

Standard Keyboard (101/102 keys)
Resources: IRQ 01


Launch Keys  Skull
Located left of the keyboard are 5 Launch Keys used to launch the following applications: wireless communication, e-mail, Internet browser, 2 user-programmable buttons.

Kresimir Kumericki works to get implemented the Acer Hotkeys:
Concerning these 5 hotkeys on the left-hand side, I have just searched and played with this a bit and I found out that using driver module from
http://www.informatik.hu-berlin.de/~tauber/acerhk. I was able to get the kernel to recognize events of pressing these buttons. Then I got somewhat stuck because I couldn't map the keycodes reported by this module into something useable (I tried this with hotkeys software) but this was maybe because I tried everything in the hurry and haven't read all the docs. I just wanted to tell you about it. Maybe you can make some progress. I now have everything working. I contacted the author of the acerhk module and he told me that I should load module keybdev (modprobe keybdev) before loading acerhk. After that, I load acerhk (insmod acerhk poll=1) and than xev reports following keycodes for the five buttons (wireless=147, email=246, WWW=178, P1=153, P2=144).
Using 'hotkeys' software I bind these keycodes to various applications (starting Web browser, xterm, ...) and everything works, apart from wireless (wireless LED stays unlit) but I don't have wireless access point nearby so I will not investigate this now.


Hot Keys  Skull
The notebook uses hotkeys or key combinations for the following:
Fn-F1 help hotkey (does not work!)
Fn-F2 puts the computer in sleep mode (does not work!)
Fn-F3 display toggle, switches display output between display screen and external monitor or to dual view
Fn-F4 screen blank, turns the display screen backlight off to save power
Fn-F5 speaker on/off
Fn-PgUp home
Fn-PgDn end
Fn- -->   screen brightness up
Fn- <--  screen brightness down

Hotkey Project  |   Hotkey Project Download



Multicard-Port   Did not tried

3 in 1 flash card port SD/MS/MMC.

[§] Winbond Memory Stick Storage (MS); Resources: IRQ 05
[§] Winbond Secure Digital Storage (SD/MMC); Resource: IRQ 06

My camera works with efficient CompactFlash. Therefore I can't try this card-port.


NIC / Ethernet  ok

Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T (rev 01)
[§] Broadcom 440x 10/100 Integrated Controller; Resources: IRQ 10, PCI-Bus 2, Device 5, Function 0


PCMCIA   ok

CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1510 PC card Cardbus Controller
[§] Texas Instruments PCI-1510 CardBus Controller; Resources: IRQ 10, PCI-Bus 2, Device 9, Function 0


RAM   Hardware Info

504 MB (Extended Memory) DDR SDRAM (Up to 2GB DDR SDRAM in 2 so-DIMM slot.)


Softmodem  Tux

Built-in 56K, V.92 international modem

Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Modem (rev. 03) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
[§] Agere Systems AC'97 Modem; Resources: IRQ 11 (10?), PCI-Bus 0, Device 31, Function 6; Input/Output Range 2400-24FF + 2000-207F

00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corp. 82801DB AC'97 Modem (rev 03) (prog-if 00 [Generic])
    Subsystem: Unknown device 1734:1033
    Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 0, IRQ 10
    I/O ports at 2400 [size=256]
    I/O ports at 2000 [size=128]
    Capabilities: [50] Power Management version 2

[§] ATI Check:
ATQ0V1E0 = ok
AT+GMM = H.324 video-ready rev. 1.0
AT+FCLASS=? = 0.1
AT#CLS=? = Not supported
AT+GCI? = +GCI:B5
ATI1 = ok
ATI2 = ok
ATI3 = Agere SoftModem Version 2.1.25
ATI4 = Built on 02/14/2003 11:59:12
ATI5 = 2.1.25, AMR Intel MB, AC97 ID:SIL REV:0x27, 19
ATI6 = ok
ATI7 = AMR Intel MB

You can parse your modem with this small Bash-script: ScanModem

Linmodems Support Page (for this specific model)
Thank you Jacques Goldberg!

 Download the latest modem driver

Install the softmodem drivers:
Unpack tar.gz package file: $ gzip -dc slmodem-2.9.X.tar.gz | tar xf -
$ make
# make install
ln -s /dev/ttySL0 /dev/modem
/usr/sbin/slmodemd --country=COUNTRY  [COUNTRY = GERMANY for Germany]

Please read the slmodem-Readme for details!

Run soft modem application: /usr/sbin/slmodemd --country=COUNTRY

Start slmodemd while booting (SuSE):
Check slmodem-2.9.6/scripts/suse for scripts.
Copy slmodemd to /etc/sysconfig/ (rename it before).
Copy slmodemd to /etc/init.d/ (rename it before).
chmod a+x /etc/init.d/slmodemd
Set the start- and killpoints to runlevel (you can use YaST for that).


Modem related links:
Lucent DSP winmodem tracking page (Ltmodem)
LT Modem Drivers for Linux / LinModem Lucent Driver Download



S-Video   Skull

This laptop have got a S-Video port. I can't see anything on TV, when I connect S-Video--->SCART to TV-set.

It is also possible to connect a screen (VGA). Thereto it is necessary to boot the notebook. While operating you can't switch the display. [Fn]+[F3] works only some seconds before booting the operating system.


Touchpad  ok

Synaptics PS/2 Port Pointing Device (Touchpad with a left and right mouse button plus a 4-way scroll button)
Resources: IRQ 12

Download the Synaptics driver from Peter Österlund: http://w1.894.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad
This is a driver for the Synaptics TouchPad for XFree86 4.x. A Synaptics touchpad by default operates in compatibility mode by emulating a standard mouse. However, by using a dedicated driver, more advanced features of the touchpad becomes available.

