I got me a laptop :)

[CaT <cat@zip.com.au>]

Some of you may remember an earlier thread where I asked for advice
on IBM and Toshiba laptops and how well linux works on them. Well I
finally went and got me one and it's a Gateway. :)

This had nothing with the advice I received here (which was good)
but more with the fact that the configuration I have on the gateway
would've cost me twice as much on either of the two other brands.
Ofcourse, I wouldn't've taken as long as I did if not for the fact
that IBM supports linux (if only their laptops were lower in price...)

Anyhow, I have it working prettywell so far. The inbuilt ethernet works
real well in 100mps full duplex. only 5 packets dropped out of 1.5mil
in a pingflood. Suspend to ram worked ok the one time I tried it (though
the ethernet card took a wee bit of time to wake up). It has bios suspend
to disk support but the utility fragged my partition table when I made a
partition for it. Haven't tried the file mode yet. I haven't tried hotswapping
the cdrom for a floppy yet so I don't know how well linux will handle
that. The mouse pad thingy works well with the gpm from woody but there's
a few things I haven't as yet gotten working.

1. Sound. This laptop has an ESS ES1980 PCI sound card. Neither of the
   ESS options in the kernel worked. Does anyone know if it's possible
   to get sound out of this sucker under linux?

   Here's the lspci output for it btw:

   00:0c.0 Multimedia audio controller: ESS Technology: Unknown device 199a

   (doesn't look promising :/)

2. Modem. The mini-pci card in this sucker is both an eepro 100 and a
   real modem (not a winmodem - the sales guy was adamnant about that
   and sounded like he knew what the difference was :). The card is a
   Xircom and here's the only details I have atm:

   00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Intel Corporation 82557 [Ethernet Pro 100] (rev 09)
   00:0d.1 Serial controller: Xircom: Unknown device 00d3

3. Gfx card :) Which X driver is the best for it? It's a

   S3 Savage IX Multi Display Accelerator. 2X AGP 8MB SGRAM

   lspci output:

   01:01.0 VGA compatible controller: S3 Inc.: Unknown device 8c12 (rev 11)

   (heh. new h/w. gotta love it)

If anyone needs any more info, plese holler and I'll see what I can do
to grab it. Thanks.

Oh. I presume the pcmcia support will be fine with this bus:

00:08.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c478 (rev 80)
00:08.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c478 (rev 80)

?

Any help will be bigtime appreciated. i have 10 days to review this
sucker to see if I want to keep it. Linux support is crucial. (I'm
on day 5 as I writ ethis...)

-- 
CaT (cat@zip.com.au)

	'We do more then just sing and dance. We've got a brain too.'
		-- The Backstreet Boys