Details

It seems to be a special model. Concerning Siemens, the 360C only has a 12.1 inch TFT, but the one I got at Media Markt had the large screen of the 360P (wich has a PII Processor) :-)

Name	:	Siemens Scenic Mobile 360C
CPU	:	Celeron 300 (Mendocino)
RAM	:	64MB (up to 256MB)
HD	:	FUJITSU MHH2048AT, 4645MB w/512kB Cache, CHS=10068/15/63, (U)DMA
CDROM	:	CD-224E, ATAPI CDROM drive (24x)
Floppy	:	3.5 inch
Screen	:	13.3inch TFT (XGA 1024x768)
Graphics Chip	:	Silicon Motion SM 811, 2MB
Soundcard	:	Silicon Motion 1968SM
PCMCIA	:	Texas Instruments TI 1225
Modem	:	?? Softmodem ??
Touchpad	:	PS/2, 2-button
Battery	:	(intelligent) NiMH, 3.8Wh, ~2.5h
Conectors	:	PCMCIA 2xII / 1xIII USB IrDA Serial Parallel VGA extern PS/2 (Mouse/keyboard) Line-out, Mic-in
	:

Installation

Basic

I did not install Windows (I'm still in the process of getting refund for Windows98 - I did not agree to the EULA).

Meanwhile (My first letter was not answered, so I used the WWW-Form) Siemens contacted me. As could be expected, they refuse to pay refund for the unused Software (EULA saying is not valid for OEM versions - ha!). All they offered me was "to bring back Software AND computer and get your money back".
THANK YOU. I'll keep that in mind.

I installed SuSE 6.1. The System booted from CD without Problems. I repartitioned the disk for Linux-only use (as all of my Computers - so don't ask me questions how to use Win parallel to Linux. I just don't know).

Standard Installation was no problem at all.

Mouse

The Touchpad is a standard PS/2 device. Works flawlessly.
I got a mail from Geert Van der Plas telling about the release of gpm-1.18. New features include a driver for touchpads, and gpm is able to work as a repeater for the mouse device. I haven't yet found the time to try it out, but you can read his description.

Kernel

The standard SuSE Kernel did not include APM support. I downloaded the most recent kernel (2.2.11) and compiled one myself. Meanwhile I'm using 2.2.14 (see below). If you like, here's the configuration (copy to /usr/src/linux/.config).

The X Window System

Probably the most interesting point for most :-)

The Silicon Motion SM 811 is not supported by XFree86 < 3.3.6. It *might* work with Accelerated X (they claim to support the SM810), but I didn't spend the money on that.

The Silicon Motion Chips are supported by the most recent version 3.3.6 of XFree86. Use the SVGA driver (XF86_SVGA). If you already have installed version 3.3.x, all you need is to download the new server and put it into the correct place. My updated configuration file (XF86Config) now also contains a working entry for this new server.

For those who want to work with the frame buffer device, the old instruction page can be read here.

One more word: I got mail from people owning a (probably older?) version of the Mobile 360 with the 800x600 screen. They were experiencing problems and couldn't get the display to work with the SVGA server. The frame buffer server does work flawlessly.

PCMCIA

The version of pcmcia-cs supplied with SuSE 6.1 (3.0.9) did not recognize the PCMCIA-to-PCI chipset, but it worked nevertheless. As I had to recompile anyway (new kernel), I got the most recent version (pcmcia-cs-3.0.14). This one recognizes the Chip.

So far, I only use a network card (Accton EN2212), works without problems.

Sound

The sound chip gave me a bit more trouble. It is a PCI device, but it is not known to the kernel, the standard sound modules fail to work.

I downloaded the most recent version of ALSA, but that did not work, either. A question on the alsa user list, posting the contents of /proc/pci, gave (within 20 Minutes) the answer that the chip "looks like a ESS Maestro Chipset" and is indeed not supported by ALSA.

So I went to 4Front and got the latest evaluation version of their (commercial) OSS package. The installation went smooth and confirmed the previous information: It detects the card as an "ESS Maestro-2E PCI". Sound from the built-in speakers is not very great, especially when the battery pack is not inserted. Headphones are fine.

There is some ongoing work on the Maestro driver for OSS linux on

I just tested the driver from zab: Starting with version 0.07, it works for me, at least there is sound output. Mic does not work at the moment, maybe in a newer version?