Features:
  • Movement with adjustable, non-linear acceleration and speed.
  • Button events through short touching of the touchpad.
  • Double-Button events through double short touching of the touchpad.
  • Dragging through short touching and holding down the finger on the touchpad.
  • Middle and right button events on the upper and lower corner of the touchpad.
  • Vertical scrolling (button four and five events) through moving the finger on the right side of the touchpad.
  • The up/down button sends button four/five events.
  • Horizontal scrolling (button six and seven events) through moving the finger on the lower side of the touchpad.
  • The multi-buttons send button four/five events, and six/seven events for horizontal scrolling.
  • Adjustable finger detection.
  • Multifinger taps: two finger for middle button and three finger for right button events. (Needs hardware support. Not all models implement this feature.)
  • Run-time configuration using shared memory. This means you can change parameter settings without restarting the X server.

    • 1. Download the latest version of Synaptics TouchPad: http://w1.894.telia.com/~u89404340/touchpad/files
    2. After that do a »make install«.
    3. Add/Replace in the InputDevice-section for the touchpad the following lines:
        Section "InputDevice"
          Driver      "synaptics"
          Identifier      "Mouse[1]"
          Option     "Device"      "/dev/psaux"
          Option    "Edges"        "1900 5400 1800 3900"
          Option    "Finger"    "25 30"
          Option    "MaxTapTime" "20"
          Option    "MaxTapMove" "220"
          Option    "VertScrollDelta" "100"
          Option    "MinSpeed"    "0.02"
          Option    "MaxSpeed"    "0.18"
          Option    "AccelFactor" "0.0010"
          #  Option    "Repeater"    "/dev/ps2mouse"
          #  Option    "SHMConfig"    "on"
        EndSection
    4. Change the Identifier to the same name as in the ServerLayout-section. The Option "Repeater" und "SHMConfig" are at the moment for testing.
    5. Add the "CorePointer" option to the InputDevice line at the ServerLayout section: Section "ServerLayout" ...  InputDevice "Mouse[1]"  "CorePointer"  ...
    6. Start/Restart the X-Server.

    Patrik Alowersson says to Synaptics driver and Kernel 2.6.x:
    The problem is related to the synaptic driver in the 2.6.x kernel. You can't disable it. But there are a lot of patches and work arounds that I have found. It doesn't seem to help on all synaptic touchpads with this problem. I added i8042.nomux to my grub config (should work in lilo too). I have no more problems and no more lost bytes on my touchpad as the kernel log reported before.

    A nice XFree 4.3 feature for your cursor:
    Search for »cursor« in /etc/sysconfig and choose your favorite cursor from /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/icons.
    - or (especially not for SuSE 9.0) -
    Add to your ~/.Xdefaults these two lines (for a transparent red cursor):
        Xcursor.size: 16
        Xcursor.theme: redglass


    USB   ok

    3 USB 2.0 Ports

    Intel Corp. 82801DB USB EHCI Controller (1)
    [§] Intel® 82801DB/DBM USB 2.0 extended Hostcontroller - 24CD; Resources: IRQ 11, PCI-Bus 0, Device 29, Function 7


    Wireless LAN   Stop

    02:06.0 Network controller: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 1043 (rev 04)
        Subsystem: Intel Corp.: Unknown device 2527
        Flags: medium devsel, IRQ 10
        Memory at e0203000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=4K]
        Capabilities: [dc] Power Management version 2

    [§] Intel® PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter; Resources: IRQ 10, PCI-Bus 2, Device 6, Function 0


    Variant 1 ~ Intel® PRO/Wireless 2100 Driver for Linux (Centrino®)
    Thank you, Stephan Heuser, Helge Krüger and Francis Irving.


    Variant 2 ~ W-LAN-Driver, free NDIS-Wrapper  

    Ndiswrapper uses 2 Win-driver-files, and it is free of charge.  Download Ndiswrapper 
    Download the Win-drivers from here: Fujitsu-Siemens Support
    WLAN: Intel(R) Calexico PRO/Wireless LAN 2100 3B Mini PCI Adapter  -  Drivers 1.1.5.0
    Caution: I can't compile this driver. So I do not use WLAN for now. If you know how to work with, it would be great to write me.
    May be it will help to use the latest kernel; the recommended kernel for Ndiswrapper.


    Variant 3 ~ Linuxant.com

    Linuxant wants $ 20 for their drivers.




    M$ Software

    You should remove some dirty W-stickers and delete the pre-installed weak operating system.

    Try to get back money for M$ software, your shop forced you to buy.
    Do not waste your money for unneeded software.

    ZDNet.de

    TheNoodle.com


    To get further information please visit the following links:

    LINUX on Laptops
    This is an index of information and documentation of interest to those who now use or are considering using the Linux operating system on a notebook or laptop computer.

    LINUX on Centrino™ Laptops

    UNIX with mobile computers
     The TuxMobil site (former known as MobiliX) is dedicated to Mobile UniX systems. It leads you to a lot of useful hands-on information about installing and running Linux, BSD, Solaris and other UniXes on laptops, PDAs, cell phones, wearables and other mobile computer devices. You may find the Linux-Mobile-Guide and the Infrared-HOWTO, a survey of supported PCMCIA/CF cards, other mobile hardware surveys, some links to databases of stolen laptops and PDAs, a survey of laptop manufacturers and their Linux status, software for mobile computers and the `linux-laptop` mailing list. For even more information see the navigation bar above, the A-Z index or the sitemap.

    LINUX on a laptop
    Linux on specific laptops.

    Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A-7600  (© Janne Nurminen)


    LINUX Software (RPM)


    Thank you all for help and information. :-)


    Last Update: April, 26th 2005


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