Specs
I ordered my M6N
from Powernotebooks. I
ordered my laptop with a 1.4GHZ Pentium M processor. I specifically
ordered with the lowest processor speed(i.e. the cheapest) because I am
anticipating upgrading the machine to a Dothan processor when they
become available. I ordered with the 60GB 5400rpm hard drive. The
machine includes a DVD-rom with CDR. I decided to go with 1GB of RAM.
The video card is the Radeon 9600 Mobile with 64M of RAM. The machine
includes a built-in modem and 10/100/1000 network card. It also
includes a Memory Card Reader, a IEEE 1394 port, and 4 USB 2.0 ports. I
ordered with the 15.4" WXGA (1280 x 800) TFT Active Matrix display. I
aslo include the Intel Pro/Wireless 2200BG LAN card.
Windows XP
I ordered my laptop without any operating system because I was planning
to install Windows XP and some version of Linux. The first thing I did
was install XP. During the install of XP I chose to split the drive in
half(approximately), 30GB for XP and 30GB for Linux. XP installed
without problem. I then used the Asus disk to install the necessary
drivers which XP did not discover. I also installed any utility
software from Asus. What I should have done at this point was go to the
Asus site and check for any updates before installing things from the
disk. Because I ended up not having some things work properly and that
was fixed by uninstalling what I had, then installing the latest
version from the Asus site. My machine came with a CD from Intel that
included the wireless drivers. Thus far I have everything worked in XP,
including all of the hotkey buttons and LED lights.
Linux
I probably would have went with Suse 9.1 if it was available, but it
isn't at this time. Instead I decided to go with Fedora Core1. My first attempt to
boot off the cd failed. I assumed that the install was attempting to
find my video settings and decided to retry with a text only install.
But I ran into the same problem. My machine came with the 0205A so I
upgraded to 0206A, but that didn't work either. Eventually I booted
with the "nofb"
option and was able to get the install working. The install did not
have the video card I had so I went with the standard LCD. I did get a
display, but it was not very pretty. After messing around a bit I
decided to download the ATI drivers from here.
I then got the display working very well at 1280x800.
At this point my touchpad was not working correctly. I couldn't get it
to move outside of the lower left corner of the screen. Then I plugged
in my USB mouse but that wasn't working either. Eventually I figured
out that the problem was in my XF86Config. I wanted to get both my
touchpad and USB mouse to work. First I download the synaptics driver
from here.
This made my touch pad work. And I especially like the way it is
scrollable on the right side. A quick view into my modules.conf file
showed that my usb modules were loading. lsmod then confirmed this. The
only change necessary was in my XF86Config-4 file. Here is my XF86Config-4 file.
With my mice and display working well I moved on to see what else was
working. The network card worked fine with the tg3 module. I did not
test the modem because I do not need to use it. The WLAN card does not
work out of the box and I have yet to try any of the options available
because I don't need wireless at this time.
Overrall I'm pretty happy with the setup. I want to get the wireless
setup working though. I plan to make some attempts in the near future
so check back here for updates.
Jason at logicalmind.net