Dell Latitude D600

I’ve acquired a new laptop: Dell Latitude D600. I’m going to talk here about my experiences with it because I think it can be useful for somebody.

First of all, the laptop has the following components:

  • 1.6GHz Intel Pentium-M (2MB L2 Cache 400MHz FSB)
  • 14” SXGA+ TFT LCD (1400×1050)
  • ATI Mobility Radeon 9000, AGPx4, 32 MB DDR
  • 2x 256MB SDRAM
  • 80GB hard disk (EIDE ATA 100)
  • 8 x DVD / 24 X CDRW
  • Intel soundcard (AC’97 Audio Controller)
  • 10/100/1000 Ethernet LAN (Broadcom Corporation NetXtreme BCM5705M Gigabit Ethernet)

Linux Distribution: Debian GNU/Linux
Kernel version: 2.6.9 with no patches

ATI Radeon 9000 M9
  Works perfectly at 1400×1050 using Xfree 4.3 and radeon driver, but without 3D. You can check if you have 3D:
$ glxinfo | grep “direct rendering”
direct rendering: No

To get 3D:

Add the following line to your /etc/sources.list

deb http://people.debian.org/~daenzer/dri-trunk-sid/ ./

then

# apt-get update
# apt-get install xserver-xfree86-dri-trunk xlibmesa-gl1-dri-trunk

Reboot the X server and check it again:

$ glxinfo | grep “direct rendering”
direct rendering: Yes

My Device section in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4:

     Section "Device"             Identifier  "ATI Radeon 9000" 	    VendorName  "ATI" 	    Driver      "radeon" 	    VideoRam     32768 	    Option      "AGPMODE"           "4" 	    Option      "EnablePageFlip"    "on" 	    Option      "SWCursor"          "true"     EndSection
ATI TV-OUT
  Works out of the box by doing the following:

  1. Install atitvout (# apt-get install atitvout)
  2. Turn on your laptop with the cable plugged and the TV turned on
  3. Set your resolution at 1024×768 or less
  4. As root simply run atitvout -f t
  5. To switch back run atitvout -f l

If the image is showed in your tv, but you lose the colors when you move the mouse, enable the software cursors by adding the following line into the Device section of your /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

Option “SWCursor” “true”

SpeedStep / CPUFreq
  Since my CPU model is not still recognized by the cpufreq, I had to compile the kernel with the option

[*] Use ACPI tables to decode valid frequency/voltage pairs (EXPERIMENTAL)

and it works perfectly

ACPI
  Works without patching the kernel
Dell i8k
  The module has to be loaded with the force=1 option

The rest of the components works perfectly and they don’t need to be commented

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