[PlanetCCRMA] Running a Dell Inspiron 8100 on a Planet DAW

[rob switzer]

On Mon, 2006-05-15 at 23:24 +0000, LinuxMedia wrote:
> Greetings,
> 
> I spent several days looking through the Plant archives and then googled 
> for laptops that run on a Planet setup. The only two that seemed to come 
> up are the Sharp MV12W and the Dell Inspiron 8100. And I believe the 
> only post about the Dell Inspiron 8100 was from an FC post. Right now I 
> can't find a used Sharp MV12W so I will ask about the Dell Inspiron 8100...
> 
> Could anyone running Planet CCRMA on a Dell Inspiron 8100 tell me the 
> following:
> 

I'm running The Planet successfully on a Dell M50, which shares a mobo
with the Inspiron 8xxx, I think.

> What version of FC are you running?
> 

FC1, FC2, and FC3 all worked.

> Did your version of FC and Planet install without a hitch and run well?
> 

Yes, for the most part.  If you're doing any OpenGL you might want to
install the proprietary nVidia video drivers to get the hardware
acceleration.

> What tweaking was necessary?
> 

Just the standard stuff mentioned in The Planet setup docs.  Pay special
attention to the disk tuning section -- you need to do this to get
decent track count/latency performance. 

> I know built in sound cards are notorious for sounding bad, but I just 
> need this laptop so I can get out of the apartment while I test apps and 
> put together my Planet DAW. My "production" PC will be at home. I also 
> probably can't afford an Audio Interface at this time. Did it recognize 
> the built in sound card?
> 

The on-board soundcard is recognized, and yes, it sounds like shit.
There are also issues (at least on my machine) with electrical
isolation/grounding.  The onboard soundcard is noisy, as is any
soundcard plugged into the pcmcia slot that has DACs powered by the
machine itself (versus an external box with it's own power ala RME).

The workaround here is to unplug the power supply and run from battery
when recording/playing back audio -- with the charger unplugged, noise
floor is around -85db, which is fine with me. 

Hope this helps.

best,
rob switzer

> Any response to this post would be appreciated. I'm a bit nervous 
> because I had to sell some things to buy a laptop and I just need it to 
> work.
> 
> Thanks,
> Rocco
> 
> _______________________________________________
> PlanetCCRMA mailing list
> PlanetCCRMA@ccrma.stanford.edu
> http://ccrma-mail.stanford.edu/mailman/listinfo/planetccrma
-- 
rob switzer <rswitzer@721.com>