**Official eMachines M68xx Thread**

[CruisinGT]

Originally posted by: cdipierr
For those of you who have it, I know it's obviously fast, but do you feel you've made a good decision to get it? What's your overall happiness level with your purchase?

I got it back at the end of January and at the time, I was still kind of iffy. But despite of a few shortcomings, I'm real happy with my decision. At $1400, its probably the best laptop purchase (performancewise and featurewise) you can make right now.

 

[Supertex]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress

Originally posted by: stardot
I tried the feature tool. The settings for the 5k80 (original drive) were the same for the 7k60.
The performance is REALLY BAD. It took 25 minutes to boot windows XP.

Has anyone installed Windows XP Pro (Service Pack 1) on the M6805? I have updated to Service Pack 2, which took 5 hours

The hard drive light is on constantly, even when nothing is runnig. I keep wanting to think this is down to the VIA drivers or the bios, but I don't know where to look.

Any suggestions?

Try taking the hard drive out and putting it back in. Make sure the contacts are clean and there isn't any debris inside of the slot for the drive and reinstall it in there.

In winxp pro...

in administrative tools, look up your "indexing service" make sure that its on manual, and not automatic. That will make your drive run ALL THE TIME.

 

[Ersogoth]

I purchased the 6807 the other day and I have a bad pixel also, I tried the Q-tip method to no avail, so I have called Circuit City and they have orderd a replacement. When it arrives I will just do a swap out. ( because I contacted them within the 14 day period )

I called the E-machines Tech Support and they informed me that the machine is upgradeable to 2GB of Ram. ( 1 Chip inside 1 chip outside. ) But swapping the inside chip will void your warranty. so do that one with care.

They will only do RMA's on the LCD if there is 3 pixels out.

Someone had also asked about upgrading to a DVD-Burner. I am not possitive, but my prior experience with laptops is, if the drive is built in and not a removable style, then you will not be able to upgrade.
This is because the chipset for the drive is on the motherboard itself, so each motherboard is manufactured specifically for the model.

 

[MatthewF01]

Originally posted by: Ersogoth

Someone had also asked about upgrading to a DVD-Burner. I am not possitive, but my prior experience with laptops is, if the drive is built in and not a removable style, then you will not be able to upgrade.
This is because the chipset for the drive is on the motherboard itself, so each motherboard is manufactured specifically for the model.

thats interesting to hear... and i certainly hope thats not the case, thatll be rather disappointing.

 

[MDE]

The M6805\7 are the same except for the DVD burner. eMachines' thing is to have one model built, and make only slight variations. I don't think that they'll go as far as to make two separate motherboards for the M68xx series.

 

[CruisinGT]

Other than the drive, the IDE interface will always be the same. I'm willing to bet that if you gave me a working DVDRW from a M6807, I can make it work on my m6805. Any volunteers?

 

[dpk777]

does the M680x support 4.1 surround sound?

How is the sound quality overall?

 

[MatthewF01]

Originally posted by: CruisinGT
Other than the drive, the IDE interface will always be the same. I'm willing to bet that if you gave me a working DVDRW from a M6807, I can make it work on my m6805. Any volunteers?

yea if its a matter of cracking the system open and swapping the components out, im all for that and I dont think theres too much for me to fear.

now if only we can obtain those drives at a reasonable price?!

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: dpk777
does the M680x support 4.1 surround sound?

How is the sound quality overall?

No, and it's acceptable but not great. If you're an audiophile, you can get an external sound card (Creative makes a couple).

 

[Bbc84]

So how does the emachine compare to the new HP and Compaq AMD 64 equiped laptops?


I wonder how the graphics car compares to each other. couple things i think the HP would appeal to me is to be able to get the 3200+ processor, and the higher resolution widescreen. And its more customizable.

 

[MatthewF01]

Originally posted by: Bbc84
So how does the emachine compare to the new HP and Compaq AMD 64 equiped laptops?


I wonder how the graphics car compares to each other. couple things i think the HP would appeal to me is to be able to get the 3200+ processor, and the higher resolution widescreen. And its more customizable.

http://forums.amd.com/index.php?showtopic=9507&view=getnewpost

check that out.


graphics are Geforce4mx. BLAH!

the emachines will overclock to a 3200+ A64 anyway! Whats to worry about

 

[Heinrich]

If only they'd drop a 9700 into these!!!!!

 

[TJ69]

Anyone install linux onto it?

Were you able to get all the hardware working? Specifically, I'd like to get wireless working.

I've had no such luck with MDK 9.2 rc1 AMD64. The install went smoothly and everything appears to work fine except wireles. Apparently, Broadcom has not released open source drivers. There are two alternate solutions, linuxant & ndiswrapper. Both appear to wrap windows drivers so that they will work with linux. I'm not sure if its just a 64bit issue, but after compiling and loading the module, I get an error when trying to load the windows driver.

I may give up with 64bit for now, and try out a 32bit distro instead. If anyone got the wireless working, please share.

Some helpful links I've found along the way:
http://people.debian.org/~ccheney/arima-w720-k8.html
http://www.muru.com/linux/amd64/
http://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic.php?t=130292

Thanks.

-TJ

 

[fernakis]

Does anyone have any experience overclocking CPU or video? Or do notes or a guide exist? I'm dying to play around with my 6805. Especially the video. With scores of 8K, 11K sounds tempting.

 

[MatthewF01]

Originally posted by: fernakis
Does anyone have any experience overclocking CPU or video? Or do notes or a guide exist? I'm dying to play around with my 6805. Especially the video. With scores of 8K, 11K sounds tempting.

if youre looking to play around with overclocking, look around at what others are saying... youll pick up a few things there.

