Ubuntu Wiki

Work in progress, hold on...

• Contact: Kristoffer Lundén

• Make: Fujitsu Seimens
• Brand: Fujitsu Seimens
• Model: Amilo M3438G

• Website: http://www.fujitsu-siemens.com/home/products/notebooks/amilo_m_3438_4438.html

Current Issues

Hardware details

Notes

1. Need to install nvidia-glx to get to 1440x900, can't go higher that 1024x768 without it. Remember "sudo nvidia-glx-config enable" to activate. Also recommended to mark this alternative during install, otherwise modeline needs to be added manually.

2. With Nvidias closed drivers. Works well.

3. Initially, headphone sound is set correctly, but internal speakers are muted and with volume set to zero. Use volume applet or similar to activate.

4. The laptop comes with a small remote control that controls a special mode called "Instant on", a media player outside of any OS. It also works with both Windows and Linux media players, for common functions like play, pause, stop, forward and so on.

5. Opens default Browser

6. Opens default E-Mail Client

7. Can be monitored with CPU Frequency Scaling Monitor applet, and can also be manually adjusted if applet is given SUID rights (sudo chmod a+s /usr/bin/cpufreq-selector)

Instant On

The laptop has special functionality that starts up a PCM Linux powered media player instead of booting a regular OS at the press of a button. Problem is, this does not work if Grub has replaced the MBR, and when booting Windows it offers to "reactivate PCM". Which it does by replacing the MBR again (not the partition table) with a special version of the Windows MBR. Instant on uses a special, patched Grub to boot on an NTFS file system, as this Linux actually resides inside the Windows installation. I'm not exactly sure how the process works yet, but as of now, I haven't figured out a way to dual boot and retain this functionality (or have just Linux and retain it). This would be nice to investigate, for instance if this media player could be migrated to the Linux partition and booted via regular Grub.

Large or all parts of this system are available under the GPL, but it's a ~150 MB download so there's some data to go through. http://download.gocyberlink.com/ftpdload/linux/source/PCMLinux_GPL_sources.zip. It would be very interesting to figure out how it determines that this special button was pressed and not the usual power on. Is it done in MBR (why other a special one)? Or in the stages after? What does it look for? It would allow for all sorts of neatness if that was cracked, replacing their pretty crappy media player with something good for instance.

TODO: More links, to NTFS Grub project and PCM homepage etc.

CategoryLaptop