Ubuntu Wiki

• Contact: PTT
• Make: MEDION
• Model: MD 6200

• Website: http://www1.medion.de/downloads/ - type in 6200 for this model

Current Issues

• Please can you post the output of dmidecode for this laptop -PaulSladen

  $ sudo dmidecode -s system-manufacturer
  $ sudo dmidecode -s system-product-name
  $ sudo dmidecode -s system-version

  • Of course, see Hardware details.
• Microphone recording is on slider 'Capture', while direct microphone output is on slider 'Microphone'.

  • This is most definately a bug, please file against alsa or linux-source. -PaulSladen

  • Ok, it seems a bit strange to me, for recording from the microphone I have to use the 'Capture' channel, but for direct playback the 'Microphone' channel. There is also a 'Mic Select' with 'Mic1' and 'Mic2', but that doesn't seem to do anything. A bit more descriptive names or more documentation wouldn't hurt I think. I'll do some more research soon. Also see Sound/Problems/Mic -PTT

• Since I upgraded to Dapper and 1.25GB RAM suspend to disk doesn't work, that is, it does suspend, but when booting again it starts the normal way. I have 515 MB Swap, maybe that's the reason. I'll test it with less RAM.

  • Yes, suspend-to-disk works by paging the whole system out to Swap. Depending on the actual usage of RAM you'll possibly need quite alot more Swap space than that! :) -PaulSladen

  • Here the problem is the swap partition isn't activated after recovering from/booting after hibernating. I can activate it by running mkswap /dev/hda2 and swapon -a, only the last command gives swapon: /dev/hda2: Invalid argument. -PTT

    • What is in cat /proc/swaps? -PaulSladen

      • now it contains hda2, after hibernation it's empty.

        Filename                                Type            Size    Used    Priority
        /dev/hda2                               partition       538168  0       -1

• Sleep (Suspend to Ram) isn't working with the nvidia driver. I does suspend, but doesn't come up right, with agpgart the screen turns on, but shows (beautifull) garbage, but reacts (at least) to Alt-SysRq-S-U-B. With nvagp the screen stays black, only the fan turns on, the power led even keeps flashing, and the system doesn't react to anything but a 4s power button press, after that power and battery have to be removed before being able to boot.

Low priority:

• CPU Throttle buttons don't work.

  • Not really sure what to do about these. They are pretty crackful and generally it's best to prevent direct user control of the FAN and CPU---on Ubuntu these should be scaled automatically as required. I've seen your scripts below and I'll think on it... -PaulSladen

  • The CPU throttling isn't usefull for automatical use, because it just forces N of 8 instructions to be HLT, so you can't use a part of your clock cycles. A bit useless nonetheless. -PTT

    • What do you think about just mapping these to KEY_PROG3 and KEY_PROG4? -PaulSladen

      • Seems right, is it detectable that these keys exist? -PTT

        • Yes, that's what the dmidecode data is used for:

                  MEDION*)
                  case "$name" in
                      *FID2060*)
                      . /usr/share/hotkey-setup/medion-md6200.hk
                      ;;
                  esac
                  ;;

          -PaulSladen

• Mail LED doesn't work (I never got it working under windows either, because the lack of MS Outlook).

  • Could probably write a separate DBus utility and hope that Evolution sends some useful signals out (there's is a probably a libnotify applet that can be copied and extended with an option this this laptop model. -PaulSladen

Good work around, hard to really solve: (I think)

• Fans needs to be turned on and off before they turn off automatically (temperature based). It's very annoying but solvable with a small script, see below. Everything is working normally, but it is a lot quieter (but not silent) if the fans are 'off'. It's enough noise to keep me from running linux on it. But I guess for specific laptop problems people should look here on the wiki.

  • Is this a need or just a it's quieter if they are, my ThinkPad R52 spins the fan pretty much all the time and I think it's becoming more widespread, especially with faster CPUs -PaulSladen

PS. I had a irreversible hard disk error some weeks ago, with 'remounting readonly', so there's a chance not al problems are purely software related.

