Study of Asus' A4740KBP laptop with focus on Gentoo Linux

Jani Reinikainen,

Revision 0.1.1, 21. February 2006

1. Introduction

1.1. Concepts
1.2. Revision history
1.3. Copyright
1.4. Disclaimer
1.5. Acknowledgments and Thanks

2. Hardware

2.1. Initial state
2.2. Tested hardware upgrades
2.3. Finding out what hardware the laptop contains

3. Software

3.1. Initial state
3.2. Re-installing Windows XP

4. Installing and Configuring Gentoo

4.1. noapic
4.2. Graphics
4.3. TV-out
4.4. Network
4.5. Sound
4.6. WLAN
4.7. ACPI

5. Hardware hacks

5.1. Heat/noise
5.2. Logitech wireless keyboard + mouse

6. Conclusion

5.1. Further Documentation

1. Introduction

1.1. Concepts

This document describes my experiences with Asus A4740KBP laptop a.k.a. notebook computer. I use my laptop as a dual-boot system between Gentoo Linux and Windows XP Professional, even though I spend about 90% of my time in Linux. I decided to give Gentoo Linux a go to see what all the fuzz is about.

1.2. Revision history

Revision v0.1.1	21. February 2006	By: Jani Reinikainen
Added "Hardware hacks" section.
Revision v0.1.0	16. January 2005	By: Jani Reinikainen
Initial revision.

1.3. Copyright

Permission is granted to copy, distribute and/or modify this document under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 or any later version published by the Free Software Foundation; with no Invariant Sections, no Front-Cover Texts, and no Back-Cover Texts. A copy of the license is included in the section entitled "GNU Free Documentation License".

1.4. Disclaimer

Use the information in this document at your own risk. I disavow any potential liability for the contents of this document. Use of the concepts, examples, and/or other content of this document is entirely at your own risk.

All copyrights are owned by their owners, unless specifically noted otherwise. Use of a term in this document should not be regarded as affecting the validity of any trademark or service mark.

Naming of particular products or brands should not be seen as endorsements.

You are strongly recommended to make a backup of your system before major installation and should make backups at regular intervals.

1.5. Acknowledgments and Thanks

Thanks to everyone who gave comments as I was writing this, and especially all of you who have donated. We couldn't be here without your support.

2. Hardware

2.1. Initial state

Originally the laptop contained the following hardware; wide 15,4" WXGA TFT screen, 512MB RAM (two 256MB sticks, no free slots), 40GB Hitachi TravelStar hard drive (in "hard drive manufacturers' bytes", in "real" bytes about 37GB), ATI Mobility Radeon 9700, Marvell Gigabit Ethernet and a Panasonic combo CD-RW/DVD-ROM. The laptop is a bit bulky and heavy compared to lighter models, but offers quite good hardware for your money.

2.2. Tested hardware upgrades

The original 4200rpm 40GB harddrive was way too small for me, so I replaced it with a 5400rpm 80GB Western Digital with 8MB of cache, and I'm very pleased with it. Unfortunately, the Asus owner's manual states, that 80GB is the maximum size the notebook can take. I would have wanted to go with a 100gb Seagate drive.

I have also updated the optical drive with a NEC ND6500A dual layer DVD+/- burner. NEC's drive fits inside the laptop fine, but the front panel is a bit different, causing the drive to sit deeper inside the laptop than the original drive. This does not however affect performance in any way.

2.3. Finding out what hardware the laptop contains

Once you get Linux installed and running, it's trivial to use the 'lspci' utility to find our what hardware the laptop contains, so that you'd know what to compile into your custom kernel. The compilation of a custom kernel is pretty much inevitable if you wish to take full advantage of the Linux system.

On my laptop, the output of 'lspci' is as following:

0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 Host Bridge (rev a4)
0000:00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 LPC Bridge (rev f6)
0000:00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce3 SMBus (rev a4)
0000:00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 1.1 (rev a5)
0000:00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 1.1 (rev a5)
0000:00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 USB 2.0 (rev a2)
0000:00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce3 Audio (rev a2)
0000:00:06.1 Modem: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 00d9 (rev a2)
0000:00:08.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce3 IDE (rev a5)
0000:00:0a.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 PCI Bridge (rev a2)
0000:00:0b.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce3 AGP Bridge (rev a4)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc RV350 [Mobility Radeon 9600 M10]
0000:02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Marvell Technology Group Ltd. Gigabit Ethernet Controller (rev 13)
0000:02:01.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev b3)
0000:02:01.1 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd R5C552 IEEE 1394 Controller (rev 08)
0000:02:01.2 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0822 (rev 17)
0000:02:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0592 (rev 08)

3. Software

3.1. Initial state

The laptop comes pre-installed with Windows XP Professional, on a NTFS partition, that it occupies the entire hard drive. This is clearly not desirable for a dual-boot system. Additionally, Linux can only read NTFS without problems, and enabling write support is not recommended at the moment; thus FAT32 would make a more sensible choice, as Linux safely can both read and write to FAT32 partitions.

I asked my retailer if I could get the laptop without the pre-installed Windows, but I couldn't. Seems like I HAD to buy the bundled Windows, even though I didn't really want it. Unfortunately, this seems to be the case world-wide. Anyway, I decided to re-install the bundled Windows XP on a small FAT32 partition. so that I could boot into Windows in case I needed to do some testing, and so that I could read and write to the FAT32 partition from Linux.

I preceeded with a stage 2 install of Gentoo.

4. Installing and Configuring Gentoo

4.1. noapic

In my /var/log/everything/current I get the following errors:

kernel: Uhhuh. NMI received for unknown reason 2d.
kernel: Dazed and confused, but trying to continue
kernel: Do you have a strange power saving mode enabled?

and:

hda: dma_timer_expiry: dma status == 0x24"
hda: DMA interrupt recovery

Not good. On top of this, the network would stop working after a few minutes, and the only way to fix it was a reboot. Appending "noapic" to the kernel line in /boot/grub/grub.conf seems to solve all of these problems.

4.2. Graphics

No binary codecs for MPlayer on AMD64. Grab the ebuilds from sh.nu or use a chroot. On Ubuntu just apt-get install mplayer or mplayer-amd64.

Strange artifacts in X.org when using "ati" driver, fglrx seems to work fine. Suggested resolution is 1280x800 due to the widescreen LCD.

4.3. TV-out

atitvout is x86 only, so no help from that.

4.4. Network

Works fine. Correct network module is 'sk98lin'.

4.5. Sound

Get the drivers from the NVIDIA website. Install the sound driver only and modprobe nvsound. Use -ao sdl for MPlayer. Using -ao oss or -ao alsa will not work with the current drivers.

4.6. WLAN

SiS chip, no drivers available, not even with ndiswrapper :-( Complain to SiS. Then again, why on earth has Asus put a WLAN chip without 64-bit drivers on a laptop with a 64-bit processor?

4.7. ACPI

ACPI works perfectly. Tested button, lid, video and fan.

Hardware hacks

Even though the laptop offers quite good hardware for your money, I had a few issues I wanted to resolve. NOTE: These hacks will void your warranty.

5.1. Heat/noise

The GPU gets really hot if you play games. The hotter it gets, the more cooling it needs. This is where the GPU/chipset fan kicks in, and wow, it sure is noisy! A simple solution is to take out your Dremel and file down the small net that covers the air tunnel. The fan stays off longer now, and air flow is much better.

5.2. Logitech wireless keyboard + mouse

I really like Logitech's wireless keyboards and mice. They're cheap (especially the OEM versions) and work well. However, they do require the use of an USB reciever. I wanted to integrate the reciever into my laptop. Turns out, it just fits between the rear panel and GPU/chipset heatsink if you file it down a bit. Here's how;

Take one USB-fitted Logitech reciever.

First, remove the sticker at the bottom of the reciver. Under the sticker you'll find one screw. Unscrew it and pry the case open.

File down the upper and lower sides of the PCB. Your Dremel will come in handy again. Careful not to take off too much, stop the minute you see copper.

Use some duct tape on the solder side of the reciever as an insulator. You don't want any short circuits, do you?

Unless you want to make a big hole for the wire + connector, simply cut the wire in half and remove a bit if you want to shorten it also.

File one of the air tunnel holes a bit larger, so that the wire will fit though it. Thread the wire though the hole. You might leave so much wire on the outside of the case that you can unplug it when needed.

You're short on space inside the case, so the best option is to remove the black wire connector on the reciever's PCB and solder the wires directly onto the pins like I did. I even bent the pins a bit to give me more room. On my PCB, the pinout was from left to right black/copper, red, white, green.

Optionally, glue the reciever in place inside the case. I didn't glue mine, because the fitting was snug enough.

Drill a small hole on the bottom panel of the laptop for the "Connect" button of the reciever. You might want to make it a bit oval, so that you can slide the bottom cover into place.

Slide the bottom panel back on and attach all screws.

Success! The reciever works fine inside the case. You can use the mouse on either side of the laptop without problems. The keyboard is however much more picky, and works only if it's in level with the reciever.

If you need the extra USB port, simply unplug the cable, just don't yank on it.

6. Conclusion

As an overall review of Gentoo, I'll point you to funroll-loops.org, which sums it up pretty good in my mind... needless to say, I will not update this page with Gentoo info anymore. Compiling everything for source is just stupid, IMHO. Here I come, Ubuntu (by the way, Ubuntu works flawlessly on this laptop)!

Hope you found the guide useful. A donation wouldn't hurt (even if it's only a euro or two - everything helps), as this site is getting so many hits it's getting a bit expensive. There's a link to PayPal at the lower left corner of this site. Thanks!