Old laptop: Dell Inspiron 1521 with cryptic video card and mystic mic

Tomas · 2014-02-05 21:44:46

Dears,

I have a terrible "Kitchen computer" at my disposal from the time when Windows 7 Beta expiration date passed. The real issue is that the ATI card within this long survivor is not being supported/recognized:

lspci |grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RS690M [Radeon Xpress 1200/1250/1270]

I have up-to-date x86_64 archlinux system running LXDE:

pacman -Suy
:: Synchronizing package databases...
 core is up to date
 extra is up to date
 community is up to date
 multilib is up to date
:: Starting full system upgrade...
 there is nothing to do

uname -r
3.12.9-2-ARCH

It seems that even mesa-demos start to complain from within:

glxgears
r300 FP: Compiler Error:
Rewrite of inst 31 failed Can't allocate source for Inst 41 src_type=1 new_index=0 new_mask=4
Using a dummy shader instead.
r300 FP: Compiler Error:
Rewrite of inst 31 failed Can't allocate source for Inst 41 src_type=1 new_index=0 new_mask=4
Using a dummy shader instead.
687 frames in 5.0 seconds = 137.277 FPS
895 frames in 5.0 seconds = 178.832 FPS

Here's glxinfo vendor (just in case it makes sense to anyone):

glxinfo |grep vendor
server glx vendor string: SGI
client glx vendor string: Mesa Project and SGI
OpenGL vendor string: X.Org R300 Project

As far as I understand the GPU is just an electricity parasite on this motherboard.

In addition to the "working GPU", the integrated mic always has been too silent under any linux flavour. If I use it with skype, my mouth actually has to be not futher than few inches from the mic & camera (mic is near camera). However it used to work fine under Windows 7 Beta (as far as I remember). Also windows 7 beta used to be quite responsive (this could be biased - internet at that time used to be cleaner from EatCpuCycles pages.

So, still the laptop hasn't reached adolescence, I would still like to continue using it. The main purpose of it is to be "Kitchen computer". I use it to watch news (flash), read news (usually includes lot's of flash ads) or watch youtube (flash, flash, html5), radionylive music, other internet browsing purposes (wife usually use it for facebook/gmail checks and ends with tons of firefox tabs on - might need to see them later what has changed or to read/see again). Daughter use it just for youtube (with supervision). I know that hardware is old, but I think CPU is still capable for the purpose (until it get's too hot from flash/firefox and starts lagging every flash/browsing experience). Currently even XBMC is a NoNo for this laptop (unless ones brains are really slow to accept the speed of XBMC).

My questions to the respected public and experts in their field:

Should I keep dreaming on that this laptop is worth anything more than peppercorn?
Is this ATI capable to decode videos? Or is it just my immagination of the GPU being from the 21st century?
Is there anything I could do with archlinux to make this laptop being decent and responsive?
Is it time to do shopping to get brand new/shiny (this time Intel i3/i5/i7 powered with Intel GPU) laptop? (The discussion of "which laptop" is out of scope for this topic)
I have some doubts about that, but currently I think this machine could be used as a stand to put the flowers abit higher on the windowsill or as worm/hot mattress for a cat

p.s. my biggest expectations would be to see GPU able to do video decoding... At least like Mini 311c with Nvidia ION LE "Wife's mini" able to decode 1080p youtube flash without a problem without overclocking, under archlinux...

Thank you in advance for your thoughts, suggestions,jokes and memos.

Inxsible · 2014-02-05 22:56:02

I have a machine that is older than yours and I still use Arch on it. I have a Dell Latitude C810 with Pentium 3, 256 MB RAM. Nvidia GeForce 2 GPU and 30 GB HDD. The CD Drive got shot so I have to use a combination of floppy and usb to install Arch on it since the bios doesn't support usb booting. It has a grand total of 1 usb port too. It is my testing system and I currently am trying out btrfs on it before I decide to put it on my main machine.

So with enough tweaking, I am sure your computer can be more than a flower pot stand, unless of course the hardware is shot !

