MiNote M722: my notebook

MiNote M722 (Mitac/Network/others?)

I got mine here in germany. It is labeled as "Network". The PCI subsystem vendor ID for various components is Mitac throuth. The specs are available here. I suspect you can get it from other OEM's with other names too.

It is a subnotebook. Small. Leightweight (1.58 kg only). It hasn't the very latest and greatest stuff build in, but for linux support this is a good thing. I got nearly all components going with Linux. I installed Debian (woody aka testing) on it, it runs a 2.4.x kernel.

Video

00:09.0 VGA compatible controller: ATI Technologies Inc 3D Rage P/M Mobility (rev 64)

framebuffer
The only nitpick here is that atyfb doesn't recognise the Rage Mobility. vesafb does very well throuth, and the most annonying limits of vesafb (60 Hz only, no resolution switching at runtime) are no issues for a LCD Display. /me runs vesafb at 1024x768 with the SUN12x22 font, which is a much better text console than scaled up 80x25 vga text mode.

X11
XFree86 4.0.2 recognises the Rage Mobility just fine and works without any problems. Config file.

XFree86 3.3.6 + Mach64 Server works too (according to Delio Brignoli).

Sound

00:00.1 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82440MX AC'97 Audio Controller

Works. You need the i810_audio driver (CONFIG_SOUND_ICH). Some kernel versions are broken: 2.4.3 used to work, 2.4.9 doesn't, 2.4.13 is fine again.

Network

00:00.2 Modem: Intel Corporation: Unknown device 7196 00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139 (rev 10)

The Ethernet works without problems with the Realtek driver.

The pctel driver (./configure --with-hal=i810intel) recognises the modem:

AC97 modem device found: devnum = 80000200, devid = 8086/7196
irq = 5, iobase_0 = 1800, iobase_1 = 1700
PCTel driver version 0.8.6 [5.05c-8.00-LN213] (MR) (2001-08-30) \
	with MANY_PORTS SHARE_IRQ SERIAL_PCI ISAPNP AUDIO_ROUTING[INTEL] enabled.
PCTel driver built on [Linux 2.4.13 i686 unknown "2.4.17 <132113>"] with gcc-2.95.4.
ttyS15 at 0x1800 (irq = 5) is a PCTel

Havn't tried whenever it actually works because the notebook is connected via Ethernet all the time and I don't have a analog telephon line (/me has ISDN + a linux box as router).

External I/O

00:07.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82440MX USB Universal Host Controller 00:08.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 01) 00:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): NEC Corporation: Unknown device 00cd (rev 02)

USB
Works. 'nuff said.

CardBus (PC-Card/PCMCIA)
The yenta_socket module recognises the bus controller. Recently got myself a wlan PCMCIA card (Netgear MA401) which is recognized fine. Using it doesn't work perfectly (slow, lot packet loss and dup packages), but I think thats more a wlan firmware/driver issue. Must investigate ...

You need a kernel with pnpbios support, otherwise the kernel will assign ressources used by the motherboard to the CardBus brigde which in turn will crash your box as soon as you touch any APM stuff. Look here for patches.

FireWire
The host controller ist recognised (ohci1394 module), but I havn't tried yet to use it due to lack of hardware to play with.

Quoting Monte Lin <monte@ipex.com.tw>: It works to the extent of current Linux 1394 support. One drawback is that the notebook doesn't provide supply power, so any device you are connecting needs another way to draw power from somewhere.

IrDA

It's a FIR chip from National Semiconductor, the nsc-ircc finds it without problems. Make sure you havn't the serial driver loaded, otherwise the module will not load because the serial driver will allocate the io ports.

Power management

APM works almost. You have to say no to the CONFIG_APM_CPU_IDLE, otherwise the notebook will freeze at boot time or after loading apm module is loaded.
Delio Brignoli: BIOS versions >= R1.08 have that bug fixed. BIOS R1.13 has a bug in the APM powerdown code. R1.10 is fine.
/me has R1.02, looks like I should go after a newer version ...

Havn't tried go get ACPI going myself as it is still experimental. According to Delio Brignoli it works well with some releases but not with others (acpica-20010615 is fine, acpica-20010717 seems to have problems with the CPU). The "easy access" Buttons do send ACPI events.

The BIOS has a bug which prevents it from recognizing a suspend-to-disk partition if the partition table has four partitions listed. So if you are going to use suspend-to-disk, better use a extended partition and put your filesystems in there to avoid using all four primary partitions.

The nvram driver can read and write the cmos ram settings, simply by using "cat /dev/nvram > image.cmos" (read) and "cat image.cmos > /dev/nvram" (write). This can be used to create cmos images for different configurations (suspend-to-ram/disk for example) and switch between them without rebooting.

The hotplug package (Debian/testing has a .deb for it) is very useful for notebook users, it handles shutdown and reconfiguration of devices on suspend/wakeup very well.

External devices

The notebook comes with a few external devices you can plug in if you need them:

CD-ROM drive
Its a ATAPI cdrom drive. Nothing special, works without problems. The BIOS can boot from it, linux recognises it as /dev/hdb if connected. Not hot-pluggable, you have to turn off the computer to connect/disconnect it.

Floppy drive
It's a USB floppy. If you plugin it the usbmgr loads the usb-storage module and the little thing is recogniced as removable SCSI disk. Tried reading a floppy, worked. I don't know whenever you can format floppies or play the usual tricks to put more than 1.44 MB onto a floppy. And I don't feel like testing it, why use floppy networking if you can plug in a cat5 cable?
The BIOS looks like it is able to boot from the USB floppy. Untested too.

Mouse
There also is a USB mouse bundled. The buildin trackpad is a PS/2 device btw. As XFree86 is able to handle more than Pointer you can even use the Trackpad and the USB Mouse at the same time. Make sure the mousedev module (usb mouse driver) is loaded before starting the X-Server, otherwise X11 will ignore the USB mouse if you plugin it while the X-Server is running.

This Site

Downloads

Software

Texts