As of Kernel Version 2.2.14, zab's driver is part of the standard kernel. Just select Maestro support when compiling your kernel. Now also the microphone works.

APM

Not yet sure about that. I compiled a kernel with APM support, but on first try nothing happened at all. I had set the BIOS to do APM only when in battery powered mode, but obviously that was only checked at boot time!? I booted with DC power, and nothing happened.
Addendum: Switching between DC and battery gives indeed some problems. E.g. the kernel does not recognize the battery if it is inserted after booting: It still says "capacity -1%". Don't know wether this is a kernel or a BIOS problem.

After changing the BIOS setting to always, screen and HD sleep seem to work, but poweroff on halt still doesn't.
OK, was my fault (sort of). At least under SuSE, you have to change the script /sbin/init.d/halt and include the "-p" option to the halt command (change line 15 to command="halt -p"). Now poweroff does work.

I don't know yet how to test the CPU slowdown mode...

Suspend to DRAM does work without problems (I installed apmd), System clock also gets reset after wake up. I did not install a disk partition for suspend to disk.

Attention!I do have alot of problems when the computer goes to suspend and a PCMCIA-Card (in my case a network card) is inserted! In this case, all effort to wake it up again are in vain. I have to power cycle. Don't know wether this is a problem of pc-cs or the hardware.

And one more thing: I often use the Laptop connected to the power line with the battery removed. In this case, apm reports AC off-line, in which case the script /usr/lib/cron/run-crons stops silently. I commented out the exit 0 in line 33 of that script.

Modem

The modem obviously is one of those Soft-Modems that use the soundcard. They don't work with Linux. But I don't need it, anyway. You may want to have a look at the Linmodem site from time to time, maybe support will show up at some point.

USB, IrDA

I have not yet looked into that...

Conclusion

It is not the best Choice for Linux, however it is almost exactly what I had in mind (no PII but large screen, 64MB, DM3500,-), it is nice-looking, very slim and reasonably light-weigth (2.9kg). I use it mainly for work, where I only need the screen and Ethernet connection.

So, in short, I am *very* happy with it!

Benchmarks

Meanwhile, I did some more testing on the performance. Probably some more to come - stay tuned :-)

Graphics

OK, I said the Frame Buffer X-Server does not *feel* slow. While that still is true (as it is not an objective measure...), it indeed *is* slow. I ran the xbench benchmark suite both for the FrameBuffer and the SVGA Server, and it gives the following results:

              FrameBuffer            SVGA

  TOTAL    317944 lineStones         439700 lineStones
  TOTAL      8896 fillStones         137936 fillStones
  TOTAL      2463 blitStones         125458 blitStones
  TOTAL   3328969 arcStones        22525223 arcStones
  TOTAL    197656 textStones        2867908 textStones
  TOTAL      8888 complexStones      274967 complexStones
  TOTAL      9455 xStones            272481 xStones

I think that convinces everyone to upgrade his XFree86...

Hard Disk

The Harddisk is pretty impressive, I must say. I did not yet try to optimize it with hdparm (and don't know wether it is possible). I ran bonnie with a 300MB file, here's what I got. Added below is also the output of hdparm -t and hdparm -T:

              -------Sequential Output-------- ---Sequential Input-- --Random--
              -Per Char- --Block--- -Rewrite-- -Per Char- --Block--- --Seeks---
Machine    MB K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU K/sec %CPU  /sec %CPU
          300  4293 92.7  8496 15.1  2873  9.0  3972 90.1  9762 10.6  52.8  0.7

 Timing buffered disk reads:  32 MB in  3.06 seconds =10.46 MB/sec
 Timing buffer-cache reads:   64 MB in  0.82 seconds =78.05 MB/sec

Kernel Compile

While not a real benchmark, it gives some hint on the overall system performance, especially as you can see in my config file what drivers were included. Kernel version was 2.2.11.

I did a time make depend clean zImage modules. Time for that was

  real    8m41.463s
  user    7m25.150s
  sys     0m35.620s

Misc

More information about Linux on notebooks in general you can find here:

If you are looking for information on the newer Model Siemens Scenic 510, have a look at the Page of Dusan Sloboda

Mail me if you have more questions or other comments on this page.

Letzte Änderung: Mittwoch, 13. Dezember 2000
[email protected]
www.astro.uu.nl/~suetter