YCH · 2014-02-06 10:54:51

Inspiron 1501 here,

System:    Host: ych Kernel: 3.10.27-1-MANJARO x86_64 (64 bit, gcc: 4.8.2) 
           Desktop: Openbox 3.5.2 Distro: ManjaroLinux 0.8.9rc1 Ascella
Machine:   System: Dell product: Inspiron 1501
           Mobo: Dell model: AUE731 Bios: Dell version: 2.6.3 date: 12/07/2007
CPU:       Dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 TK-53 (-MCP-) cache: 512 KB flags: (lm nx sse sse2 sse3 svm) bmips: 3199.82 
           Clock Speeds: 1: 800.00 MHz 2: 800.00 MHz
Graphics:  Card: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD/ATI] RS482M [Mobility Radeon Xpress 200] bus-ID: 01:05.0 
           X.Org: 1.15.0 driver: radeon Resolution: 1280x800@61.0hz 
           GLX Renderer: Gallium 0.4 on ATI RS480 GLX Version: 2.1 Mesa 10.0.2 Direct Rendering: Yes
Network:   Card-1: Broadcom BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX driver: b44 ver: 2.0 bus-ID: 08:00.0
           IF: eth0 state: down mac: 00:1c:23:81:e9:fa
           Card-2: Broadcom BCM4311 802.11a/b/g driver: b43-pci-bridge bus-ID: 05:00.0
           IF: wlan0 state: up mac: 00:19:7e:c3:d5:37
Drives:    HDD Total Size: 60.0GB (86.6% used) 1: model: OCZ 
Info:      Processes: 134 Uptime: 1 day Memory: 733.4/871.1MB Gcc sys: 4.8.2 Client: Shell (sh) inxi: 1.9.18

First of all I should say about this. I’m not gonna buy ATI GPU for linux machine again in my life. Maybe my child could buy one if they are working well with kernel team in the future. I have another ATI GPU in my desktop(HD 5770). Working good but always one step behind compare than Intel, Nvidia.

Maybe that is why they were cheap when I’m buying one.

Anyway, it’s quite capable with few exception. Most big problem is there is no 3D and power management(dynamic clock) capable driver. AMD officially abandoned this chip. It works well with open source radeon driver if you are not using 3D. Power management thing is also matter. Laptop temperature could be high by this problem. It can make fan speed always high and crazy loud.

Radeon wiki page explains how forcefully set clock low. I’m currently using low profile.

➜ ~  sudo cat /sys/kernel/debug/dri/0/radeon_pm_info
default engine clock: 400000 kHz
current engine clock: 100240 kHz
default memory clock: 200000 kHz

I’d changed default HDD to 60GB SSD. It definitely help to get usable performance. Without SSD, I maybe abandoned this laptop. Here is some check list,

Don’t do 3D thing.
Don’t use 3D compositor based DE. GNOME 3, Unity, KDE 4, Cinammon
Choose light WM. I’ve tried XMonad, AwesomeWM, Openbox, XFCE. All of them working decently.
Make swap sufficiently. Mine is 2GB
Don’ open many tabs in browser.
Use ADBlock or whatever block aggressively.
Don’t do serious thing with flash. 480p or 720p flash videos are working but fan speed would get crazy.
Video decoding. Plain mpv(mplayer) working good with 4~5GB 720p HD video. Sure, fan speed at top. I just use earphone.

I’m currently using openbox, tint2 panel at left edge. Quite usable. But first and foremost, you need SSD :-).

Last edited by YCH (2014-02-06 10:56:43)

vorbote · 2014-02-15 13:29:37

Tomas wrote:

Dears,
I have a terrible "Kitchen computer" at my disposal from the time when Windows 7 Beta expiration date passed. The real issue is that the ATI card within this long survivor is not being supported/recognized:
lspci |grep VGA
01:05.0 VGA compatible controller: Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. [AMD/ATI] RS690M [Radeon Xpress 1200/1250/1270]
[...]

I have this nagging feeling in the back of my head: Are you trying to use a Catalyst driver? If so, it won't work. At all. Instead use the X.org driver, it is decent these days. If not, you may be hitting a problem the radeon driver has with older laptops, because it enables PCIe-2.0 by default and your laptop doesn't support it. See <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AT … _PCI-E_2.0>. Setting the GART size may help too <https://wiki.archlinux.org/index.php/AT … nce_tuning>.

On your other questions... Yes, I think it is time to buy something more powerful, but don't throw this laptop away, it still has a lot of life in it even if it is running some sort of (God forbid!) BSD.

Last edited by vorbote (2014-02-15 13:37:15)

Arch Linux

#1 2014-02-05 21:44:46

Old laptop: Dell Inspiron 1521 with cryptic video card and mystic mic

#2 2014-02-05 22:56:02

Re: Old laptop: Dell Inspiron 1521 with cryptic video card and mystic mic

#3 2014-02-06 10:54:51

Re: Old laptop: Dell Inspiron 1521 with cryptic video card and mystic mic

#4 2014-02-15 13:29:37

Re: Old laptop: Dell Inspiron 1521 with cryptic video card and mystic mic

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