Sotec 3120X Linux Installation support:

"News"

18 April 2004: Still having trouble getting the 3d Acceleration to work let me know if you get it working! Also, let me know what you need to see on here, maybe more details? I don't know

23 March 2004: After lot's of hassles with getting Mandrake Linux and later Gentoo linux installed on my Sotec (now Averatec) laptop I decided that I would start putting some HOWTOS and writeups on the web to help others. Right now there isn't much to show, but as I get more working I will add more

Mandrake 10.0 CE:

Let me start by saying that everything seemed to work right out of the box on Mandrake 9.2 except for my wireless card. Same seems to be the case for Mandrake 10.0 CE but I can't remember if the touchpad features worked. Let me know so I can put up info on how to get it working

• Atmel WLAN Drivers HOWTO - This will walk you through getting the Atmel WLAN Drivers to work with Mandrake. This only really applies if you have the generic wireless pcmcia card that you could purchase fromt he sotec website

Gentoo:

Gentoo Linux was a whole other story. I had to do some playing around with the kernel in order to get the stuff working. There is a lot of support in the kernel and I will explain getting sound, and dma and everything working later but for now here is a list of the HOWTOS I have written for Gentoo.

Kernel:I chose to use gentoo-dev-sources as my kernel, which gives you kernel 2.6.3 at the moment (I think 2.6.5 is available but i haven't switched yet). Here is my config file for kernel 2.6.3 kernel-config-2.6.3

• Ethernet: SiS 900 driver will work from kernel
• Sound: compile into kernel using the trident driver (Trident 4d-Wave DX/NX; SiS 7018)
• Video: 3d Acceleration will not work, or at least I haven't had any luck with the SiS 630st yet, just hard locks the system, but I'll keep on trying
• USB: This works well use OHCI support (OHCI HCD support)
• Modem: I haevn't used it at all but it is an AC'97 modem, which has support in the kernel. I never use the modem so I haven't tested it yet
• Mouse: Use the synaptics driver here, here is my config for the mouse to work. mouse-XF86config

HOWTOS:

• ACPI - Should work if you have it enabled in the kernel when you build it
• 3d Acceleration: I've had no luck getting this to work yet. Should work with the 2.4 kernel, but seems impossible with the 2.6 kernel. One thing is sure XFree86 4.3 does NOT support the sis 630 graphics chipset but 4.2 and 4.4 do. I have 4.4 running with direct rendering enabled but the sis_agp module provided by the kernel does not work and causes crashes if the sis_dri tries to access it.
• PCMCIA Wireless Config HOWTO - This will walk you through getting PCMCIA working with the 2.6.3 kernel (gentoo-dev-sources). This is also useful for getting the ATMEL drivers working with Gentoo if you have the same generic pcmcia card which I have. I purchased this card from the Sotec Website.
• Sound - For Alsa sound you'll need to use the trident drivers. You can compile these into the kernel, and then run
  • # env ALSA_DRIVER='trident' emerge alsa-driver
  • The Gentoo Documentation is a good resource for installing ALSA once you know what drivers to install and compile with
• Getting DRI support for the SiS630st graphics chip - This is proving to be difficult but I am working on it

Joseph Koston, (joe at koston dot net)