From Gentoo Linux Wiki

[edit] Introduction

This page contains information on installing Gentoo (AMD64) on the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A 1667G laptop. The short version is that the important hardware (processor, disk drives, display, wireless, ethernet, touchpad) are all supported and work well. The card reader has only been tested with SecureDigital cards, and there are some things that haven't been tested at all, such as the ExpressCard slot and Firewire port.

There are at least 3 models of the A1667G available, but none of the differences should have any impact on the information below (the changes are in the processor speed, installed RAM, and HD size).

[edit] Quick specs

• Athlon64 4000 (800-2600MHz)
• 1GB PC2700 (2x512, max 2GB)
• 100GB PATA hard disk
• 15.4" WXGA CrystalView (1280x800)
• Radeon X700 Mobility 128MB
• VIA 8237 (16bit, 48KHZ) on-board AC97 soundcard incorporating 56k v92 modem
• Realtek Gigabit Ethernet
• Broadcom 802.11 b/g
• NEC ND-6650A dual-layer DVD writer
• 1x Mini-PCI slot, plus two antenna cables - for the wireless card
• 1x Mobile PCI-Express Module I slot (with unconfirmed II, III, and HE) - for the graphics card
• 1x ExpressCard 54mm slot (can take 34mm cards) - untested
• 4-in-1 card reader
• 4x USB 2.0 (One dedicated to the card-reader; One to the Express Card slot; 3 usable external ports in total; see "discussion" tab)
• 1x Firewire

[edit] Installation

Installation was very straightforward, starting with the 2005.1 AMD64 minimal CD and doing a full install (ie from Stage1). When the LiveCD has finished booting, run:

modprobe r8169

to load the driver module for the RealTek Gigabit Ethernet adapter. You can then run:

net-setup eth0

and have net access while installing. Before you do any compiling, you should also run:

modprobe powernow-k8

which will load the cpufreq driver for the Athlon64. Without this, you'll probably find that the processor is stuck in it's lowest frequency state, which will substantially increase compile times (800MHz instead of 2600MHz in the case of the Athlon64 4000).

[edit] Kernel settings

[edit] CPU support

Select the Athlon 64 processor type, and cpufreq settings:

Processor type and features -->
    Processor family -->
        (X) AMD-Opteron/Athlon64

Power managment options -->
    [*] Power Management support
    ACPI (Advanced Configuration and Power Interface) Support -->
        [*] ACPI Support
        <*> AC Adapter
        <*> Battery
        <*> Button
        <*> Fan
        <*> Processor
        <*>    Thermal Zone
    CPU Frequency scaling -->
         [*] CPU Frequency scaling
         <*> AMD Opteron/Athlon64 PowerNow!

[edit] USB support

The laptop has a VIA chipset, so as usual with VIA boards, select UHCI support in the USB section:

Device drivers -->
    USB Support -->
        <*> UHCI HCD (most Intel and VIA) support

[edit] Wireless support

Wireless support must be enabled if you want to use ndiswrapper to load the Broadcom WLAN driver (see below):

Device drivers -->
    Wireless LAN (non-hamradio) --->
        [*] Wireless LAN drivers (non-hamradio) & Wireless Extensions

[edit] PCI Express

PCIE support should be enabled (the X700 Mobility is a PCIE card):

Bus options (PCI etc.) -->
    [*] PCI Express support

[edit] Headline text

[edit] Audio/Modem support

Select the appropriate ALSA driver, and if you want it, the modem driver (can also be modules of course):

Device drivers -->
    Sound -->
        <*> Sound card support
        Advanced Linux Sound Architecture -->
            <*> Advanced Linux Sound Architecture
            <*> OSS Mixer API
            <*> OSS PCM (digital audio) API
            [*] OSS Sequencer API
            PCI devices -->
                <*> VIA 82C686A/B, 8233/8235 AC97 Controller
                <*> VIA 82C686A/B, 8233 based Modems

[edit] Card reader support

To enable support for the inbuilt card reader, which works as a USB storage device, scsi support must be enabled:

