FreeBSD 4.5 on a Dell Inspiron 4100

Video

Two video chips are available in the 4100: the nVidia GeForce2 Go and the ATI Mobility RADEON. Do NOT get the nVidia. XFree86 (4.2.0) does not support it; Linux-only drivers from nVidia are necessary, which means Linux is necessary.¹ XFree86 4.2.0 does support the ATI chip, and works quite beautifully with no esoteric configuration. Note that I couldn't get XFree86 4.1.0 to work.

Sound

The sound chip is an Intel. I built the pcm(4) driver into my kernel. Perhaps loading a kernel module will work; I didn't try. PCM and CD audio work quite welll. The speakers sound good for their size, but headphones sound much better.

Network

The builtin Ethernet card is a 3Com 3c905C; it works. The modem is some flavor of Winmodem. I have no idea if it works. The Dell TrueMobile 1150 MiniPCI wireless adapter is a relabeled Lucent/Orinoco card and works very will using the wi(4) driver. Now I just need a KDE panel applet to change the SSID and WEP keys...

APM

After enabling apmd(8) in /etc/rc.conf, the machine suspends and resumes happily when I close the lid (or type zzz). On suspend, the wireless card is removed/detached. This makes dhclient(8) complain with receive_packet failed on wi0: Device not configured several hundred thousand times per minute. I added a line to /etc/rc.suspend to kill dhclient before suspending. I manually reconfigure the wireless network with a ten-line script after resuming. Furthermore, with USB builtin to the kernel, it would frequently complain with usb0: host controller halted after resuming. I built a kernel without USB support. The messages disappeared even though the USB kernel module is loaded and usbd(8) is running. It's a -STABLE kernel, so maybe there were some relevant code changes. Or maybe I'm hallucinating. Again.

USB

The driver loads happily, but I haven't tested any devices.

PCMCIA/PCCARD

The driver loads happily, but I haven't tested any devices. The builtin wireless card uses the pccard bus, so it apparently works. I can power on/off the wireless card and change the beep type.

Configuration Files, Command Output, etc.

Footnotes

¹ If you are unfortunate enough to own a laptop with an nVidia GeForce2 Go, try The FreeBSD NVIDIA Driver Initiative or the FreeBSD NVIDIA Driver Project .

Last updated: Sun Apr 7 19:24:51 EDT 2002