SuSE Linux 7.3 on Dell Latitude 610

Hardware

Dell Latitude 610 Laptop.

Graphic

ATI Mobility Radeon (M5), 16 MB Ram
Display: 1400 x 1050 pixels

Sound

Crystal 4205
AC-97 chip

Network

3Com PCI 3c905C Tornado
Fast Ethernet controller

Modem

3Com PCI (0x1007)
Unknown winmodem

Drives

Harddisc 30 GB
Modular CD-RW/DVD-Combo

Connected components

Fritz Card PCMCIA v2.0 (ISDN-Card)
Micronet SP3000U (USB analog modem)
Epson Stylus 880 (USB printer)
Ericsson T68 (IrDA Handy)

Installation

I used "Text mode", "Manual installation" and in Yast1 "Expert mode".
Don't select the PCMCIA packages. Install them later.

LILO

The kernel option "enableapic" let the system crash from time to time.
Using "disableapic" instead helps.

PCMCIA

My /etc/rc.config.d/pcmcia.rc.config looks like this:
PCMCIA_SYSTEM="external"
PCMCIA_PCIC=""
PCMCIA_PCIC_OPTS=""
PCMCIA_CORE_OPTS="probe_io=0" <- This is very important!

XFree86

I upgraded to version 4.2.0. Older versions may also work.
Simply use xf86config4 to configure /etc/X11/XF86config. Sax2 has crashed my laptop.
Choose "ATI rage 128 as your card.
The display related sections you can see below.

Section "Module"
    Load        "GLcore"
    Load        "dbe"
    Load        "dri"
    Load        "extmod"
    Load        "type1"
    Load        "freetype"
    Load        "glx"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
    Identifier  "LCD"
    HorizSync   30-90
    VertRefresh 50-60
EndSection
Section "Device"
    Identifier  "ATI Rage 128"
    Driver      "ati"
EndSection
Section "Screen"
    Identifier  "Screen 1"
    Device      "ATI Rage 128"
    Monitor     "LCD"
    DefaultDepth 16
    Subsection "Display"
        Depth       16
        Modes       "1400x1050"
        ViewPort    0 0
    EndSubsection
EndSection

Sound

Yast2 has found the sound chip and enabled it successfully.
The following modules are loaded by SuSE after sound setup:

Module                  Size  Used by
snd-pcm-oss            19328   0  (autoclean)
snd-pcm-plugin         14640   0  (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-mixer-oss           5344   1  (autoclean) [snd-pcm-oss]
snd-card-intel8x0       9008   1
snd-pcm                29984   0  [snd-pcm-oss snd-pcm-plugin snd-card-intel8x0]
snd-timer               8976   0  [snd-pcm]
snd-ac97-codec         23456   0  [snd-card-intel8x0]
snd-mixer              26912   0  [snd-mixer-oss snd-ac97-codec]
snd                    32592   1  [snd-pcm-oss snd-pcm-plugin snd-mixer-oss snd-card-intel8x0 snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec snd-mixer]
soundcore               3248   3  [snd]

Infrared port

My Handy communicates trough /dev/ircomm3. (Check the bios setup: IR enabled and on COM4)
The script in /etc/rc.d/irda needs the following modifications:
...
rc_reset
case "$1" in
    start)
        echo -n "Starting service IrDA"
        modprobe ircomm
        modprobe ircomm-tty
        ## Start daemon with startproc(8). If this fails
        ## the echo return value is set appropriate.
        startproc /usr/sbin/irattach ${IRDA_PORT} -s # >/dev/null
        # Remember status and be verbose
        rc_status -v
        ;;
    stop)
        echo -n "Shutting down service IrDA"
        ## Stop daemon with killproc(8) and if this fails
        ## set echo the echo return value.
        killproc -TERM /usr/sbin/irattach
        # Remember status and be verbose
        rmmod ircomm-tty && echo -e "\n Module ircomm-tty removed"
        rmmod ircomm && echo -e "\n Module ircomm removed"
        rc_status -v
        ;;
...
This loads and unloads the ircomm modules.
Sometimes, after a successfull connection,
the irda system needs a restart.

With the "ircp" command, i can copy vCards from and to my Ericsson Handy.
ircp is not on the SuSE CD's. You can get it here.

Drives tuning and burning CD's

/etc/lilo.conf

The CD-RW drive is on /dev/hdc; the kernel option "hdc=ide-scsi" is needed.
The append line looks now like: append = "hdc=ide-scsi disableapic"

/etc/rc.d/boot.local

The IDE controllers are running in 16 bit mode after installation.
hdparm -c 3 /dev/hda speeds up the hard drive.
Then load the ide-scsi driver: modprobe ide-scsi,
because the next line will fail if you don't do so.
hdparm -c 3 /dev/hdc speeds up the cd-rw drive.
Don't forget to edit /etc/fstab. Your cd-rw drive is now on /dev/sdc0.