[PD] It really works!,,and laptops

Nick Fells nick at music.gla.ac.uk
Wed Jan 23 18:28:10 CET 2002


Hi,

Just wanted to follow up this little thread of a couple of months ago
(see marco's message below)

Marco (or anyone) - d'you know of any progress on this issue of laptop
BIOS?

Anyone bought a laptop recently & running PD smoothly under Linux?

Looking to buy...

Nick

-- 
Dr Nick Fells,	
Music Department,
University of Glasgow,		Tel: +44 (0) 141-330 4096
Glasgow G12 8QQ			Fax: +44 (0) 141-330 3518
UK.				http://www.music.gla.ac.uk/~nick


-----------------------------
from marco trevisani.... 11/12/01....

Laptops: 

Unfortunatelly i must say i would not run to buy a laptop right now...as
i 
did...:-( 

Due to a new policy introduced (let say imposed) by Microsoft...all new 
laptops (and soon i guess also all desktops), do NOT allow anymore
access to 
the BIOS at booting time. This means (briefly) that you are not able for 
instance to disable PnP and other things and the Linux is not able to
assign 
IRQs to "non vital" devices..i.e. PCMCIA, Sound cards, video (TV) 
output,firewire...etc.not a very pleasant situation. 

All these functions, now, must be controlled and set by and from within
the OS. 
ACPI (that is going to replace APM) will be the way to gain access to
the BIOS 
from the OS but has not reached yet a level of sofistication to make
this 
process easy (if even possible). 
The only ultra ugly solution right now is to hard link IRQs in the
Kernel 
itsefl....(no comments) 
Right now even power management is really limited to the minimal. 
This is a work in progress, and i guess (hope) that will be solved in
few 
months (also because i wiped out W_XP right away from my laptop so i
really 
hope is just a matter of months...).I'm myself working on it (at least
as far 
it concerns my specific laptop). 

For record: 
I got a Toshiba Satellite 5005-S504 which features seem promising: 
- DVD- CD-RW - CD 
- Sound card with ADC DAC line + headphone + SPDIF optical 
- Firewire 
- Video (TV) output RCA 
- a bouch of USB (neither serial nor parallel) 
-Smart Card 
- And another card slot i now forgot what is supposed to be for... 
- PCMCIA 
- 512MB, 1.1Ghz, 30Gb 

A part for CD and an external USB mouse, none of these features are
working 
right now.... 
Hopefully very soon, since the card is supported by alsa, firwire should
be 
and video (tv) out should be as well..... 
So after this legacy free problem will be solved should be a great
machine. 
(BTW: 2000USD....:-( now you can find it cheapper...already) 

What i found good for now (in this bad situation) is that even if
Toshiba does 
not support officially Linux, they have a very active and helpfull linux 
deprtament (i dont know if "department" is the right definition) in
Europe and 
Japan, and they really help and they do their best to solve problems
(like 
this one). 
(they have mailing list and they are very responinve and quick) 
..and by consequence also the Linux Toshiba community ( i mean toshiba
owners) 
is very alive and efficient... 
After this experience i had (this is my fist laptop), i would reccomend
to put 
this as FIRST priority when you think about getting a laptop. Also, even
if 
you will find a bit more expensive i would consider to buy from a
reseller 
that ships computer already with Linux...if you dont want to spend about
a 
month (with no problems such as mine raising on the way) to tune it
up.... 

Sorry for this long and almost off topic message, but i think it is also 
important to share these issues amongst us,because many of us, like me,
they 
have the dream of going to a concert with thier laptop, their PCMCIA or
USB 
professional sound card, and give the concert....with battery only, in
order 
to avoid the "Guenter-effect"...:-)) 

        ciao, 
        marco



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