Device drivers -->
    SCSI device support -->
        <*> SCSI device support
        <*> SCSI disk support
        <*> SCSI generic support (may not be needed?)
        [*] Probe all LUNS on each SCSI device

Since the card reader is a USB 2.0 device, enable the ehci hcd and usb storage:

Device drivers -->
    USB support -->
        <*> EHCI HCD (USB 2.0) support
        <*> USB Mass Storage support

Then the FAT file system (may look slightly different in older kernels)

File systems -->
    DOS/FAT/NT Filesystems -->
        <*> MSDOS fs support
        <*> VFAT (Windows-95) fs support

[edit] Wireless

Once the installation is finished, the first thing you'll probably want to get working is the wireless hardware. The A1667G contains a Broadcom WLAN chip, which is supported under Linux using the bcm43xx driver. This driver is included in recent Linux 2.6 series kernels, and its webpage is at: [1]. It also works perfectly well using ndiswrapper. Even better, there are XP-64 drivers available from Fujitsu here, so it will work in both 32- and 64-bit installs. Download the Windows driver from the previous link, and extract the files somewhere (say /root). Then do:

emerge ndiswrapper
cd /root
ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
update-modules
modprobe ndiswrapper
iwconfig wlan0

If everything worked, you should get several lines of output from iwconfig displaying information about the wireless status of the interface. You can then go on to setup your wireless connection in the usual way, using /etc/conf.d/net and /etc/conf.d/wireless. You will also need to create an extra init script for the wlan0 interface like this:

ln -s /etc/init.d/net.lo /etc/init.d/net.wlan0

You can then start the interface on boot by running

rc-update add net.wlan0 default

If things go wrong, the best place to start looking for solutions is in the ndiswrapper Wiki and documentation (see the link above).

WEP encryption works, WPA has been seen working in at least one case.

NOTE: the A1667G has a hardware switch to enable/disable the wireless card, located on the front right of the unit. On my system, this switch was OFF by default, so make sure it's turned on if things don't seem to be working. When active, the WLAN LED should be lit (second from the left, under the screen).

[edit] Display

All models of the A1667G have a 128MB Radeon X700 Mobility PCIE. This is not (yet) fully supported by the Xorg drivers, so most people will want to use ATI's binary "fglrx" driver instead. To install the driver and create an xorg.conf, run:

emerge ati-drivers
eselect opengl set ati
/opt/ati/bin/fglrxconfig

You may have to manually add the resolution "1280x800" to the list near the bottom of the resulting xorg.conf in order to get the correct resolution when starting X.

If you do not wish to use the proprietary drivers, the 'radeon' Xorg driver works; however, in the default configuration, all you get is a blank screen. This is because the chipset is sending video to the wrong output. Using in the Device section of xorg.conf:

Option          "MonitorLayout"         "LVDS, AUTO"

will fix it.

[edit] Audio

Audio support is provided by a VIA VT8233 chip. This is fully supported by the ALSA driver named "snd-via82xx". Once your system is installed, simply run:

emerge alsa-utils

to install the alsasound init scripts, config files, and mixer apps. Then edit the lines containing "snd-card-0" and "sound-slot-0" in /etc/modprobe.d/alsa like this:

 ...
 alias snd-card-0 snd-via82xx
 alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0
 ...
 

Now run:

update-modules
rc-update add alsasound default
/etc/init.d/alsasound start

Finally, run alsamixer to unmute at least the "Main" and "PCM" channels. You should now be able to hear sounds. If not, check the hardware volume control on the front left side of the unit.

Hardware mixing is supported, meaning applications can share access to the card, so you don't need to worry about setting up dmix etc.

[edit] Modem

The alsa driver can also provide lowlevel access to the onboard modem, through the snd-via82xx-modem module, but a further package, slmodem, is needed to provide terminal access to the modem for programs like pppd. This has been tested on the A1667G, on a different distro, and using the slmodem package at http://linmodems.technion.ac.il/packages/smartlink/SLMODEMD.gcc4.tar.gz but should also work on gentoo - see HOWTO slmodem.

