hardware list/drivers for 3270

Does anyone know where I can find a list of the hardware that's in the 3270? I couldn't find it on the site and the drivers are not working well at all. I am upgrading it to XPpro and I've got yellow bangs on several of the items left in device manager after installing all the drivers from the site.

As soon as I figure out what's in it, I get to go on a driver hunt! YAY! I'm quite surprised because with notebooks, usually the best success I've found is with the notebook vendor's driver packages and not the generic ones from the individual component mfrs. Apparently not in this case.

My wife was having so many issues with the weakness of XPhome on her 3220 that when we decided to upgrade her and grabbed the 3270 from staples for 800USD (hey, the cost of living is high in Oregon, notebooks will run us 50-150USD higher than average, and she needs something light or the 6100 would have been it) that I decided to take her straight to XPpro. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the stuff before blowing it away because I mistakenly assumed that since it was working great under XPhome that pro wouldn't have an issue. If it was going to be a linux install, I would have written them down regardless because you never know how it's going to go. Now I have no clue without cracking the case what's in it. I don't want to do it. Laptops are like jigsaw puzzles and I always forget to put a screw back in somewhere. I'm terrible at jigsaw puzzles.

If someone doesn't know what's up with it, at some point I'll probably throw a knoppix or mepis CD in and see what it finds...

And yes, I do have yet to hit their support (this just happened and it's 8:30 PST) which I will probably do tomorrow.

Lots of good stuff here, I'll be reading for a while...great deal on light books. Can't beat it at all.

And to the guy that was having a fan problem, there's a couple calibration routines in the BIOS (at least of the 3200 series). Try those. I haven't had time to try them yet, but yeah, the fan is noisy and the system hot. Obviously those utilities were included for a reason.

Thanks!

 

Did you try device manager? You could let windows update look for any missing drivers. Here's a good freeware programs:

http://www.lavalys.com/products/overview.php?pid=1&lang=en&pageid=1






I know things, things that could get me killed


Thinkpad T41:
* 1.6Ghz Pentium M * 768Mb Memory * 40Gb Hitachi 7200RPM * Panasonic UJ-845-B DVD+RW *

 

If the device manager doesn't know what it is, the odds are slim that windows update will have anything and even if it did find something that might work, it's even odds that it will be an improvement. windows update actually installed an ancient driver for a NIC on another system I was workin on and I had to roll back the driver to get the new one back...ironc? Not sure. WHat is irony?

Windows generic drivers tend to blow as far as performance is concerned in general, and can usually barely make notebooks live. The generic video driver on the 3270 is okay on resolution but try dragging a window around *zzzzzzzzzzz*.

I'm not messing around with half-a** solutions. I have the time to do it properly. I called Averatec's customer care line (friendly and honest guy..maybe I just got lucky) and he was up front about the 3270 being very new and the site wouldn't be updated with drivers specific to it for 1-3 weeks. They've also gone to a diskless recovery system, so since I formatted the system I need a recovery cd to even get back to xphome and since it's so new they don't have a cd to send me yet. I asked him for a hardware list and he said that he didn't have the info handy but to email the care center and they could dig it up and send it to me. At least I cna go grab drivers from the mfr then. I'll re-ask about the drivers for the 3270 from those guys, maybe they'll send me a zipfile or make them available quicker.

They have to have them somewhere because they were on the system when purchased. I've never seen a case where a driver was xphome or pro specific, one has always worked for the other...

Maybe since they're a value organization they don't spend much money tweaking their drivers and OEM may be just as good.

We'll see. I'll post update when i hear back, even though nobody else probably has one of these yet...

 

There are some driver on the averatec website at www.averatec.com/customercare

 

Read this thread
http://www.notebookreview.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=13897
Thanks for the assistance, though.

 

More information on the Averatec stuff.

email [email protected] with your complaints - I certainly will. I'm also likely to notify the State Attorney General's office for false/misleading documentation.

Hardware I've detected so far (minus the video card - it's a Via chipset something or other)

Network card - Via Technology Rhine 10/100 (realtek) VT82C100A (VT6102)
Wireless card - Ralink RT2500 802.11 (apparently)
PCI Bridge is a VT8237 (K8T800 South)
Hard drive (on mine) is a WtC WD8000E
CD (on mine) is a GCA-480N
sound SEEMS to be a VT8233 (AC97)
Knoppix sees the modem as a Via Tech AC97 (Intel 587 ) But someone else with an older unit says it's a SmartLink in theirs. (when I boot windows, I'll double check. I had to take the first machine back due to their 'recovery system' )

IDE Controller - Via VT82C586A/B (VT82C686? VT823x)
Cardbus is ENE Technology Inc, CB1410

To me, the laptop is good just as is - I'm not so upset about the recovery system - but I think it's misleading, and probably violates a number of FTC regulations.

You're not given a reinstallation media anymore. The installation stuff is supposedly stored on a section of your hard drive, and you restore from that. Their solution if you crater the drive is to let you create 'recovery media'.

This is where they screw you over. You get an 'evaluation' of Phoenix Technologies 'Recover Pro' software - but it's a 15 day evaluation, as I recall. You have to initially create a system backup, which resizes your hard drive, then makes an image of your current data to that new partition. In my case, it rendered the system unable to boot. I swapped it out today for a new one, and I'm making my OWN images. For open source, Knoppix and partimage (I think that's the command) lets you connect to another PC over the network and make a network image - be sure to span at under 2 gigs, however.

