my dv1170ca

Order submitted: 2005/02/24
Order approved: 2005/02/25
Order shipped: 2005/02/25
Order received: 2005/03/01

Hardware:

• HP Pavilion dv1170ca, PR427UA#ABL
• Intel Centrino mobile technology featuring Intel Pentium M 725 1.6GHz, 2MB L2 cache
• 14.0" WXGA High-Definition* BrightView Widescreen (1280 x 768) Display
• Fujitsu MHU2100AT 100 GB (4200 rpm) HD
• Infineon HYS64D32020GDL-6-C 512 MB 266 MHz DDR SDRAM (2 x 256 MB)
• Intel WM3B2200BG rev B Pro/Wireless 2200 802.11b/g integrated wireless LAN
• Pioneer DVR-K14 DVD±RW and CD-RW Combo drive
• Intel Extreme Graphics 2 (shared) i855GM/GME
• Realtek RTL8100CL/RTL8110Sb 10/100 NIC
• Conexant CX20468-31 Sound Blaster Pro-compatible 16-bit audio with internal Harman/Kardon speakers
• Texas Instruments PCI 7411 (Cardbus, Firewire, FlashMedia Reader, SD-Host controller)
• 3-yr warranty extension w/ accidental damage protection

00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.1 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:00.3 System peripheral: Intel Corporation 82852/82855 GM/GME/PM/GMV Processor to I/O Controller (rev 02)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation 82852/855GM Integrated Graphics Device (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 03)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 03)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 03)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-M) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 03)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev 83)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 03)
00:1f.1 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801DBM (ICH4-M) IDE Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) SMBus Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.5 Multimedia audio controller: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Audio Controller (rev 03)
00:1f.6 Modem: Intel Corporation 82801DB/DBL/DBM (ICH4/ICH4-L/ICH4-M) AC'97 Modem Controller (rev 03)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C/8139C+ (rev 10)
02:06.0 Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 2200BG (rev 05)
02:09.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI6411,6421,6611,6621,7411,7421,7611,7621 Cardbus Controller
02:09.2 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCI7411,7421,7611,7621 Firewire Controller
02:09.3 Unknown mass storage controller: Texas Instruments PCI6411,6421,6611,6621,7411,7421,7611,7621 Flash Media Controller
02:09.4 Class 0805: Texas Instruments PCI6411,6421,6611,6621,7411,7421,7611,7621 SD Host Controller

HP dv1170ca product page: http://www.hp.ca/products/static/pavilion-notebooks/dv1170ca/index.php
HP dv1170ca brochure/spec sheet: dv1170ca.pdf

http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/pci6411.html
http://focus.ti.com/docs/prod/folders/print/pci7411.html

Software Configuration

xorg

Some people needed http://perso.wanadoo.fr/apoirier/855resolution-0.3.tgz to make 1280x768 work in xorg, but my dv1170's video bios has apparently been updated, so I do not require the 855resolution tool! I only needed to add an appropriate modeline to my xorg.conf:

Modeline "1280x768" 80.14 1280 1344 1480 1680 768 769 772 795

mplayer

vo=xv
monitor-aspect = 1.66666667 #15:9


Then, since I play a lot of 4:3 content from my MythTV PVR on my laptop, I like it to fill the screen:

vf = crop=720:384,pp=lb
af = volume=10:sc #for making AC3 DVD audio audible

Notice that the 1280x768 display has a 15:9 aspect ratio, not 16:9. So the most common "widescreen" format video will come close to, but not quite fill the screen (unless you cut a bit off each end to fill the screen vertically.)

suspend

Generally, S4 (hibernate) works great. The only caveat is that some special keys (like LCD brightness, wireless kill-switch, etc) do not work after resuming. If the wiless kill-switch is off (radio on) when hibernating then you're ok, but if it's on when you hibernate then you will have no way to turn it off after resuming. I just leave the LCD brightness at the lowest and make sure the kill switch is off ebfore hibernating.

S3 (suspend-to-ram) is a bit of a problem, because the BIOS does not re-POST the video BIOS after resume from S3. This is a known problem on a lot of laptops, but there is a possible workaround.

Find yourself a program called vbetool. This will let you forcibly POST the video BIOS after resuming. On my dv1170ca, this almost works. Video comes up, but there are weird drawing glitches (very hard to describe) seeming related to overlays. X is visible, but mostly unusable in this state, so S3 isn't much of an option right now.

My hibernate script: /usr/local/sbin/hibernate
It can be used with one or two arguments:

hibernate [disk|mem] [shutdown|platform]

The defaults are disk (S4) and shutdown. mem is for testing S3, and platform is for testing alternate means of shutting down after the hibernate is complete. You probably don't need it.

keyboard

To make some of the special keys work, I run a script at startup with these commands:

power conservation

FC3 isn't so smart about laptop power conservation. Running things like the prelink or slocate cron jobs while on battery is just bloody stupid. So I made a short script, onac, that I prepend to several cron jobs like so:

/usr/local/sbin/onac || exit 0

It just checks for presence of an AC adapter, and returns success if found. For one-liners, you could write "onac && do_something.sh".

More to come...