Pass with caution!

Erratum _- see http://blog.sudev.in/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=49
Wireless

First you need to determine which wireless hardware is present in your laptop. If it is Intel’s IPWxxx then there is nothing to be done. This device is recognised automatically and you can configure it using the networking menu.

However my laptop came with Broadcom Corporation BCM4310 wireless device. To get this working you will need to download the windows driver and run this under ndiswrapper.

First you will have to edit the file /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist and add to the end in a line all by itself:

blacklist bcm43xx

This will prevent modprobe from installing the BCM43xx driver which is not the correct driver for this device. You need to make sure that this driver is not loaded before you go further. Either reboot or if you are comfortable using command line give the command:

sudo rmmod bcm43xx

Next you download the windows diver for which you will have to google and download the same. Or if you have a windows machine of same type (or windows on another partition) then use pendrive or something to copy this file on to a convenient location. Then you will have to download few things and setup ndiswrapper.

Do not despair. It used to be difficult process to set up but now you have a GUI tool which makes installation almost a breeze. You will have to use Synaptic from Administration menu to download and install “ndisgtk” package. Once downloaded and installed it will appear as a menu under administration. Run this and click on “Install New Driver”. Point to the downloaded windows driver and that is just about all you need to do.

There seems to be something broken in this GUI package and even though after installation wireless networking works the GUI still says no driver. Do not worry. Most important is that you get the proper windows driver for you hardware as there are many Broadcom wireless cards/devices out there. All you need is little bit of perseverance.

Graphics

This laptop has nVidia graphics card. Best way to get full accelerated graphics working is to use the proprietary nVidia driver. Otherwise you can use the open source nv driver but this does not give full accelerated output.

At the time of initial set up it is best to specify vesa driver for use under X. Once the install is over you can use the browser to go to nVidia site and download the driver for your card. However I found that this page gives a better solution. You download the run file and then run it as sudo in a shell. This will prompt you to first make sure that no X is running. To do this first do “Ctrl+Alt+F1″ to drop into a console and then log in. After log in do “sudo killall gdm” (assuming you are Gnome) and then change to directory where you have downloaded the file. Then run the command “sudo sh NVIDIA-Linux-x86-1.0-7185-pkg1.run”. This will download the appropriate driver from nVidia site and install it. This will also modify you X configuration after you say yes at appropriate prompt.

Once installed all the latest 3D effect like Beryl or Compiz work great.

Infrared remote

This is work under progress. Previously in another laptop I had got this to work but it seems effort to benefit ratio is low. In any case I will update this in next couple of months once I find time to get this working.

Erratum _- see http://blog.sudev.in/wp-admin/post.php?action=edit&post=49

Sound

Okay so now I had Tx100 working and letting me log in but there was no sound. Also on the left hand top of keyboard there are three LED’s for volume control and mute. The mute LED turns from blue to orange halfway at system boots.

This proved to be comparatively easy solution. First i checked what all modules are getting loaded for sound by running:

lsmod |grep snd

This showed that the module “snd-hda-intel” was getting loaded. Next was to find why this is not working. Googling for snd-hda-intel I found that there are many models supported by this module and for each you have to pass specific options by suitably editing the file /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base. In this case I added the following line right at the end of this file using an editor:
options snd-hda-intel model=3stack

Ooopppsss….there was still no sound! I ran the command “alsamixer” and un-muted speaker volume control and viola!!!

The LED-buttons for sound control still show blue-orange-blue lights and do not work but sound works and volume control applet on the task-bar gives control over the volume.

Other devices

To find out what other devices got recognised out of the box I ran “lsusb ” and got the following output:

sudev@laptop01:~$ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 006: ID 0eef:0001 D-WAV Scientific Co., Ltd eGalax TouchScreen
Bus 002 Device 005: ID 08ff:1600 AuthenTec, Inc.
Bus 002 Device 004: ID 0c45:62c0 Microdia
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 04b4:6560 Cypress Semiconductor Corp. CY7C65640 USB-2.0 “TetraHub”
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 0000:0000
Bus 001 Device 008: ID 03f0:171d Hewlett-Packard
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 0000:0000

This shows the devices that are recognised. In order they are touch-screen, finger print reader, web camera, usb-hub and HP’s integrated blue tooth device.

Touch-screen

Out of the box install detects touch screen and loads wacom drivers in the xorg.conf file. The problem that remian to be solved is to get proper calibration done so that the screen resolution and touch respond properly. This is yet to be completed.

Finger print reader

This is work under progress.

Webcam

The web cam also gets recognised in the standard install. If you fire up ekiga you will need to use V4L2 plug-in rather than V4L and the device gets recognised as /dev/video0. I have not been able to configure applications like camorama to get this recognised as they only work with V4L plugins. I need to get deeper in to making these applications recognise V4L2 plugins.