MSI_Wind

This article is part of the Hardware series.

Laptops • TV Tuner Cards • Wireless • Servers • Storage • Other Hardware • Motherboards • Related

1 Hardware
2 Hardware Status Overview
3 Kernel
- 3.1 SATA
- 3.2 Sound
4 Miscellaneous
5 Troubleshooting
- 5.1 Detection problems
  - 5.1.1 Ethernet
  - 5.1.2 Keyboard/touchpad
- 5.2 Graphics

Hardware

Processor: Intel Atom N270
Southbridge: Intel 82801GBM ICH7 Mobile (ICH7-M)
Northbridge: Intel 945 GMS
HDD: Western Digital Scorpio Blue (SATA)
Screen: 10.2" 1024x600 
GPU: Intel 950 GMA
APU: Realtek ALC 888S
Webcam: Sonix Technology , USB 2.0 Camera
Ethernet: Realtek RTL8101E
Wifi: Realtek RTL8187SE
Bluetooth: Micro Star International, USB Bluetooth
Card Reader: Realtek USB2.0-CRW (SD/MMC/MS/SDHC)

dmesg lspci lsusb

Hardware Status Overview

	Device	Working	Driver	Comments
Processor	Processor			The Atom N270 is a 32bit processor with Hyper-Threading
Drives and Storage	Hard Drive		ahci	Use `hdparm -B 254 /dev/sda` to stop the clicking noise
	Card Reader		usb-storage	scsi emulation, works fine
USB	USB		uhci, ehci
Graphics	Intel		i915, intel	2D works, 3D needs tweaking
Input Devices	Keyboard		keyboard	Detection problem
	Touchpad		synaptics or mouse	Detection problem, Touchpad manufacturer differing between batches
	Functions Keys			Not all keys are configurable
Multimedia	Webcam		uvcvideo	Works with v4l2
Networking	Ethernet		r8169	Detection problem
	Wireless		modified r8180	Experimental but works, see RTL8187SE
	Bluetooth			Works without issues
Sound	Sound		snd_intel_hda
Sensors	Hardware Sensors			Only the CPU thermal zone seems to be present
Power Management	ACPI
	Suspend to RAM			Works with pm-suspend, kernel panics with /sys/power/state
	Suspend to Disk

Kernel

SATA

Note: You need to activate the AHCI in the BIOS.

You don't need the IDE driver, nor any SATA chipset driver, just the SATA AHCI driver.

Linux Kernel Configuration:

  Device Drivers  --->
     < > ATA/ATAPI/MFM/RLL support  --->
     <*> Serial ATA (prod) and Parallel ATA (experimental) drivers  --->
        [*]   ATA ACPI Support
        <*>   AHCI SATA support

Sound

The Realtek ALC 888S works fine with the Intel HDA driver

Linux Kernel Configuration:

  Device Drivers  --->
     Sound  --->
        Advanced Linux Sound Architecture  --->
           PCI devices  --->
              <*> Intel HD Audio 
              [*]   Build hwdep interface for HD-audio driver 
              [*]   Build Realtek HD-audio codec support   
              [ ]   ...
              [*]   Enable generic HD-audio codec parser             
              [*]   Aggressive power-saving on HD-audio             
              (60)    Default time-out for HD-audio power-save mode

Miscellaneous

BIOS Update

Check out this howto to create a USB flash drive with FreeDOS.

Get the BIOS update from MSI, unzip it and copy the directory to the flash drive. Boot, change to c:\ and then to the directory and run the .bat .

Warning: You NEED to have the AC Adapter pluged in, or the updater will refuse to work.

Note: To boot on the USB flash drive you need to activate the "USB legacy mode" and/or force HDD-Drive for the USB in the BIOS .

Note: If your keyboard freezes after the update, don't panic, just remove the battery for 10s and it should work again.

Function Keys

It seems to depend on the BIOS revision, see the talk page

Fn+F2 : no effect, ACPI event "video IGD"
Fn+F3/F6/F11 : hardware, work as expected
Fn+F4/F5 : hardware, you need to press them 1-2s to change the brightness by 1/8 , also generate ACPI event "video LCD", and generates an "Unknown key pressed"
Fn+F10 : dead key
Fn+F12 : ACPI event "button/sleep SLPB" (you might need a BIOS update for it to work)
Fn+F7/F8/F9 don't work but can be reprogrammed with xmodmap (see below)

File: ~/.xmodmaprc

 ! F7 F8 F9
 keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
 keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
 keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute

Note: You don't need xmodmap if you use evdev, the extra keys are automatically assigned

Webcam

Note: Don't forget to activate the webcam with Fn+F6

It works with mplayer and v4l2, but it doesn't seem to work with v4l1. The LED left of the webcam is lit when the webcam is capturing (as it should).

$ mplayer -fps 15 tv:// -tv driver=v4l2:device=/dev/v4l/video0

Note: Make sure you have the v4l2 useflag for mplayer

It should work with other applications as long as they use v4l2. It was reported to work with Skype.

Troubleshooting

Detection problems

Ethernet

If your ethernet connection doesn't work, try compiling the driver as a module.

Keyboard/touchpad

If the synaptics touchpad and/or the keyboard sporadically don't work after booting, add 'i8042.reset' as kernel parameter.

Graphics

The DRI (accelerated 3D) from the stable portage tree doesn't work, you need to use the testing version of media-libs/mesa, x11-drivers/xf86-video-i810, and packages related to those two (emerge will tell you which).

If you don't need accelerated 3D, the stable version will work just fine.

Sample xorg.conf

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