Hardware details

dmidecode:

System Information
        Manufacturer: MEDION
        Product Name: FID2060
        Version:

• Intel Pentium 4 2.60 GHz

• nVidia GeForce FX Go5200 - 64 MB RAM

• 5.1 audio, Card: SiS SI7012, Chip: Realtek ALC650F (module: snd_intel8x0)
• 15" TFT XGA (1024x768)
• HD 40 GB Hitachi 4200 rpm / 2 MB

• 2 x 256 MB DDR PC 2700 Siemens -> Upgraded to 256 MB + 1 GB

• Samsung CDRW/DVD SN-324B
• Synaptic 4 button touchpad
• Neodio USB-Storage-CFC MMC/SD MSC SMC
• SiS 900 Fast Ethernet 10/100
• Intel 537AA Modem 56K V90
• Creatix CTX712 Wireless LAN miniPCI Card (Prism2, 802.11b)

• O2Micro OZ6912 CardBus-controller

• 1 x PCMCIA type II
• 2 x Cardreader (6 in 2)
• 4 x USB 2.0
• 1 x PS/2
• 1 x TV out
• 1 x VGA

• 1 x IEEE 1394 FireWire

• 1 x LAN (RJ45)
• 1 x modem (RJ11)
• 1 x COM
• 3 x mini jack, Front + Mic/Center + Line in/Rear
• 1 x Irda
• New mail LED

*) These scancodes are from /var/log/syslogd

• Could you give some information about what these keys do under MS Windows. Do the throttle keys bring up a menu, switch between minimum and maximum or gradually go up and down like a volume or brightness control? What happens when AC power or Battery is used; do these over-ride the throttling? -PaulSladen

Notes

Under MS Windows, there is a utility that manages the CPU-throttling, it has eight states between you can switch, and a default for AC power and Battery. I didn't find it very usefull, but it would be usefull to bind these keys manually to something else. When an unknown key is pressed there can be a pop-up with a question where to bind it to.

Under MS Windows there is also a utility that turns the Mail LED on when new mail arrives, it requires MS Outlook.

I have a few scripts that I had on my debian, for making the throttle keys and the automatic fan control work:

cpu - bind the command 'cpu +' to scancode 0x6d and 'cpu -' to scancode 0x6b to make the throttle keys work. (On Debian I had made it working, didn't find it usefull so under Ubuntu I haven't made it working)

CPUSPEED=`cat /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling|grep active|awk {'print $3'}|tr -d T`
case "$1" in
    +)
        if [ "$CPUSPEED" -gt "0" ] ; then
            CPUSPEED=$(expr $CPUSPEED - 1)
            echo -n $CPUSPEED>/proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling
        fi
        ;;

    -)
        if [ "$CPUSPEED" -lt "7" ] ; then
            CPUSPEED=$(expr $CPUSPEED + 1)
            echo -n $CPUSPEED>/proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling
        fi
        ;;
    0|1|2|3|4|5|6|7)
        echo -n $1>/proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling
        ;;
    *)
        cat /proc/acpi/processor/CPU0/throttling
        ;;
esac 

fan

if [ -z $1 ] ; then
    cat /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/temperature
    echo -n -e "CPU Fan:\t\t "
    cat /proc/acpi/fan/FN1/state|awk {'print $2'}
    echo -n -e "GPU Fan:\t\t "
    cat /proc/acpi/fan/FN2/state|awk {'print $2'}
    exit 0
fi

if [ "$1" == "--help" ] ; then
    echo "fan on  - set fans on"
    echo "fan off - set fans off"
    echo "fan     - return temperature info"
fi

if [ "$1" == "on" ] ; then
    echo -n 0 > /proc/acpi/fan/FN1/state
    echo -n 0 > /proc/acpi/fan/FN2/state
elif [ "$1" == "off" ] ; then
    echo -n 3 > /proc/acpi/fan/FN1/state
    echo -n 3 > /proc/acpi/fan/FN2/state
elif [ "$1" == "onoff" ] ; then
    /usr/local/bin/fan on
    sleep 1
    /usr/local/bin/fan off
fi 

silence - place in /etc/init.d, and link /etc/rc2.d/S21silence to it to turn off the fans on boot.

### BEGIN INIT INFO
# Provides:       silence
# Required-Start: $acpi
# Required-Stop:
# X-UnitedLinux-Should-Start:
# X-UnitedLinux-Should-Stop:
# Default-Start:  21
# Default-Stop:
# Description:    Switches the FANs off
### END INIT INFO

#. /etc/rc.status

#rc_reset

case "$1" in
    start|reload)
        echo "switching the fans off"
        /usr/local/bin/fan onoff &
        #rc_status -v
        ;;
    status)
        /usr/local/bin/fan
        ;;
    stop)
        echo "switching the fans on"
        /usr/local/bin/fan on
        #rc_status -v
        ;;
esac
#rc_exit