Fujitsu Siemens E5600 - any known issues?

I've been offered the above PC with an AMD Athlon 939 3500+ CPU. It has onboard graphics using the SiS761 chipset. I'm unable to test the PC before purchasing, so am wondering if there are any known issues before I part with my hard-earned?

More info:

uk.ts.fujitsu.com/rl/servicesupport/tech...o/e/esprimoe5600.htm

uk.ts.fujitsu.com/rl/servicesupport/tech...itsu/D2264/D2264.htm

I took the plunge and bought the E5600. I have installed Debian Wheezy, Seb's 3.4.55 rtai kernel and LinuxCNC. Latency looks pretty decent, however the graphics resolution is poor. I *think* it is using the Vesa driver (lspci -vv doesn't show which driver is in use) and I've had to select 800x600 resolution because the display is partially off screen using the only 2 higher options of 960x600 or 960x540.

Has anyone had previous experience with this hardware? How can I get a better resolution such as 1024x760 or higher?

EDIT:
As Sod's law goes...I just found a solution right after posting this question! For future reference:

1. reboot into recovery console
2. enter root password
3. X -configure
4. cp xorg.conf.new /etc/X11/xorg.conf
5. reboot

Display is now automagically 1024x760. Strange that Debian didn't do this when I installed though...

Hi

You should be using the driver from the xserver-xorg-video-sis package, assuming your card was detected properly at boot.
If you look through dmesg it will show what was detected and the video modes allegedly supported by the monitor.

If it an older monitor, it can give problems, I used to have all sorts of problems with this monitor until I switched to running on HDMI all the time.
Even though it is a new high spec monitor, Ubuntu 12.04 completely failed to recognise it on VGA and dumped down to 1024x768, which looks pretty stupid on a 24" monitor.

I have only ever run it on HDMI under Wheezy and it picked it up straight away with both the on board Intel chipset and later with a nvidia GPU

If it is an AGP or PCI card, looks like you can use your overflowing spares box to see if one of the other cards works better!

regards

Hello my friend!

Yeah, I noticed yesterday that Synaptic is showing that xserver-xorg-video-sis is installed, but the auto-generated xorg.conf is using the Vesa driver. I have no idea why Debian decided to install the sis driver but use Vesa for the SiS762 on-board graphics. My monitor is a fairly old 4:3 17" TFT, so the 1024x768 resolution looks OK. Despite my curiosity, it's probably best left alone!

One other odd thing with this motherboard is that it appears dead if I use the 24-pin power supply, but runs fine using only a 20-pin plug. My power supply is over spec compared to the original Fujitsu Siemens one, so shouldn't be a problem. I tried a Radeon 5450 HD card in the PCI-E slot and had no power related issues.

Any thoughts on that?

Some of the Fujitsu Siemens computers tend to be very modular, you can swap out HDD, DVD, the entire PCI extention module etc just by undoing a few clips.
Made them very easy for IT departments to repair and maintain, it does not suprise me they have different PSUs and plugs.

As far as which video card to use, you are in uncharted waters here. At least you have a few to choose from!

It is often not necessarily the most powerfull or newest card that does best, one that just takes the load off the CPU and system memory without any negative effects can be something as neolithic as the 32MB AGP ones that I use,
whatever suits the system.

Hopefully you will finish your odyssey soon and get around to turning metal into swarf

regards

I think I'm addicted to farting about with software! The onboard graphics seem to work fine and latency is around the 6K mark, despite my best efforts to make it spike. To be honest, having had several months of 25K+ motherboards and testing every trick in the book to get them <15K, I'm a bit overwhelmed to find a setup that produces <8K latency with default BIOS settings and no O.S. tweaks'.

I don't have the whole PC - just the mobo with an AMD 3500+ processor. For the price of 2 pints, I'm finally happy! Still got a lot of work to do on the milling machine conversion, which is not helped by me being a perfectionist!

Thanks for your help, it is much appreciated and I've learnt a lot over recent months.

My next LinuxCNC related problem will be getting speed control on the spindle. It's using an Altivar 312 inverter drive and my BOB only has 3 output pins free and no speed control. I believe I can control speed using the LAN and RJ45 ports?

At last a good board

I use speed boards on my machines, set the spindle as a velocity stepgen and output on two pins, it converts the steps to 0 - 10v for speed control and dir powers a relay for M3/M4

I'll post some details of the UK supplier tomorrow

Have you ever tried this? wiki.linuxcnc.org/cgi-bin/wiki.pl?VFD_Modbus

Or is it likely to result in pain?


I've found this converter: www.diycnc.co.uk/html/spindle_boards.html but will eagerly await your recommendations. Also, I'm quite handy with a soldering iron and some stripboard if you know of any circuits?

Hi,

That is the guy, I have 3 of his speed boards, they just work.
He does sell kits at slightly reduced prices, but quite frankly there are so many surface mount components, a couple of extra quid far outweighs the hassle.

So long as your VFD / DC Speed Controller or whatever, takes a potentiometer type control for 0 - 10v, which nearly all do, that is by far the simplest way to control spindle speed.

There is a modbus component, so it is possible, but unless you are trying to retrofit a machine with it all already in place, you would have to be a masochist to go that route IMHO

regards

Tidy! I have Roy's PCPPS BOB, so at least I can buy his spindle board in the confidence that there won't be any compatibility issues.

I'm still curious about the MODBUS, but will look at that some other time!


PS
He has a couple of different boards. Which one do you recommend? I have 3 spare outputs on my BOB (pins 14, 16 and 17)