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Digimate M4522
Author(s)
Darren Hatherley
Introduction
This is a guide to running Linux with the Digimate M4522 laptop. The M4522 is believed to be out of manufacture now, but there are probably a few floating around on the second-hand market. Despite the lack of built-in wireless networking, this laptop was useful for Linux users as it could easily be bought without an operating system installed (and therefore at a cost that did not include a wasted operating system license fee).
This guide is intended to provide you details on how well this laptop works with Linux and which modules you need to configure. For details on how to actually install and configure the required modules have a look at our guides section for distribution specific instructions.
Editing This Page
Feel free to edit this page if you have further information or corrections to add, or send an e-mail to admin@linlap.com if you don't know how to/can't be bothered editing this page.
Specifications
| Name | Digimate M4522 |
| Processor | Pentium4 2.2GHz - Processor can, according to dmidecode, run up to 2.8GHz |
| Screen | 14in, 1024×768 |
| RAM | 512MB |
| HDD | 40GB |
| Optical Drive | Combo DVD/CDRW |
| Graphics | ATI 340M |
| Network | RealTec 8139 Fast Ethernet |
| Other | 3xUSB2, 1xFirewire, 1xSerial, 1xParallel, 1xVGA, 1xPCMCIA Type2, 1x S-Video out, 56k Modem |
Linux Compatibility
| Device | Compatibility | Comments |
|---|---|---|
| Processor | OK | |
| Screen | OK | |
| Optical Drive | OK | Reads and writes fine, plays video DVDs |
| Graphics | OK | Uses xorg ati driver; with DRI runs Quake 2 and 3 at a push |
| Sound | OK | us snd_ali5451 |
| Ethernet | OK | use 8139too |
| Wireless | N/A | PCMCIA or MiniPCI card required |
| Bluetooth | N/A | |
| 56K Modem | Untested | ALi M5457 modem |
| Fringerprint Reader | N/A | |
| USB | OK | |
| Firewire | Untested | |
| Card Reader | N/A | |
| PCMCIA | OK | Wireless card recognised but rt61 driver crashes regularly |
Notes
Getting (K)ubuntu working on this laptop was a breeze. Everything worked straight from the install. The DRI must be enabled in the xorg.conf file to get 3D accelleration; this is, however, far from essential to get the laptop working.
There's a slight anomaly with the keyboard: the key marked with the pipe and backslash symbols does not work as indicated with any keymap I've thrown at it. The pipe and backslash characters can be set up using keyboard shortcuts in KDE (and probably GNOME too), but they will not be available in a non-X session. This is only a big issue for those who regularly work on the command line.
Summary
Until I managed to smash the screen, I was very happy with the performance of this laptop. The battery could do with running a little longer, and suspend-to-RAM didn't really work properly (I would suggest only using the suspend-to-disk mode), but I'm not sure if this is a general problem with the ACPI standard. The graphics chipset is not particularly appropriate for running 3D applications on linux, but that's rarely a priority for laptops.
Discussion