Dell laptops

[David Gilbert]

>>>>> "Daniel" == Daniel Eischen <deischen at freebsd.org> writes:

Daniel> On Tue, 11 Jul 2006, M. Warner Losh wrote:
>> Greetings,
>> 
>> What are the current problems, if any, on current Dell laptops have
>> with FreeBSD?

Daniel> Yeah, thanks for asking!  My Inspiron E1405 came with an Intel
Daniel> 3945 A/B/G mini-PCI wireless that isn't supported (OpenBSD has
Daniel> a seemingly actively maintained wpi driver for this card, and
Daniel> I have an experimental FreeBSD driver from damien that I
Daniel> haven't yet been able to get to work).  I've ordered an
Daniel> Atheros-based mini-PCI in the meantime, and can lend out the
Daniel> 3945 to anyone willing to work on it.

Daniel> Also, the Fn (the blue key) can't be used to suspend, control
Daniel> volume, switch CRT/LCD, etc, and most importantly enable the
Daniel> radio on the wireless card (Fn + F2).  Even if the wpi driver
Daniel> works, it's worthless if I can't enable the radio.

My XPS-170 came with a 2915 a/b/g, and the iwi driver works fine.  The
function key switch also works --- but it's operation is somewhat
acpi-related, I believe.  The screen switching function stopped
working for me with the latest update to the nvidia driver (try it on
the console --- if it works there, it's the nvidia driver).

Dave.

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|David Gilbert, Independent Contractor.       | Two things can be          |
|Mail:       dave at daveg.ca                    |  equal if and only if they |
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