[LAU] Thinkpad R60 for Audio Update - Firewire Conflicts with Audio

[Ken Dawson]

Sampo,

I appreciate your reply.

Sampo Savolainen wrote:
> On Wed, 2007-04-18 at 12:17 -0700, Ken Dawson wrote:
>> Thanks for this.  How do you like your D820 under Linux?  I'm especially 
>> interested in how well the graphics, wireless LAN, and ACPI support 
>> work.  Oh, and the audio.
> 
> I've got intel graphics. Works great after 915resolution is installed
> (it's needed for the bios hack to access teh 1920x1200 video mode)
> 
> The dell is sold with the intel 3945d chip or the "dell
> wireless" (broadcom something). Needless to say, i got it with the intel
> chip. Works great.
> 
> ACPI? I've never had to worry about that. Fans etc. work well. I'm not
> sure if it's related with ACPI but an interesting tidbit: if the PSU
> cord is connected poorly long enough, the bios decides it can't be sure
> it's getting enough power and forces the cpu frequency scaling to set
> the max scaling freq to min freq. So the cpu gets stuck at the lowest
> speed. This can be fixed by removing the PSU cord for a while,
> re-inserting it. (you might need to fiddle
> with /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu[01]/cpufreq/scaling_max_freq
> afterwards)

I ask because I have a system using an ASUS M2N32-SLI (AMD 64bit) 
motherboard, and it will not even consider booting unless I specify 
-acpi=off to the kernel.  I wouldn't want to voluntarily encounter this 
condition again.

> 
> Audio? A few hacks needed. 
>  1) You need to set the Capture element in the mixer to record, 
>     otherwise the driver will not return any samples when recording.
>  2) At least with my current alsa version (1.0.13rc2) needs
>     position_fix=1 as a parameter for the snd-hda-intel driver
> 
> After those fixes it works well. haven't tried spdif though as I have no
> dock. I use an RME multiface + pcmcia card for real work and it works
> just great. I havent' attempted extreme latencies as I have no need for
> such.
> 
> All in all? Very little hassle for a very new machine. It's extremely
> fast, relatively quiet, good battery life, the screen is wonderful
> albeit not very bright.
> 
> I'm happy with it.
> 
> 
>   Sampo
> 
> PS. One hint. If you decide to get one: call them and ask for an offer,
> don't get it at list price!

This I don't understand.  Last time I bought a Dell laptop, it was 
purely through the web-page, and totally cut-and-dried.  How do you go 
about haggling with them?  I've never found their phone talent to be (1) 
easily reached or (2) really engaged when I did reach them, sales or 
support.

/ken