If you installed the alsa modem driver as a module (see Audio Support in the kernel settings, above) run:

modprobe -v snd-via82xx-modem

Then, having installed slmodemd, you can run:

slmodemd --alsa -c UK &

This will create a device like /dev/ttySL0 which you can then configure as the tty for programs like pppd, minicom, etc.

(Of course, if you are outside the UK, use your own country code from the list that comes with the slmodem package. The codes are case-sensitive.)

[edit] Card reader

There is a built-in USB based Genesys Logic card reader, which is supported by the kernel's USB mass storage driver. Note that the USB device is not active and shown on the USB bus until an appropriate card is inserted into it. Enable the kernel settings for the reader as above, then (supposing you have created a mount directory /mnt/card) insert the card into the slot, wait a second or two, and run:

mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/card

The files stored on the card should now be available in the /mnt/card directory.

[edit] ACPI/Hotkeys

A good place to start is the Gentoo Power Management Guide, which takes you through setting up a separate runlevel for battery mode, and adding event handlers to switch between AC and battery power. Closing the lid should turn off the display without any extra work if you have ACPI enabled in your kernel. If you want to control it directly, emerge radeontool and use "radeontool light on" or "radeontool light off". The thermal zone works, but is only useful as an overheating detector; the temperature is hardwired to 50°C during normal operation and is 105°C when overheating occurs. However, the AMD Athlon (K8) temperature sensor is supported using the i2c-viapro and k8temp modules. The sensors package/program will set this up for you automatically on kernels supporting these drivers.

The other hotkeys available are the three quick launch hardware buttons above the keyboard, and the "whisper mode" button next to them. The first three hotkeys are mapped to keyboard scancodes, and so with an appropriate keymap these keys can be programmed with any action. The whisper mode button works, but it operates by using ACPI to throttle back the processor to it's lowest performance state; the fan still operates automatically to keep the system cool. This should work as long as you have frequency scaling support in your Linux kernel.

Of the keyboard hotkeys, the sleep hotkey generates an ACPI event, so you can set up whatever handler you want for it under /etc/acpi (see the Power Management Guide for some examples). The Battery/Mute, Volume Up, and Volume Down hotkeys on the keyboard are mapped to keyboard scancodes; these happen to be the same as the ones from the remote control, so these can be used with an appropriate keymap. The hotkeys for LCD brightness work. The Video Output Switch hotkey does work, and it detects whether alternative video outputs are present. It has been confirmed that it is possible to switch outputs in console, but not using X.org 7.0 using the fglrx driver; it looks like this is waiting on an appropriate video/display ACPI entity driver in kernel and X.org driver support.

[edit] Remote Control

The A1667G comes with a dinky remote control device tucked into its ExpressCard slot. This looks like the RC-106 available at [2]. When pointed at the small IR port on the front of the laptop, it will beam keycodes at whatever application currently has the keyboard focus. In particular the up and down arrow buttons emit the corresponding keycodes, and the ok button is equivalent to pressing the enter key on the keyboard. So you can use this device to scroll your web browser, or browse your command history in a shell, and actually run commands. With the Program "xbindkeys" it is possible to assign the remote-control some tasks, e.g. the control of XMMS or other programs...

[edit] Security Note

If you are concerned about the malicious use of a hacked RC device, beaming "rm -rf /" or similar at your IR port from behind your back, it is suggested to place some opaque tape across the offending port, in order to forestall this uncommon but perfectly possible type of attack. :-)

[edit] lspci output

00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
00:00.5 PIC: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 I/O APIC Interrupt Controller
00:00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 Host Bridge
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. Unknown device b999
00:02.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller
00:03.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller
00:03.2 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8T890 PCI to PCI Bridge Controller
00:08.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB22/A IEEE-1394a-2000 Controller (PHY/Link)
00:09.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8169 Gigabit Ethernet (rev 10)
00:0a.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:11.6 Communication controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 80)
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
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility X700 (PCIE)

[edit] Links

• A Linux compatibility guide to the Fujitsu-Siemens Amilo A1667G

• This guide is listed at the TuxMobil Linux laptop and notebook installation survey.