The Dell 700m Meets FreeBSD

Because I am phenomenally lazy, I use PC-BSD to install FreeBSD on my workstations.

Why?

Because you get a preconfigured X environment, with almost everything you could want, all ready to roll. It's a fantastic project, and I urge you to check it out.

If you've installed PC-BSD, the only things you have left to worry about is the wireless and video resolution. So lets get started..

Wireless

While I struggled with wireless initially, it's actually very simple. I have the Intel 2915, but you might have the Intel 2200 if you didnt opt for the upgrade. Either way, go to http://damien.bergamini.free.fr/ipw/, and follow the links there.

Well, thats what all the guides on the internet told me. It's a little more complex than that.

You really want to install ports/net/iwi-firmware, and This Guide, while hard to find via the ipw website, was a perfectly useful step-by-step guide for me.

Here's the little setup script I use to load my wireless config after boot:

kldload -v if_iwi
iwicontrol -i iwi0 -d /usr/local/share/iwi-firmware -m bss

ifconfig iwi0 inet 10.1.1.42 netmask 255.255.255.0 ssid default
route add default 10.1.1.6

All done? Good.

Resolution

Okay, resolution is a hard one.

Quick explanation: Intel have a little problem with something called "vbios", and you need a program to edit the "vbios" after each reboot, before X can write to the graphic card properly.

These are the solutions I tried:

The first three were great, except they'd all report success in changing the vbios values but not actually do it. And I couldnt get any of them to compile from scratch, as most of them are built for linux anyway. The 915resolution port compiled, but it just didnt work.

It turned out that option four was the best. I spoke to Craig Kleski, after seeing his post on FreeBSD Questions, and assuming he must have made some progress.

Craig was kind enough to send me his binary for 855resolution, which he'd made from hacking the original 855resolution sources.

So here's what you need to get 1280x800 running on your 700m, under FreeBSD (tested on 5.4 thus far):

So put the 855resolution file somewhere that you won't lose it, and put the XF86Config file in your /etc/X11/ where it belongs. I've added a line to my /etc/rc.conf to run the 855resolution fix on boot. Here's the line:

/usr/local/bin/855 30 1280 800

And that should be that. Reboot, and you're done.