Viglen Dossier NS Plus
Linux Compatibility Testing Results

System Type: Laptop
Test Completed: 2003-08-11

Viglen Dossier NS Plus is awarded the AppLabs Linux Compatibility mark.

AppLabs' www.Linux-Tested.com compatibility testing of this system showed the following distributions compatible with the Viglen Dossier NS Plus:

RedHat 9

This document presents the compatibility testing results.

System Configuration

The following table defines the system configuration tested by AppLabs.

System Configuration as Tested
Company	Viglen
Model	Viglen Dossier NS Plus
BIOS Revision	2.00.7
Main Board and Chipset	Intel® FC-PGA2
Processor(s)	Intel® P4 1.8 GHz
RAM	256 MB
HBA	IDE
Motherboard Features and Capabilities	1. Supports Intel® Celeron or Pentium® 4 processors 2. Intelligent Power Management ACPI/APM
Display Adapter	SIS® 128-bit 2D/3D 4x AGP (SIS® 650)
Serial Ports	None
Parallel Ports	One (1) Enhanced Bi-directional
USB Ports	Two (2) USB 2
I/O Ports and buses	One (1) Firewire Ports;
Host Bus Adapter	IDE
Network Interface	RealTek RTL-8139 (Built-in)
Audio Chipset / Sound Card	SIS® 7012 PCI Audio Accelerator
Optical Drive	Samsung SN-124 24x / DVD
Hard Drive	Hitachi IC25N020ATMR04-0 (ATA)
Floppy Drive	Standard 1.44MB
Keyboard	laptop keyboard
Pointing Device	touchpad with 2 (two) buttons
Miscellaneous Hardware	one (1) TV-out port one (1) microphone in one (1) speaker out one (1) type II slot with CardBus Support one (1) IrDA Infra red port 14.1 inch color XGA TFT (1024 X 768) V.92 56K Smart Link Soft Modem for Linux

Testing Results

The following table defines the hardware as tested in this system by AppLabs, and provides the pass/fail results.

Tests and determinations are available for reference in ASCII format for immediate viewing.

Test Comment Result
Installation Testing
CD-ROM Installation PASSED
NFS/FTP Installation PASSED
Device Auto Probing PASSED
Base System Testing
Kernel Compatibility PASSED
GRUB/LILO Compatibility PASSED
Heavy I/O Test PASSED
Network Test PASSED
Network Load Test (Not required on workstation test) PASSED
SMP Test (Only required multiprocessor systems) PASSED
Display Adapter
Console Compatibility PASSED
X Server Compatibility PASSED
Stand Alone Monitor (Laptop Test Only) NA
Simultaneous Display CRT/LCD (Laptop Test Only) NA
Sound Adapter
Basic Sound Compatibility PASSED
Advanced Sound Availibility PASSED
Advanced Sound Compatibility FAILED
Serial Ports
Kernel Detection NA
Compatibility Testing NA
Throughput Testing NA
Parallel Ports
Kernel Detection PASSED
Compatibility Testing PASSED
Mouse
Kernel Detection PASSED
Compatibility Testing PASSED
Keyboard
Compatibility Testing PASSED

Notes and Observations:

The soundcard is detected with the Intel® Sound driver which is correct; however, it is in a disabled state. This is because the 2.4.19-9 kernel (latest kernel that is stable for RedHat 9) is unable to appropriately assign an IRQ to the soundcard chipset. An error is displayed from dmesg.log and the messages.log files stating that IRQ zero will not work.

To troubleshoot this issue, AppLabs located and compiled the RedHat rawhide 2.4.21 kernel on RedHat 9. This fixed the IRQ zero issue and the sound modules loaded correctly; however, the X server must be recompiled in order to work with the new kernel.

RedHat 9 does not correctly probe for the video card. Users must execute redhat-config-xfree86 at a terminal and manually select the SIS® 650 driver. This will load the SIS® video module on the next reboot of the X-server.

Power off -- When the command (shutdown -h now) is issued from a terminal, RedHat 9 does not completely shutdown the notebook. It leaves the notebook at a prompt asking the user to (power down).

Standby -- When the command (apm -s) is issued from a terminal, the display flickers, the resolution changes momentarily, and an the following error is displayed in the terminal window: (apm input/output error).

AppLabs update the BIOS on the notebook to the latest version and retested these issues. The same results occurred.

As noted under the Device Autoprobing section, RedHat 9 with the 2.4.19-9 kernel did not correctly assign the approriate IRQ for the sound card chipset. Users may try compiling the rawhide 2.4.21 kernel to fix this issue.

There are Linux drivers available for the built in modem. They are available at http://216.67.237.96/main2/down/20_slmdm-2_7_14_tar_en.gz Unfortunately, the same IRQ 0 issues exists with the 2.4.19-9 kernel detecting the modem. Users may try compiling the rawhide kernel to fix this issue.

Legal

AppLabs makes no warranty, either expressed or implied, regarding the information or lack thereof present in this document or in the documents it references.