HOWTO: DELL Latitude D800

[spirospr]

Hardware specs :

15.4'' WSXGA
Intel Pentium M 1.7
512 MB RAM
GeForce4 4200GO
Broadcom internal modem
Dell True Mobile 802.11g (based on broadcom94306 chip)
Sigmatel audio card
Firewire
Broadcom Ethernet
Bluetooth

This “how to” is not full at the moment. It's about the solutions for problems i came up after installing Ubuntu 4.10. Expect updates since i will try to use all of my devices.

The solutions are for the devices which not worked at all or worked with problems. These are :

1.No sound card – wireless devices recognized
2.Display resolution was too low (600x800) after boot up

Sound – Wireless

The problem with sound and wireless card after searching is a bug that creates a irq conflict. The solution is adding acpi_irq_isa=7 in boot options. This is how :

sudo nano /boot/grub/menu.lst

#Find this line

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-386 root=/dev/hda4 ro quiet splash

#make it look like this

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-386 acpi_irq_isa=7 root=/dev/hda4 ro quiet splash

Save it and reboot. After rebooting you should have no problems with you sound. If so check volume controls in Gnome.In order to make your wireless work you will need to install ndiswarpper because broadcom is not recognized by the kernel. This will allow us to use windows drivers for the wifi card. So do these :

#install ndiswrapper

sudo aptget-install ndiswrapper-utils

#or do it through synaptic by searching (Generally i prefere synaptic since it retrieves dependences if needed and installations are done smoothly).
#now we will install the windows drivers which must be transferred in some location of our partition

sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf

#if you have the .inf file in another directory from the one that you are you will have to enter the entire path to the file. For example /home/cat/desktop/bcmwl5.inf.
#now we will activate the device

sudo modprobe ndiswrapper

#normally after that you will see the wifi indicator , in not removed from desktop , to be activated

Now you should make a network profile from Gnome

Computer--->System Configuration--->Networking

Select “Add” “wireless” select “wlan0” for device make the choices that suit for your network and finish it. This should be all. Some say that after you should add a line in the file /etc/modules saying “ndiswrapper” in order the driver to load but i did not since it loaded without it.

Resolution – Install Nvidia Drivers

It is not required to install nvidia drivers to increase the resolution but one way or another i wanted the drivers to be installed. I am not going to describe how to install nvidia drivers since others have made that already . Following the instructions of the link following you should have no problems :
http://www.ubuntulinux.org/wiki/BinaryDriverHowto

Thank's to sp0ck i managed to achieve 1680x1050 resolution. Here is the solution he found :

Edit /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 and scroll down to the "Monitor" section and change the values to


Section "Monitor"

Identifier "Generic Monitor"
HorizSync 30-107
VertRefresh 50-185
Option "DPMS"
Modeline "1280x800" 159.74 1280 1296 1552 1664 800 800 815 835
ModeLine "1680x1050" 214.51 1680 1800 1984 2288 1050 1051 1054 1103

EndSection

Sound Buttons on keyboard

I managed to make the volume control keys (volume up-down,mute) on my keyboard to work by doing this :

Select Computer--->Desktop Prferences--->Keyboard Shortcuts

Then select the volume up,down,mute and specify the key for the shortcut by pressing the specific keys on your keyboard. This should work just fine , as in windows.

Well that is all for now. I hope that this will help others with same hardware as me. Sory if something is mising but please feel free to notify me because it is a long "how to" and i might missed sth. So as i said wait updates to be done.

P.S. For those who don't have internet from their laptop they can't use "sudo apt-get" or synaptic to get the required packages, so they can find it and download it from another pc from here
http://archive.ubuntu.com/

[choulth]

Thanks, you saved my day!

[herweg]

This is a great howto, I would like to add that it also works on my Dell Inspiron 8200. I have one question though - up until I read this, I have been using pci=noacpi to get sound working on my machine. Is there any benefit to using acpi_irq_isa=7?

[spirospr]

This is a great howto, I would like to add that it also works on my Dell Inspiron 8200. I have one question though - up until I read this, I have been using pci=noacpi to get sound working on my machine. Is there any benefit to using acpi_irq_isa=7?

I don't know because i have not test this setting , but if it is working right i don't think there is a reason for you to change your settings.
Testing around is the best thing ...

[Jeconais]

Thanks a lot - that kernel modifier has my laptop sounds working perfectly.

[mr_ed]

Sweet HOWTO!

That was totally painless!

One caveat: Make sure that you type the correct filename. Mine extracted as all caps, and I entered it as lowercase. I ended up having to remove the folder, since doing an ndiswrapper remove wouldn't get rid of the stuff that installed.

[tux61]

Thanks a lot for your howto !

[theBlackDragon]

What to do if you have an Intel PRO/Wireless 22OOBG card?

The default Ubuntu kernel includes it it seems, but it doesn't work, it doesn't create any devices, but lsmod does list the modules...

Is it advisable to install the drivers from source over the ones that Ubuntu provided? Or will that only get me into more trouble?

tia

[Rob]

I've had to adapt the boot options to get the sound working on my Dell Inspiron 8200 too, and have a suggestion for a change to your howto.

This part should be done slightly differently:-

#Find this line

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-386 root=/dev/hda4 ro quiet splash

#make it look like this

kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-386 acpi_irq_isa=7 root=/dev/hda4 ro quiet splash

If done as above the next time the kernel is updated (for example applying security updates using Synaptic) the acpi_irq_isa=7 bit will be removed when the menu.lst file is automatically regenerated. Instead do it as evane describes in this thread:-

add acpi_irq_isa=7 to the default kernel options line in /boot/grub/menu.lst... for example

# kopt=root=/dev/hda7 ro acpi_irq_isa=7

then run sudo update-grub, and make sure you kernel line has that extra statement like so... kernel /vmlinuz-2.6.8.1-3-686 root=/dev/hda7 ro acpi_irq_isa=7 quiet splash

Reboot and your should issues should be resolved...

It took me a while to work out why I had to keep fixing the sound on my laptop until I realised the menu.lst file is being regenerated automatically.

Hope this helps,

Rob.

[nico]

My sound worked using the automagic rules in the grub file on a Dell Latitude 600, thanks alot for this post!!