• Contact: FranciscoBorges, ManuelFernandez2, SebastianOrtiz and GustavoNarea.

• Make: Dell
• Brand: Dell
• Model: Inspiron 6400

• Website: #Inspiron Line

Note: There were several spurious copies of these tables on this page. There were merged into a single one. PLEASE, add info to the original table instead of creating another one.

How do we include information with Gutsy Gibbon? (upgrade from Feisty works ok except LCD brightness control now lost)

Submodels of this laptop

Dell allows lots of hardware options with this model. There are two main divisions:

• According to the graphic cards:
  • Those with integrated graphics controller (Intel 945GM)
  • Those with graphics card (Mobility Radeon X1400)
• According to the processors:
  • Those with Intel Core Duo @ 1.66.
  • Those with Intel Core Duo @ 1.83.

There is a different solution to getting X to work with wide-screen resolution for each of these two options.

Note: The Inspiron 6400 is identical to Inspiron E1505. See also LaptopTestingTeam/DellInspironE1505

System info

• Processor:

  • Intel Core Duo Yonah (1.66GHz 2M cache), or

  • Intel Core Duo Yonah (1.83GHz 2M cache).
• Express Card controller: Intel ICH7
• Memory Type: 1.8-V SODIMM DDR-2

• Video Controler:

  • Intel 945GM Graphics (8Mb), or

  • Ati Mobility Radeon X1300 (256 Mb).
• Speaker: two 4-ohm speakers
• Display: 15.4-inch WXGA or WSXGA+
• Maximum Resolutions: WXGA 1280x800 or WSXGA+ 1680x1050
• Monitor Refresh Rate: 60Hz
• Modem Controller: Conexant HDA D110 MDC
• Modem Type: v.92 56K MDC
• Wi-Fi Device: Intel Wireless
• Audio Controller: Sigmatel STAC9200

• 5-in-1 media memory card controller: Ricoh R5C832

• Keyboard: 87 (US and Canada); 88 (Europe); 91 (Japan)
• Keyboard layout: QWERTY/AZERTY/Kanji
• Battery: "smart" lithion ion
• Coin-cell batery: CR-2032

Output of (cd /var/lib/acpi-support/ ; grep . -r *-*)

$ (cd /var/lib/acpi-support/ ; grep . -r *-*)
bios-version:A06
system-manufacturer:Dell Inc.
system-product-name:MM061
system-version:Not Specified

Issues

Current Issues

1. With Intel 945GM Graphics your resolution will not work out-of-the-box. See workaround.
2. Inspiron E1705 with X1400 graphics cannot detect monitor
3. External USB HD not detected when booting alternate install CD

Issues before Feisty

Note: Check also this page if you are using Kubuntu Edgy: COMPLETE HOW TO: Dell Inspiron 6400

1. Dell Truemobile / wireless 1390 does not work with Network Manager Applet. It is having trouble setting the ssid. For now you can use iwconfig to set ssid and dhclient to acquire an ip address. (Edgy)
2. Touchpad horizontal scrolling seems to be disable by default!!*3
3. Some special media keys do not work (ex: Play or "Eject CD").

4. Dapper sometimes corrupts BIOS NV data or time-of-day clock. This can lead to the BIOS freezing before loading the MBR, and before allowing editing of BIOS settings. This is the bug #43745 Check also this thread on the problem.

5. The CPU might get too hot. See also this page for a solution: COMPLETE HOW TO: Dell Inspiron 6400 and this one to set i8kctl to run as daemon.

Hardware details

Workarounds

Setting the correct resolution

With Intel 945GM

On Gutsy

With "intel" Driver in xorg.conf works out of the Box

1. Open xorg.conf with "sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf"
2. Search for "Section "Device" and change Driver "i810" to "intel"

With "i810" Driver in xorg.conf:

1. Install 915resolution
2. Reboot.

On Edgy and Feisty

1. Install 915resolution
2. Reboot.

See bug #89216.

On Dapper

This is a bit complicated. I and other owners of the same laptop were only able to solve this through a ugly hack.... Read this thread for details ubuntu flight6 on a dell inspiron 6400.

1. You beter re-run 'dpkg-reconfigure xorg-xserver' (I'm not sure this is necessary).
2. You need to use 915resolution and the one in the current Ubuntu repositories (25April2006) does not recognize the card. Download this one

   • 915resolution and install it.

3. Read the documentation if you like to configure it. The values I used were MODE=58 XRESO=1280 YRESO=800. They go into /etc/default/915resolution.

Or follow this post http://kubuntuforums.net/forums/index.php?topic=5186.0

With Mobility Radeon X1400

I have to install fglrx Drivers https://wiki.ubuntu.com/BinaryDriverHowto/ATI and 3D Accel

Setting up 3D Acceleration

XGL To get working XGL + Compiz https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CompositeManager/Xgl, after https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CompositeManager/InstallingCompiz and finaly https://wiki.ubuntu.com/CompositeManager/ConfiguringCompiz

Touchpad's horizontal scrolling is disabled by default

By default horizontal, (side) scrolling is OFF. In order to get it working you must comment this line in /etc/X11/xorg.conf:

Option "HorizScrollDelta" "0"

Since setting this parameter to 0 disables horizontal scrolling. see synaptics(5) for parameters details. You can check if it works with "xev", and seeing if side scrolling generates events for buttons 6 and 7.

See bug #89727.

Fixing suspend/sleep

Installing fglrx drivers seems to break suspend/sleep. This can be fixed by editing /etc/default/acpi-support and changing "POST_VIDEO=true" to "POST_VIDEO=false" .

Setting up S-Video Out - TV-Out

With Intel 945GM

On Gutsy

Change the Driver to "intel" in your xorg.conf:

1. Open xorg.conf with "sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf"
2. Search for "Section "Device" and change Driver "i810" to "intel"
3. Restart the X-Server and login
4. Connect the S-Video output with your TV an press "Fn" + "F8"

Cange to PAL when black/white:

Open Terminal and type:

1. xrandr --output TV --set TV_FORMAT PAL;
2. xrandr --output TV --auto;

Fix WLan LED on Hardy Heron

Bug: https://bugs.launchpad.net/linux/+bug/176090

:~$ sudo apt-get install linux-backports-modules-hardy

then:

:~$ sudo rmmod iwl4965; sudo modprobe iwl4965

or:

:~$ sudo rmmod iwl3945; sudo modprobe iwl3945

Notes

Bluetooth and Wifi

Note they are controlled from the same key and this can be configured in the BIOS.

Ubuntu Dapper 6.06 Beta with network updates to 2006-05-08. I had the following experience:

• 915resolution worked to get full 1680 x 1050 resolution
• hibernate and sleep do not work: activity happens, but PC never wakes up. Have to remove power and battery to recover
• speaker mute, volume up and down media buttons work. Play/pause, rewind, forward and stop do not.
• flash card reader works with 128M SD card. Not tested with other types of card.