Dell laptops

[Daniel Eischen]

On Wed, 12 Jul 2006, David Gilbert wrote:

>>>>>> "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).

I didn't make the mistake of getting a system with an nvidia chip ;-)
It's an Intel 945 of some sort and I don't have X set up on it yet,
so it's strictly console right now.

-- 
DE