In short, they claim you can have 'recovery media' - but it's not actually the programs you're paying for. It's an image of the hard drive - and you have to pay an extra $40 to 'activate' the version so you get USEABLE images past the trial period.

What a wonderful way to screw people over.

Lucky for me, I'm putting Linux on the sucker, so I'll be fine.

I also paid $100 more for it than the guy did at Staples, so I may check into that, and see if Sam's club has a price guarantee.

Once I'm done, I'll post up all the drivers/experiences/and so forth on my personal web site, possibly with links to the drivers needed.

BW

 

Video - Via/S3G Unichrome Pro IGP (It's an VT8237 chipset, if that helps - viaarena.com doesn't give 'exact' drivers for the K8T800, except for XP64) You might have to play with other drivers.
Modem - SmartLink 56k (www.smlink.com) ( http://www.smlink.com/content.aspx?id=53 )
Wireless - Ralink is actually giving away the information to the open source community to develop drivers, so I'm in good shape there. http;//www.ralinktech.com
Network - Via - http;//www.viaarena.com (Rhine II)
Sound - Via Vinyl AC97 - viaarena.com
chipset - Via - Hyperion 4 in 1.

Hopefully that helps you out.

BW

 

Update - SiSoftware's Sandra identifies the chipset as a K8M400.

Extra information - It looks like the max memory that the unit can support is 512 megabytes, which is what it came with. Acceptable for my usage. They also put a nice big sticker saying 'void if tampered' - over the hard drive and memory slots. Yeah, right. Someone's not tracking the lawsuits against manufacturers for trying to play that game. Generally, easily replaceable/upgradeable parts don't apply - but your mileage may vary. I personally think that the 80 gig drive and 512 megs of ram will be plenty.

Here's the text output.

SiSoftware Sandra

System
Host Name : YOUR-9E3B38BE92
User : Troy
Domain : WORKGROUP

Processor
Model : 1x Mobile AMD Sempron(tm) Processor 2800+
Speed : 1.60GHz
Model Number : 2800 (estimated)
Performance Rating : PR2406 (estimated)
Type : Ultra-Low Power
L2 On-board Cache : 256kB ECC Synchronous, Write-Back, 16-way set, 64 byte line size

Mainboard
Bus(es) : ISA AGP PCI IMB CardBus USB i2c/SMBus
MP Support : 2 CPU(s)
MP APIC : Yes
System BIOS : American Megatrends Inc. 080011
System : AVERATEC 3260 Series
Mainboard : To be filled by O.E.M. To be filled by O.E.M.
Total Memory : 480MB DDR-SDRAM

Chipset 1
Model : VIA Technologies Inc K8M400 CPU to PCI Bridge
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 804MHz (1608MHz data rate)
Shared Memory : 1MB

Chipset 2
Model : Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) Athlon 64 / Opteron HyperTransport Technology Configuration
Front Side Bus Speed : 2x 804MHz (1608MHz data rate)
Total Memory : 512MB DDR-SDRAM
Memory Bus Speed : 2x 160MHz (320MHz data rate)

Video System
Monitor/Panel : Default Monitor
Monitor/Panel : Digital Flat Panel (1024x768)
Adapter : VIA/S3G UniChrome Pro IGP

Physical Storage Devices
Hard Disk : WDC WD800UE-00HCT0 (75GB)
CD-ROM/DVD : HL-DT-ST DVD-RW GCA-4080N (CD 24X Rd, 24X Wr) (DVD 3X Rd, 3X Wr)
CD-ROM/DVD : QSI CDRW/DVD SBW242B
CD-ROM/DVD : QSI CDRW/DVD SBW242C
CD-ROM/DVD : QSI DVDRW SDW-042
CD-ROM/DVD : Slimtype COMBO SOSC-2483K

Logical Storage Devices
Hard Disk (C : 64GB (60GB, 94% Free Space) (NTFS)
CD-ROM/DVD (D : N/A

Peripherals
Serial/Parallel Port(s) : 1 COM / 0 LPT
USB Controller/Hub : VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller
USB Controller/Hub : VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller
USB Controller/Hub : VIA Rev 5 or later USB Universal Host Controller
USB Controller/Hub : VIA USB Enhanced Host Controller
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
USB Controller/Hub : USB Root Hub
PCMCIA/CardBus Controller : Generic CardBus Controller
Keyboard : Standard 101/102-Key or Microsoft Natural PS/2 Keyboard
Mouse : Synaptics PS/2 Port TouchPad

MultiMedia Device(s)
Device : Vinyl AC'97 Codec Combo Driver (WDM)

Communication Device(s)
Device : Smart Link 56K Modem

Power Management
AC Line Status : On-Line
Battery No 1 : 100%

Operating System(s)
Windows System : Microsoft Windows XP/2002 Home (Win32 x86) 5.01.2600 (Service Pack 2)

Network Services
Adapter : VIA Rhine II Fast Ethernet Adapter
Adapter : 802.11g MiniPCI Wireless Network Adapter

Performance Tips
Warning 100 : Large memory sizes should be made of Registered/Buffered memory.
Tip 2546 : Large memory modules should be ECC/Parity.
Tip 2 : Double-click tip or press Enter while a tip is selected for more information about the tip.

 

One last driver.

Winbond - can't really tell the chipset, but it uses the SD card reader drivers from the "7000 cardreader" whatever that might be. I have the driver that works on my hard drive right now, and if emailed I'll provide it - I got it from driversguide.com (I think)

BW