Toshiba Satellite A210 (701)

CPU

The A210 exhibits a dual-core Turion 64 X2 TL-62 running at 2100 MHz (200 x 10.5) and with a 512KB L2 cache for each core. For traditional processors, the multiplier is the value multiplied by the speed of the FSB to get the clock speed of the processor. Turion processors have a memory controller integrated on the CPU die, replacing the traditional concept of FSB. The multiplier here applies to the 200MHz system clock frequency, not the HyperTransport speed which is 800MHz.

• AMD Turion Architecture

Video Card

There's a dedicated utility for configuring the fglrx ATI driver called aticonfig. I was able to configure the card to accept the dual heads with the following command which generated an appropriate xorg.conf file.

aticonfig --initial=dual-head --screen-layout=above

To run a single monitor, use

aticonfig --dtop=clone

• Ubuntu Hardy Installation Guide
• fglrx wiki
• ATI BinaryDriverHowto
• Radeon xorg.conf options

Webcam

lsusb shows the webcam to be a Chicony. Some of the webcam programs are unable to communicate with it, but skype show that it's working fine. Xawtv and Cheese also work with it. Cheese is the better one as it integrates more nicely with GNOME.

USB Problem

I'm having major problems with USB. If a few devices are connected then after some minutes all of them will stop working (this is even without using a hub and just connecting to all available usb ports on the laptop). After they've stopped, the system will shutdown during bootup spontaneously (and not at exactly the same point during bootup) until all devices are removed (even monitor and LAN will need to be removed sometimes before it will boot). So far it has always succeeded in booting when there's nothing plugged in except power.

I don't know yet whether this is a hardware problem or a linux problem. First I'd like to see if Sven's behaves the same way in my set up. If not I'll have to reinstall it with vista and test it again then return the unit if still failing.

I'm now back on the old A10 lappie and nuking the A210 back to factory default system so I can test the USB's thoroughly. The last straw was when I tried to watch a movie and it was not able to render it smoothly, and about 5 minutes into it rebooted. I tried installing with an older version of Ubuntu 7.1 but it locked up during installation.

Benchmark

I haven't found a good simple program to give a simple whetstone result for the CPU(s) yet. But as a basic benchmark comparison I did a two-pass rip of a DVD vob to a 1GB xvid file using dvd::rip. It took a bout 5.5 hours on the A10 (2200MHz Celery with 400MHz FSB), and about two hours on the A210, which made it just under 3 times the speed. However, I didn't realise at the time that you need to set it to cluster-processing to use both cores, so actually it's about 5.5 times faster.

Windows Vista

I've had to reinstall the machine to factory defaults again by booting the recovery DVD's made after first boot. The discs don't contain any user information, the put it back to exactly the same state that it comes out of the box running an installer on first boot.

I've been extensively testing USB devices and they seem to be working without any problem (it's difficult to tell because vista is so unstable that it's intefering with my observations!).

Two of my drives may be full of windows virus's which may be why vista crashes when they're turned on. I've been running USB mouse and keyboard, one external drive and two memory sticks. I'm running in extended desktop and running video's off different devices onto both screens. It seems to be running smoothly and with good performance. So overall I'm pretty confident that the spontaneous shutdown's and USB problems are to do with Linux not with the hardware.

I'm downloading Ubuntu 7.10 i386 since this should be the most stable Linux option to try even if it won't perform quite as well.

Ubuntu 7.10 i386

I tried Debian and still the same trouble, so I'm assuming it's something to do with the Linux kernel, or at least a problem in common with all Debian-based distro's.

Installation

The first problem with the 7.10 installation is that the installation first boots in as a live CD to the desktop, then the installation application is launched from there. This is a problem because without the fglrx graphics driver, the desktop won't start. So at that point, hit CTRL+ALT+F1 and install the driver first with the following commands,

apt-get update
apt-get install xorg-driver-fglrx
depmod -a
aticonfig --initial=dual-head

After changing this, do CTRL+ALT+F7 and hit enter to get it to retry in two minutes. The display manager will try again eventually and should take you to the desktop. You can then run the installation application from the icon on the desktop.

On first boot of the installation, the same problem will occur so repeat the process. You'll need to log in after CTRL+ALT+F1 using the details you specified in the installation application. After logging in this is a good time to set up your root user with sudo passwd root. You don't need to wait for the window manager to retry after installing the driver (it may only retry during the installation boot anyway), just reboot and you should get in to the desktop of your newly installed 7.10.

A notification will come up saying restricted drivers available, enable the driver and reboot again. Now go through the normal Ubuntu update procedure to bring the system up to date.

USB problem

Unfortunately the USB problem is happening with 7.10 as well. It doesn't spontaneously shut down, but all devices stop working, and again it won't reboot until at least some are unplugged. The lsusb command shows that all the devices are present even when no longer responding. I should have tested it first with the LiveCD (doh!) because it even fails on that - but anyway if that had happened I would still have had to test if the updates fixed it so no time lost there. However, we now need to decide what we're going to do, because the laptop isn't very usable if it can't work with USB devices. At least 7.10 allows continued testing after things stop working, so maybe we can figure out what's going on. The next step may be to try a different Linux distribution like pure Debian or Mepis.

Video problem

Unfortunately after updating the system, the dual-monitors are no longer perfect. The xorg.conf file needed to be modified for it to boot (current version here), and even then there's a problem with the mouse pointer on the external monitor which makes it render as a large block of junk. I could not get the external monitor resolution to be correct in any configuration other than extended desktop, and the Screens and Graphics application no longer reflects the actual configuration.

• Unofficial Linux ATI driver wiki
• Setting up with aticonfig only
• Getting GL working properly with ATI

Audio problem

There's no audio available after the 7.10 installation, I haven't looked in to this yet.

See also

• Best distro for toshiba a210