Overview Chart
last updated: Aug 14 2006
This laptop is now quite old. Nevertheless, I recently installed Ubuntu 6.06.1 (dapper drake) on it. Most things work out of the box now. The only remaining problems are 3D accelerated graphics (can be configured manually, is quite slow, however) and some ACPI stability issues (battery sometimes not detected, seldom ACPI crashed that cause the laptop to be very very slow). The modem is not tested at the moment as I don't need it.
There are some other models in the FX50x series and additionally, the newer model series FX60x, FX70x and FX80x (and maybe FX90x) are available. It seems that all models with AMD Duron or Athlon CPU have very similar hardware than the FX501 and so the information given here are valid for them, too. The models with Intel CPUs are quite different, however!
The old article about using Mandrake Linux 9.1 on this device can still be read here.
Overview Chart| Component | Modell | Status | Driver | Remarks |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Processor | mobile AMD Duron 1 GHz with PowerNow | fully supported | for PowerNow: powernow-k7, cpufreq_ondemand or cpufreq_userspace | out of the box |
| Screen | TFT 14.1", 1024x768 | fully supported | ||
| RAM | 256 MB SDRAM | fully supported | ||
| Hard Disk | 20 GB | fully supported | ||
| Floppy Disk Drive | 3.5", removable | fully supported | instead of the floppy, a 2nd battery can be used | |
| DVD Drive | DVD: 8x, CDROM: 24x | fully supported | Kernel | Playing Video DVDs possible |
| Battery | LiOn, 3000 mAh | fully supported | ||
| System Watching | ACPI | nearly fully supported | various acpi modules | out of the box. Sometimes, the battery is not recognized. Then only rebooting helps. Sometimes (luckily seldom) ACPI crashs completely - then the laptop gets very slow - only rebooting helps. |
| Suspend/Sleep possibilities | ACPI, Software Suspend | nearly fully supported | Suspend-To-RAM does not work (crash at wake up). Suspend-To-Disk (aka hibernate) works out of the box. Fan control also works out of the box. | |
| Graphics | ATI 3D Rage Mobility-M1, 8 MB RAM | fully supported, 3D not out of the box | accelerated 2D out of the box, for accelerated 3D see below. | |
| Sound | VIA686 AC97-Sound | fully supported | snd_via82xx | out of the box |
| TV-Out | Composite NTSC/PAL | fully supported | out of the box, use Fn-F8 key. For switching between NTSC and PAL one can either press the Fn-F8 key twice or use the atitvout tool (can be found in the universe section of Ubuntu). | |
| PCMCIA | PCMCIA, 2 of type 1 or 2 or one of type 3 | fully supported | pcmcia, yenta_socket | out of the box |
| Firewire Interface | fully supported | ohci1394 (shipped with kernel) | not tested by me (see remark 1) | |
| Internal Modem | Conexant HSF AC97 SoftModem | not tested | not needed by me. current status unknown. | |
| Network | fully supported | 8139too | out of the box | |
| USB Interface | 2x VIA USB 1.1 (UHCI) | fully supported | uhci_hcd | out of the box |
| Parallel port | fully supported | |||
| Serial port | not yet tested |
Remarks:
To get accelerated 3D, follow the instructions in this Ubuntuforums post. However, this approach overwrites some Ubuntu system files. This means, that after kernel updates and X.org updates, probably the last three steps (calling the ./install files) has to be re-done.
With this driver, it is possible to play the game "chromium B.S.U" (about 25 frames in 1024x768). However, in planet penguin racer the frame rate is too slow. Furthermore, Google Earth also does not work as expected as the globe is redrawn over and over, even when nothing has changed at all.
I decided not to use this driver. However, it was not easy to recover the old system state. I used the following command which hopefully remove the driver completely and re-install all packages in which it has overwritten some files:
Additionally, the color depth can be re-set to 24bpp in /etc/X11/xorg.conf (search for the line starting with "DefaultDepth").