Linux on a JVC Mobile mini note PC / MP-XP7210

The MP-XP7210 is a really neat computer with less than a kilo weight and the size of a A5-book. It comes equipped with lots of interfaces and a really pentium processor. it has a bright light display, power for 4 hours without ac-connection and standard hardware components which are mostly supported by linux.

The bad news: the notebook is much to expensive, it lacks legacy-interfaces (serial and parallel), it also lacks wireless connections (irda, bluetooth or wlan), the keyboard is very narrow and the display has a 134dpi (pay attention to this: 75dpi is normal, 100dpi is fine) resolution which really needs excelent eyes.

The other Model, the MP-XP3210 should work fine with my suggestions. i have no model to test this. This model is really affordable right now (about an Euro per gramm :-).

How to start?

If you want to install a linux kernel into the system you may wonder how to do that because the system lacks a floppy or cdrom. it can boot from network, usb-floppy or the harddisk. i recommend the way using the installed windows from the harddisk but will dokument a netboot setup soon. See fai for now.

the system comes with three partitions, one 2GB at the beginning of the harddisk for windows recovery. the second is about 22GB for programs and the last (about 5GB) for your data. this setup is a good idea for a windows installation because windows has to be reinstalled from time to time. the recovery-programm will install this setup always if you boot into the first (normaly hidden) partition (press alt-f8 while booting) and answer the questions.

with the installation described here you may keep the installed windows if you like. you should at least keep the first 2GB partition to revert the system to a normal state if you need to send the notebook to JVC in case of a warenty-defect.

if you installed linux you may no longer use the recovery-program for windows if you repartitioned the harddisk. it will repartition the harddisk as described.

• Boot into windows and connect to a Linux-Box with the install medium. Copy all needed files somewhere on the C:-disk.
• You need a kernel, a root-filesystem (rescue-disk for debian) and loadlin. you may also need fips, fdisk or any other partition editing tool. For debian you should copy base and drivers also.
• Reboot you machine and press Alt-F8 to get into the recovery-mode.
• Press Ctrl-C to interrupt the recovery and answer 'y' to the question if you like to end the batch-process.
• Copy the copied files from you C:-disk (now D:) to your current disk (now C:).
• Defrag and shrink the windows partition if you like.
• Boot into linux using loadlin.

  loadlin linux initrd=initrd.bin root=/dev/ram
  		

• Follow the installation-process of your distribution.

The Hardware

00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 630 Host (rev 31)
00:00.1 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev d0)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 85C503/5513
00:01.1 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 10/100 Ethernet (rev 82)
00:01.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (rev 07)
00:01.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 7001 (rev 07)
00:01.4 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS PCI Audio Accelerator (rev 02)
00:01.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 56k Winmodem (Smart Link HAMR5600 compatible) (rev a0)
00:02.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5591/5592 AGP
00:09.0 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 88)
00:09.1 CardBus bridge: Ricoh Co Ltd RL5c476 II (rev 88)
00:09.2 System peripheral: Ricoh Co Ltd: Unknown device 0576
00:0a.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments TSB43AB21 IEEE-1394 Controller (PHY/Link) 1394a-2000
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS630 GUI Accelerator+3D (rev 31)
		

Kernel

You should use a newer Kernel (i use 2.4.20) with acpi enabled and most of the stuff configured as modules as most distributions do today. i started with the standard debian config (kernel-image-2.4.20) and switched acpi on. See the diff on the right or get the whole .config here.

Important: Do not use the MP-XP with a non-acpi-kernel! APM is not supported by the notebook. I encountered lots of trouble with that.

CONFIG_ACPI=y
CONFIG_ACPI_DEBUG=y
CONFIG_ACPI_BUSMGR=m
CONFIG_ACPI_SYS=m
CONFIG_ACPI_CPU=m
CONFIG_ACPI_BUTTON=m
CONFIG_ACPI_AC=m
CONFIG_ACPI_EC=m
CONFIG_ACPI_CMBATT=m
CONFIG_ACPI_THERMAL=m
# CONFIG_APM is not set
CONFIG_SERIAL_ACPI=y
		

Modules

See the modules on the right. Nearly all the hardware is supported and works fine. If you look at the connectors clockwise:

• Power Managment
• Modem (get a driver from ftp://ftp.smlink.com/linux/unsupported/ or here slmdm-2.7.14.tar.gz, works fine.
• Ethernet Network works fine with kernel 2.4.20.
• VGA (use the newest drivers here, see X11-section)
• USB
• Sound
• Mouse (Standard PS/2 with 3 buttons! X-users will like it)
• single PCMCIA
• SD Card slot (Nothing done here, found no drivers found for that)
• Firewire (Modules load fine, i have no device to check)

I use the paket 'hotplug' now which loads most of the modules succesfully without user-invention.

# /etc/modules: kernel modules
#        to load at boot time.
#
# video
sisfb
sis
# networking
sis900
# sound
trident
# universal serial bus
usb-ohci
hid
# firewire
ohci1394
raw1394
# modem
slmdm
slamrmo
#acpi
ospm_busmgr
ospm_battery
ospm_ac_adapter
ospm_button
ospm_ec
ospm_thermal
ospm_system
ospm_processor
		

X11

The X11 stuff, or especially the sis driver comes from a guy in vienna who works hard on this (thanks alot to Thomas Winischhofer). you can download the new driver from http://www.winischhofer.net/ or from here sis_drv.o and copy it to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers. you may use my XF86Config-4.

The problem with X11 is the unusual resolution of 1024x600 (normal would be i.e. 1024x768 or 800x600). The driver lacks support for proper switching from internal to external display and different resolutions for external displays right now.

Section "Monitor"
	Identifier "LCD"
	VertRefresh 50-75
	HorizSync 30-90
	ModeLine "1024x600" 50 1024 1104 1176 1248 600 603 619 630
EndSection

Section "Device"
	Driver "sis"
	Identifier "SiS 630"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
	Identifier "SiSscreen"
	Device "SiS 630"
	Monitor "LCD"
	DefaultDepth 16
	SubSection "Display"
		Depth 16
		Modes "1024x600"
		#Virtual 1024 768
	EndSubSection
EndSection
		

Finally

Disclaimer