Lifebook P7120

The proliferation of electronic gadgets doesn't necessarily increase the opportunities for learning, it simply increases the opportunity to present information in a variety of ways.
Simon Gipson

Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook P7120

Datasheet

Hardware Support Chipset Note
Board Yes Intel 915GMS
Processor Yes Intel Pentium M 753 Ultra-Low Voltage @1.2GHz
Memory Yes DDR2-400MHz SDRAM 512MB (x2)
Hard-disk Yes 60GB P-ATA UDMA100 4200 rpm Toshiba MK6006GAH
DVD-ROM Yes Matshita DVD 24x UJ-832S (1.01)
Touchpad Yes Synaptics SynPS/2
LCD Display Yes 10.6" TFT XGA, CrystalView, 1280x768
Video Yes Intel 915GM Express Graphic (Dual-head) Needs 915Resolution for 1280x768
Sound Yes HDA Intel (RealTek ALC260)
Ethernet Yes 10/100Mbps (Chipset Realtek RT8139)
Wireless Yes Intel Corp. PRO/Wireless 2915ABG Needs up-to-date ipw2200 firmware
Bluetooth Yes Alps Electric UGTZ4
Modem Yes 56K V.90 MDC 1.5 (Chipset ?) Didn't try by myself
but go to Joey Hess page
USB Yes Intel 82801FBM (ICH6 Family) UHCI
Multi-Card Reader Partial Ricoh R5C822/R5C592/xD-Picture (SD/SDIO/MMC/MS/MSPro)
(driver: sdhci)
SD-Cards: ok,
MemorySticks: not ok
Firewire Yes Ricoh IEEE 1394 R5C552
Fingerprints Scanner No Authentec AES2501B (?) See: VeriFinger Fingerprint Identification SDK
TPM Partial Infineon (tpm_infineon) See: Linux Device Driver for Infineon TPM

Scans & Probes

Results of usual scans and probes of the hardware:

Installing Debian

Installing Debian from a recent version of the Debian installer should work out-of-the-box.

If you try to install an old version of Debian, you might hit problems because of some problems in the S-ATA driver, the old default Debian kernel doesn't work properly. As long as the BIOS is in charge of the DVD-ROM reader everything is fine but when it's up to the OS to handle it everything is going down (note that a Fedora or a Mandriva will not have this problem).

I performed the network installation booting on a USB stick. Here are the steps to follow:

  1. Download the following files:

    Note: If you don't have room enough on your stick better get debian-testing-i386-businesscard.iso.

  2. Plug the stick and do: zcat boot.img.gz > /dev/sda
  3. Mount the stick and copy the ISO image (netboot or businesscard) on it.
  4. Set your BIOS to boot on the Stick
  5. Boot... here you go !

Compiling the kernel

Download the last 2.6.x kernel (at least a 2.6.22) on www.kernel.org. And the last version of the ipw2200 firmware. Compile the kernel with this .config and install the firmware.

CPU Scaling

Use the cpufreqd package with the following /etc/cpufreqd.conf file. You might need to load the module through /etc/modules (just add a line with speedstep-centrino).

Hard-drive

Unless some strange manipulations the hard-drive is located in /dev/hda.

Hard-drive specifications & capabilities

Performances (hdparm -tT)

/dev/hda:
 Timing cached reads:   2804 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1403.04 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:   64 MB in  3.07 seconds =  20.85 MB/sec

DVD-drive

Unless some strange manipulations the DVD-drive is located in /dev/scd0.

/proc/scsi/scsi

Attached devices:
Host: scsi0 Channel: 00 Id: 00 Lun: 00
  Vendor: MATSHITA Model: DVD-RAM UJ-832S  Rev: 1.01
  Type:   CD-ROM                           ANSI SCSI revision: 05

Capabilities

It seems to have the following capabilities:

Performances (hdparm -tT)

/dev/scd0:
 Timing cached reads:   2752 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1377.20 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:    2 MB in  3.90 seconds = 525.66 kB/sec

Network

Two network interfaces should appear:

The bluetooth works out-of-the-box. Just install the package bluetooth and try it.

Automatic network detection

I use Network-manager with success in combination with its Gnome applet, it's working nicely.

Kismet

To have Kismet working, just install the kismet package and modify /etc/kismet/kismet.conf to specify the source in the following way: source=ipw2200,wifi0,ATHEROS.

Xorg Server

Here is my xorg.conf file.

915Resolution

Install the package 915resolution or get it from the official website. Set /etc/default/915resolution as follow:

# 915resolution default
MODE=4d
# Resolutions for the mode
XRESO=1280
YRESO=768

And in /etc/X11/xorg.conf set the resolution as: Modes "1280x768".

Suspend-to-RAM & Suspend-to-Disk

Both should run almost out-of-the-box with the package 'hibernate. Just take care to uncomment the line about i915Resolution and Netwrok-manager in /etc/hibernate/common.conf.

Hotkeys

The special keys should be working on any recent Gnome-desktop (Raise-Sound, Lower-Sound, Mute-Sound, Raise-Brigthness, Lower-Brightness).

Remark about the 'ECO' Key

For now, I didn't manage to catch any signal coming from this key. I'm suspecting the BIOS to catch it (as for the brightness control).

TODO list

  1. Authentec AES2501B Fingerprint Scanner (see this news and checkout the VeriFinger SDK). I should also try this.
  2. TPM Infineon support (status)

Other Pages about the Lifebook P7120

Bugs, Wishes & Improvements

If you found this page helpful and/or if you have ideas to improve it, just feel free to contact me.