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CompuLab (Fit-PC) Intense PC
Subsystem Tests

Jim Carter, 2012-03-16

Legend

Box Worked out of the box, i.e. after a clean installation.
Conf It needed editing a configuration file or running a setup GUI.
Add-On Needed additional or patched software: download it; follow instructions to compile and install it; it works.
Fiddle As with Add-On, but it required some workarounds in the procedure, which might seem minor to an experienced user but which might prevent a newbie from making it work.
Hack So you call yourself a guru? This one will challenge your skills. But this guru eventually got it working.
Fail I wasn't able to get this one to work, at least so far.
N.T. Not tested.
* I'm using some special security procedures, which needed to be modified for OpenSuSE 11.2. Before that was done, the console user's session was being registered incorrectly so it could not mount removable devices. Once that was fixed, items marked '*' functioned according to their color background.

Checklist of Features

Does it boot at all? Box
 Time, power button to greeter
 Time, greeter to desktop (XFCE)
 Time, desktop GUI to shutdown
OS Installation No prob
Processor (Intel i7-3517UE) Recognized
  Chipset (Intel Ivy Bridge) Recognized
Memory (8Gb) Recognized
Video (Intel HD 4000) Box
  2D graphics: Box
  3D graphics: ????
Hard disc (500Gb SATA) Box
  Seagate "Momentus" 500Gb 7200RPM SATA 3GHz. tr>Wired Ethernet (2x) Box
  IPv4 (dhcp) Box
  IPv6 (RFC 2462) Box tr>Wireless 802.11 Box
  We aren't planning to use 802.11 on this machine, but it was tested in the client role. tr>Bluetooth Box
  Tested with Bluetooth mouse (HID).
Sound
  Line In (not a mic)
  3.5mm stereo (front, hw:1,0) Conf
  HDMI audio (hw:0,3) Conf
  Needs radeon module parameter audio=1
USB Box
  4x USB-2 (front), 2x USB-2 (rear), 2x USB-3 (rear). All were tested and working, using the keyboard (low speed) and the external optical drive (high speed). I have no USB-3 client to test with.
RS-232 (mini connector) N.T.
-- These components are external USB: --
Optical disc
Flash card slot
-- Hardware Behaviors --
CPU speed modulation Conf
  In /etc/sysconfig/kernel MODULES_LOADED_AT_BOOT, specify powernow-k8 for the E-350 CPU. The default governor is ondemand, and the CPU frequency actually varies depending on the CPU load.
Random number generator Missing
  amd-rng does not load, saying no such device.
Suspend to RAM Update BIOS
  For s2ram you need --force, because the chipset is not recognized. The machine is shipped with a buggy BIOS and has a probability of about 20% of freezing when it wakes. Here is the BIOS update procedure. This done, suspend to RAM is reliable (20 times without failure). Surprisingly, there was never any problem with the video driver (fglrx or radeon). 1 sec to sleep, 2 secs to wake. Wake on LAN, or USB (keypress or mouse click), will wake it. Do not press the power button as you would on an Intel box; it will get very confused and thoroughly stuck.
Suspend to disc (hibernate) Box
  s2disk suspends with no problems (9 secs to sleep and 27 secs for the normal boot procedure diverted to image restoration). Tested 16 times with no failures, and considerable production service subsequently. It wakes on similar events as with suspend to RAM.
Wake on LAN Conf
  In BIOS setup you need to enable Wake on LAN. It will wake from suspend (S3 and S4), and from poweroff (S5) except not if power was lost (e.g. plug pulled) and restored. (Note, there is a BIOS setup option for what to do when power fails and resumes. I have it set to reboot, if it was running at the time of failure.)
Wake on USB Box
  It will wake from S3 or S4 when you press a key on the USB keyboard, or click the mouse. It will not wake from S5 though (duh). An optical mouse's lamp is off, so mouse motion does nothing, but clicking a button wakes the machine. Jimc recommends against this because it's unclear if the mouse event will be interpreted by the GUI. Similarly, use the shift or ctrl key, not Enter, to wake.

Software Tests

Hotplug
 USB flash memory stick
 Flash card slot
 Data CD (internal drive)
Web browser Chromium
 Linux: Browsertest, everyting works except it only plays Ogg multimedia formats. Need to re-test after installing movie codecs.
Play music from web Sort of
 Linux: Firefox can play Ogg using Xine, but other formats are done with the Totem plugin, which is far from an out of the box experience.
Download and read PDF evince
Instant message Pidgin
 You need to add your accounts, of course.
Speed benchmarks:
 Integer (ratio to Pentium III Coppermine 1.0GHz) 1.20
 Floating (matrix multiply, mflop/sec) 739
 Graphics 2D
 Graphics 3D
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