Then go download a program called ClockGen, get the version for Athlon64 motherboards, and get the specific version whose name ends in '03' (there are a few different versions designed for diff. motherboards)
Mess with that stuff.

Then get ATITools. It will find the maximum overclock speeds for your video card, its pretty idiot-proof and easy to use.

Go read around, mess with things yourself, then come here once you get your hands dirty and have questions!

Best of luck to you!

 

[Arcanedeath]

Welp I am now the proud new owner of an Emachines M6805, I got it from best buy while they still had the 250 dollars in rebates and used 75 bucks in reward zone cupons on it, so brought the price down to 1324.99 after rebate, not to shabby. I'm very impressed w/ the speed of this laptop and the screen is extremly nice, (no dead pixels). I tried to configure an HP w/ similar specs but it was 2-300 more w/ the same specs. Only small issue I had a first was a sticky spacebar, but repeated use resolved that issue. I'm kinda bumed E-machines doesn't have drivers and more info about the laptop on their site but I guess I'll have to live w/ that until they can catch up. The system seemed to get glowing reviews from the members of Hard OCP's fourm and a couple other places I looked including here. I did get a 4200 rpm Travelstar drive and not the 5400 rpm one, but still all in all a very nice purchase, I'm giving serious thought to upgrading the memory to 768mb or 1.25gb as 512 isn't really cutting it for Everquest or KOTOR w/ Norton running in the backround, I guess I'm just spoiled from running 1GB on my desktop for so long. I'm also looking into getting a seagate momentus 40gb 5400rpm 8meg buffer drive or a 7k60 travelstar, but I'm undecided if it's worth the bucks for the performance increase, I can definitly tell that the HDD is holding me back in load times for various things, but before I replace the HDD I think I'm gonna upgrade the memory first to at least 768mb and see if I can live with it. Welp just thought I'd share, so far very happy w/ the new lappy

 

[fernakis]

Matthew: Thanks for the tips, I'll check those tools out. By the sounds of it though, I should back up all of my stuff first. Sounds like it could play some havoc on the system. I wonder whether overclocking has any effect on the lifetime of the components. Hmmm...

Arcane: Glad you're enjoying your purchase. The hard-drive is the real bummer for me as well. I notice it most in the boot-up times. Ssslllloooowwww... I've decided to stick with it for the next little while in the hopes that some better and cheaper 7.2's come along.

 

[MatthewF01]

Originally posted by: fernakis
Matthew: Thanks for the tips, I'll check those tools out. By the sounds of it though, I should back up all of my stuff first. Sounds like it could play some havoc on the system. I wonder whether overclocking has any effect on the lifetime of the components. Hmmm...
q]

hehe it almost sounds like you ran across one of my posts elsewhere...


I overclocked my system too high and corrupted my windows install...TWICE.

back up if you can!
Too high an overclock caused the RAM to crap out and corrupt important system files. blah!

so beware at speeds above 2000mhz

 

[MDE]

Don't forget about the lack of an AGP\PCI lock messing things up too.

 

[alexruiz]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress The only nagging bug that I've found is the CPU is locked at 800MHz on battery power.... .

That issue is exclusive to WinXP, and it is because of the CPU driver. If you don't mind "downgrading to win2K the issue is non existant.... powerNOW! is well implemented in win2K.

 

[MDE]

Originally posted by: alexruiz

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress The only nagging bug that I've found is the CPU is locked at 800MHz on battery power.... .

That issue is exclusive to WinXP, and it is because of the CPU driver. If you don't mind "downgrading to win2K the issue is non existant.... powerNOW! is well implemented in win2K.

I've got XP set up the way I like it, and I don't have it on battery power that much, so I can live with it. Is the problem from XP itself, or AMD's XP driver?

 

[CruisinGT]

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
I've got XP set up the way I like it, and I don't have it on battery power that much, so I can live with it. Is the problem from XP itself, or AMD's XP driver?

Well, that would be the million dollar question but if you asked me, I'm almost certain its AMD's XP driver.......Hmmmm.....I wonder if AMD's 2000 driver would work in XP..... :/

 

[alexruiz]

Originally posted by: CruisinGT

Originally posted by: MonkeyDriveExpress
I've got XP set up the way I like it, and I don't have it on battery power that much, so I can live with it. Is the problem from XP itself, or AMD's XP driver?

Well, that would be the million dollar question but if you asked me, I'm almost certain its AMD's XP driver.......Hmmmm.....I wonder if AMD's 2000 driver would work in XP..... :/

And you would be RIGHT!! The problem is AMD's driver. They even state in the readme.txt file for winXP that a "known issue" is not being able to recover to full speed.

I wanted to have 2K since the beginning, as a dual boot between win2k and winXP 64 bits will be tough to beat That is what I have right now.

You can try to install the powernow driver for win2k in XP and see how it behaves.... let us know what you find.


Alex

 

[chargrilled]

Could someone do me a huge favor and tell me the following -

As soon as I received my 6805 I installed XP Pro on it. I should have booted it up and wrote down the model/manufacturer of the following three devices but I did not and now I am having trouble finding them.

The sound card, the modem, and wireless.

I think the wireless is broadcom but I don't know the model. The modem is most likely connexant but again I don't know the model and the sound I don't know. Emachines website does not list the 6805 yet under the support - downloads so that is not any help. If anyone could help me I would greatly appreciate it.

 

[MDE]

If you didn't format, there's a drivers folder on the hard drive. Try putting the restore discs in and see if one of them has the drivers. If not, I can just send the whole folder (all ~70MB) off of mine to you through AIM or MSN.