eMachines m6809 Laptop Thread (32-bit gentoo for now?)

[colinb18]

[layyze]

colin:
Strange stuff, because it looks like it is working. Does wlan0 appear in ifconfig and/or iwconfig?
Also, double check that you wireless support turned on in the kernel (though it looks like you do).
And make sure that you turn on the wireless stuff in the BIOS. I can't remember exactly what the setting is in the BIOS because I don't have my laptop in front of me right now, but I think that it has something to do with the wireless antenna. The emachines light indicates whether or not the antenna is on, and I am pretty certain that you need to have a BIOS setting on in order to get it working.

[layyze]

It is official. Due to two major releases for 64 bit linux in the past day (oddly enough on the same day), you can now go totally 64 bit on your emachines m68xx without any major problems.

Yesterday ATi released a 64 bit X driver, allowing you to finally have 3D acceleration with your Radeon M10 under X.

Also, yesterday ndiswrapper released a 64 bit compatible version of ndiswrapper, allowing you to finally be able to use your Broadcom 802.11g wireless card in 64 bit linux!

So after 7 months with a 64 bit laptop I can finally use nearly all of the features as intended!

[Chuck Milam]

[cag]

I've had a working M6809 now for some time - all except the wireless.
Just curious, did anyone get their wireless working in 64bit mode? I gave
it try and am probably close but not all the way there. I installed
ndiswrapper-1.0 then downloaded the driver, got that put into
ndiswrapper and modprobed. Bingo - not a problem. Then I
Fn-F2 to turn the little beast on and got a flashing e and my
system froze. Fn-F2 again to turn it off and I'm back.

dmesg looks like

ndiswrapper: driver netbc564 (,10/01/2002,3.70.17.5) added
ACPI: PCI interrupt 0000:00:0c.0[A] -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
ndiswrapper: using irq 18
wlan0: ndiswrapper ethernet device 00:90:96:b4:e5:69 using driver netbc564
wlan0: encryption modes supported: WEP
Losing some ticks... checking if CPU frequency changed.
warning: many lost ticks.
Your time source seems to be instable or some driver is hogging interupts
rip NdisMSynchronizeWithInterrupt+0x53/0x70 [ndiswrapper]

The last line is the key.

Apparently ndiswrapper is banging on the poor wireless like mad
and generating enough interrupts to halt the system. I have kernel
2.6.9r14 installed but have an older kernel I might try. Not sure if
this is a kernel problem , driver problem, or ndiswrapper problem.

Seems to me once I can Fn-F2 and get a solid e light - it should
be working. If anyone has got that far I'd love to hear about it.

chris
_________________
cag

[cag]

One step further. Its and IRQ problem. Boot with acpi=noirq and when you
power on the wireless the light is solid and the system is unfrozen. Of course
you lose darn near everything else. The worst being is you can't brighten
the screen and might boots up at the lowest possible level.

Even so I did not get the wireless to see my router - still one step
at a time.

chris
_________________
cag

[layyze]

[cag]

Gl[/code]ad to know that it works

1. Kernel is 2.6.9r14. No boot options other than the pointer to root (root=/dev/hda3). I only used the acpi=noirq
as a test to see if that helped.

2. Kernel configuration is: