I am a big Dell fan, so when my employer offered me to buy an office laptop, I didn’t think much. :) I chose Dell Inspiron 640m and intentionally selected its hardware components to be similar with my home-based Dell Latitude D620. And, of course, installed Fedora Core 6 straight away.
Hardware
- Intel Core 2 Duo T7200 2 GHz 667 MHz FSB
- 1 GB RAM 533 MHz DDR2
- Intel 945GM Express Integrated Graphics Controller
- 14.1″ WXGA+ 1440×990 (widescreen)
- HDD SATA 80 GB, 7200rpm
- TSST Corp DVD+/-RW TS-L632D 8x Drive
- Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX
- Intel PRO/Wireless 3945ABG
- Intel High Definition Audio Controller
- Bluetooth
- 5-in-1 card reader (SD/MMC/MS/MSPro/xD)
- Touchpad
- 4 x USB 2.0, VGA-out, TV-out, Firewire, internal modem
- 6-cell 56WHr Li-Ion battery
As you can may notice, hardware is very similar to Dell Latitude D620, which I have covered recently, so I’ll try to focus on main differences here, rather than covering whole subject once again.
lscpi output
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/PM/GMS/940GML and 945GT Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03) 00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03) 00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 01) 00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 01) 00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 01) 00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 01) 00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #1 (rev 01) 00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #2 (rev 01) 00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #3 (rev 01) 00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI #4 (rev 01) 00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 01) 00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e1) 00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 01) 00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 01) 00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 01) 02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02) 02:01.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0832 02:01.1 Class 0805: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C822 SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro Host Adapter (rev 19) 02:01.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd Unknown device 0843 (rev 01) 02:01.3 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd R5C592 Memory Stick Bus Host Adapter (rev 0a) 02:01.4 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd xD-Picture Card Controller (rev 05) 0c:00.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02)
Installation
First steps with FC6 on my new laptop were… text-mode! Somehow, installer couldn’t start xserver and switched back to text-mode installation. After few tries I figured out linux vesa parameter to start installation and finally I was able go through graphical mode. Other problem was, after first installation (in text-mode), GRUB didn’t show up at all after first reboot, and WinXP started loading straight away. There is small possibility that I didn’t check some option while installing in text-mode, which was a bit confusing, but I rather doubt that. Anyway, I’ve ran installation (graphical) for a second time and it worked fine.
Display
System’s default display driver after installation was VESA. Switching to i810 or intel drivers resulted in xserver crash while trying to restart it. Luckily, the first system’s full-update brought updated i810 drivers which worked without any problems. Even more, desktop-effects worked flawlessly with these drivers as well! Huh, after my long and harsh nvidia-vs-desktop-effects-experience with D620, that was quite a relief! :)
Other important thing about display is screen resolution. It’s widely known issue with intel-based video cards, that they usually need tweaking it’s video BIOS modes with 3rd party applications to make proper resolution work. It wasn’t any different in my case. All you need is 915resoltution package installed. Then, just add following line into your /etc/rc.d/rc.local file:
915resolution 58 1440 900
And then restart system. If you need details on that, please refer to README file of 915resolution, or just believe me - it works. ;)
Drives
SATA hard drive was recognized again as /dev/sda. DVD+/-RW drive was presenting exactly same effects as in D620, so applying workaround was necessary. Built-in multicard reader works fine, at least with SD/MMC family cards, I wasn’t able to check MS/MSPro/xD cards.
Power management
Battery lifetime dissapointed me again. While typical office work, with LCD dimmed to 50%, wireless devices switched off, music on my ears and CPUs frequency scaled dynamically (mostly at 50%, tough) it managed to keep running for just 2h40m, while I expected at least 3 hours. :(
Hibernation is working, quite stable, but… yes, there’s always some ‘but’. In this case, after resuming system, screen resolution is not reverted to original state and stays at 1024×768. It looks like video card’s BIOS is reset after resume and 915resolution hack doesn’t work anymore. I guess there is some workaround for that, but at the moment I have no idea about any details.
[UPDATE] Here’s a workaround: http://klamstwo.org/evad/archives/32
Suspend works without troubles, at least. :)
Touchpad
Worked very well since the very beginning and no special xorg.conf configs and tricks were necessary. Nice one.
Special hardware keys
One of Dell Inspiron 640m features are multimedia keys in front of chassis. These are volume up/down/mute, play/pause, next/previous track, stop and so called ‘MediaDirect’ key. I am very happy to inform, that all of these keys (except MediaDirect one, which I guess is windows-software-operated only) are accessible and could be assigned as standard gnome keyboard shortcuts. Also, Rhythmbox music player supports ‘music’ keys, while volume keys are widely accessible.
As we speak about ‘hardware’ keys, typical Dell’s combination to change LCD backlight intensity (Fn-Up/Down) doesn’t work - at least while running FC6. :( I was very surprised in negative way, as that shortcut used to work without troubles with my old Inspiron 510m as well as with new Latitude D620.
[UPDATE] It started to work ‘just like that’ - probably after some system/kernel update. Woohoo!
Networking, Bluetooth, sound
Please refer to previous post, regarding FC6 installation on Dell Latitude D620.
Not tested
Internal modem, CardBus slot, Firewire port, VGA-out, TV-out
Related
- http://gentoo-wiki.com/HARDWARE_Dell_Inspiron_640m
- http://krammer.info/it/debiandell-inspiron-640m/
- http://www.geocities.com/stomljen/readme.html
