Home |
xS+S Info |
Produkte |
System Info |
Linux Info |
Verschiedenes
Notebook Hardware Available From Asus
latest modification: Sept, 19th. 1999 by Christian
Czezatke
General Information
All Asus notebooks feature a modular design that should make it easy to
upgrade the notebook in the future or to swap a defective component without
having to replace the entire unit. Technically speaking, the notebook
consists of the following pieces:
-
The main board
-
A separate module holding the graphics hardware
-
An intel mobile module CPU. This is a small daughtercard on which the CPU
and parts of the chipset are mounted. By upgrading the mobile module, you
are able to turn an Asus notebook with a Pentium 200, for example into
a PentiumII 233.
Furthermore, all Asus notebooks feature the following characteristics:
-
Built--in 16bit Stereo Sound System (based on the Yamaha OPL SAx or the
Ensonic Maestro chip)
-
2 CardBus slots
-
Win95 auto tilt-up keyboard
-
Touchpad
-
CD-ROM/Floppy
-
lots of interfaces, such as: IrDA, USB, 3.5mm audio jacks, serial, parallel
port, VGA and SVHS connectors.
-
large Li-Ion battery (The documentation mentions NiMh batteries too, but
it seems they've never shipped...)
Because of the fact that the Asus notebooks have a rather large battery,
the CD-ROM and the floppy disk cannot both be mounted in the notebook at
the same time. If you need both, CD-ROM and floppy simulatnuously (like
when installing Linux from CD-ROM), you have to use a separate cable that
comes with the notebook to connect the floppy to the parallel port (works
flawlessly under Linux too).
Model-Specific Information
Currently, there are three different familys of Asus notebooks available.
The main difference between these three models seems to be the size of
the TFT display. Due to the modular design of these notebooks, all other
components can be found in any Asus notebook.
Asus F7400 Series Notebooks
Mariking the current "high end" of the Asus notebook family, this model
features 14.1" TFT LCD Display.
Asus P6300 Series Notebooks
The P6300 has been the first notebook from Asus to appear on the market.
It is also sold under serveral other brands. Being the Asus "middle-class
notebook" it features a 13.3" TFT Display with a resolution of 1024x768
and 64k colors. This is also the kind of Asus notebook that I own, BTW
(so I have to rely on other sources of information about the other Asus
notebooks.
Asus L7xxx Series Notebooks
The entry level Asus notebooks feature a 12.2" TFT display with a resolution
of 800x600 pixels.
Hardware Characteristics
Since the Asus notebooks are quite modular in design, you can get any combination
of the following hardware components. Regardless of the combination in
your notebook, you should always be able to get Linux running in textmode.
However, when you're planning to use X11 or the audio hardware of your
notebook, you need to watch out a bit:
Graphics Adapter
-
Neomagic MagicGraph 128XD
State of support under Linux: Excellent
This is quite a common graphic chip in notebooks. It comes with 2MB
of EDO RAM, so it will be able to do resolutions of up to 1024x768 at 16bpp.
This chip is supported by the standard XFree SVGA server since the
3.3.3.1 release.
-
ATI Rage Pro LT
State of support under Linux: Very Good
Again this is quite a common graphic chip for notebooks. There have
been problems with XFree running on this graphics chip for quite a while,
but the Mach64 server from new 3.3.5 release of XFree86 is reported to
work quite well with this chip (and makes use of its hardware acceleration
features).
-
Silicon Motion SMI 910
State of support under Linux: Weak
Currently, this chip is neither supported by XFree nor by any other
commercial X-Server i know of that supports this card natively. However,
running XFree on this graphic chip is still possible, but you cannot use
any hardware acceleration features this chip offers.
Recommendation:
Get an Asus notebook with either the Neomagic or the ATI Rage Pro LT
chip if you intend to run Linux on your notebook.
Audio Hardware
-
Yamaha OPL SAx
State of support under Linux: Weak
Up to now, I have only managed to get audio output working on this
device, but audio input sounds rather distorted...
-
ESS Maestro (1978)
State of support under Linux: Even Weaker, But Improving... ;-)
Currently, there is a beta driver for this audio chip included in the
2.2.x Linux kernel series. If have received some reports of how to set
up audio under Linux for this chips, but things seem to be changing fast
as the Linux driver for this chip matures...
Recommendation:
Currently, the Yamaha is probably the better choice for Linux. But
driver for the ESS Majestro is currently under active development...
Ohter Hardware Components:
PCMCIA/Cardbus support should work fine on all Asus notebooks. This is
also true for accessing the floppy (even when it is connected to the parallel
port), and the CD-ROM (standard IDE CD-ROM). IrDA is currently untested
(I have only one device with an IrDA interface, so I cannot test it...).
If you have information on how to get IrDA up and running on the Asus notebook,
please let me know.
USB support is still under development under Linux in general, so USB
is not available under Linux right now. However, all other interfaces the
notbook has should work fine under Linux, too.
More Information on Asus Notebooks
If you have more information on Asus notebook hardware, please let me
know. For more detailed information on the notebook's hardware features
have a look at one of the following sites:
Back to main page
Comments to
webmaster@xss.co.at
This page was last modified at October 9th, 1999.
Linux is a registered trademark of Linus Torvalds.
|
|