X62 problems, quirks, and fixes

[Bibin]

It looks like those of us who ordered X62 units have begun to receive them. There's much to celebrate, and 51nb's team has done an excellent job. However, any homebrew computer is going to come with some caveats. Let's talk about what we're looking at and what fixes can be done.

Sound Card Stuff
The sound daughterboard is on the right side of the computer, connected with a flat ribbon cable. This ribbon also carries two USB 2.0 signals. This is certainly the jankiest part of the whole thing.

I am considering trying to build a full replacement sound daughterboard, or at least hack in a decent USB DAC and nerf one of the USB ports on the PCH - maybe I can steal the USB lines from the fingerprint reader, which I have no plans on using. That would at least deliver quality headphone output.

Speakers do not work
Resolution: Under Windows, the Realtek HD Audio driver may be installed.
Under Linux:

You need to install alsa-tools
Create snd-hda-intel.conf to /etc/modprobe.d/ and add this line into it:

options snd-hda-intel model=auto index=1,0

Add these lines to /etc/rc.local:
/usr/bin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_MASK 0x01
/usr/bin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_DIRECTION 0x01
/usr/bin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_DATA 0x00

Under other operating systems, no solution has been found yet.

Speakers emit high-pitched tones
This looks interference-related, or there's some spooky resonance going on in some of the passives. In addition, the second speaker installed under the sound card may be vibrating against the case. Over the course of ten minutes, the whining was reduced and finally went away. The sounds correspond with the rotation of the CPU cooling fan.

Speakers emit interference sounds from GSM radios
That terrible rhythmic click is audible through the speakers, even when the volume is down. The sound board is terrible.

Headphone output is tinny
The headphone output's frequency response is noticeably attenuated at lower frequencies. No actual spectral analysis has been done on it, but it's objectively worse than the original X60/X61 output. Perhaps this is a mis-configuration of passive components around the Realtek chip?


Power and Heat
The original X6* batteries and power cords can be used with the X62.

Charge rate unknown
Under Linux, no charge rate is given, so we will be told "charging at a zero rate - will never fully charge". In fact, it is charging just fine.
Under Windows, we just get "charging" - no word on the rate or how long is expected.

Orange battery LED
The X62 shines the battery LED orange when it is charging, and green when it is done. On the normal X6* machines, the light is only orange if the battery is very low, and it will flash periodically when charging.

CPU runs a bit hot
The CPU on my unit idles around 40-50 degrees celcius, sits at 60 under medium load, and under full load tops out around 80. Not ideal temperatures, but with the CPU at relatively high load for half an hour, temperatures never peaked above 85 (when playing Overwatch as a test).

Palmrest heat
The dreaded right palmrest warmth from the X61 is gone, and... is replaced with left palmrest warmth in the X62. It's from the Wi-Fi card. Moderate under Windows, and can be helped by reducing the rx/tx power in the Wi-Fi driver config. Under Linux, power management rules help similarly (powertop's tunables will help).

Solution: I've installed an Intel 7260 Wi-Fi card, and put a small bit of foil tape to replicate the light shielding on the other side of the palmrest, and no heat can be felt underneath the palmrest any more.

Fan is noisy
The fan looks like an actual lenovo one grafted on. Mine in particular has a quiet tick to it. Otherwise, the fan whirring is not very loud. The fan does enthusiastically come on when the CPU is under load. It looks as though applying a low-pass filter to the temperature sensor would do some good. The heatsink is clearly a hand-made deal.

Forum user mdancer reports that the maglev fan from the ThinkPad X200 fits well and is much quieter, and can be substituted.


Connectivity
The X62 offers nearly the same lineup of ports as the X61, but one USB 2.0 port is replaced with a USB 3.0 port, and the VGA port is nixed in favor of a mini-displayport and mini-HDMI port. PCMCIA is gone too.

The ethernet, display port, and SD card slot are upside-down!
Yep, that's how it is!

The WWAN LED is on - I don't even have a WWAN card
No clue why that happens, but it's normal behavior.

The SD card reader isn't working
Under Windows, the driver is available here.
Worked with no additional effort under Debian Stretch Alpha 8.

[sloggy]

Kept my x62 plugged in for a few hours and the battery still refuses to charge. Under windows 7 it says "plugged in, charging" with an orange battery LED but will stay at 0%. Could it be because i'm using an x220 charger? Really hope it's not a bad battery. it's a brand new genuine 8 cell.

[axur-delmeria]

Palmrest heat
The dreaded right palmrest warmth from the X61 is gone, and... is replaced with left palmrest warmth in the X62. It's from the Wi-Fi card. Moderate under Windows, and can be helped by reducing the rx/tx power in the Wi-Fi drier config. Under Linux, power management rules help similarly (powertop's tunables will help).

I expected this to happen the moment I saw images of the prototype board.

[Bibin]

I've updated my post with a note about more [censored] interference noises in the speakers. I think I'm going to go in there and disconnect them until a real solution is found.

[flyingfishfinger]

USB
- Still having issues in Windows 7. I'm starting to get the feeling it might be a BIOS setting. Bluetooth is on USB as well, on some boots no USB devices incl BT are detected. I'll study this a little more and report back. It's fairly annoying.

R

[Bibin]

USB
- Still having issues in Windows 7. I'm starting to get the feeling it might be a BIOS setting. Bluetooth is on USB as well, on some boots no USB devices incl BT are detected. I'll study this a little more and report back. It's fairly annoying.

R

That's strange, USB has been fine for me in Windows 7 and Linux.

I looked a little at the sound board today while I was unplugging the speakers. The HDA codec is a Realtek ALC662, and the amplifier for the speakers (maybe headphones?) is a PAM8403 Class D amplifier. Looking at the amplifier, I'm surprised to not see more capacitors for power rail filtering. I would expect this to help with power spike-related noise from the fan.

The amplifier has a /MUTE pin. I expect the ALC662 uses one of the GPIO pins to pull this line low when headphones are plugged in, but in Linux without the specific driver, the amp might just be held in mute. Once I get home and can use my scope, I'll verify the behavior under Windows with the drivers, and I might simply lift the MUTE pin and wire a hardware solution using the heaphone jack's physical switch. The ALC662 is receiving the Intel HD Audio data just fine, and the only issue is the lack of speaker amplifier activation.

As for the tinny output through the headphone jack, I'll look over the application circuit for the ALC662 and see what might need to be changed. That shouldn't be too hard to solve, and I think I remember off the top of my head a post on the 51nb forums addressing this issue. If I connect an external amplifier to the computer, it sounds fine. It only sounds bad if I am using headphones directly. I think the ALC662's outputs are meant to drive a high impedance load, not something relatively low like headphones (direct speakers). Adding an amplifier dedicated to the headphones can solve this problem, I think.

I'd also like to make a proper stereo -> mono mixing circuit, as the speaker connector on the X62 board is really for stereo, hence two speakers. Hopefully the sound issues can be resolved without a lot of trouble. If the amp won't cooperate, installing a different amplifier circuit for the speakers that activates with hardware isn't out of the question.


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Meanwhile, if you're wondering how 51nb does the SXGA+ cable conversion: http://i.imgur.com/RpEeB02.jpg

This was all done in the interest of getting the LCD at 60Hz instead of the default 50Hz: http://i.imgur.com/uDCelD5.jpg

[Bibin]

The mDP plug on mine does not work with multiple adapters. I haven't yet seen it work. I don't have a mini HDMI cable to test with at the moment.

[mdancer]

Ok, some hardware tips:

1) You can fit SVGA+ LCD into x61s without cutting a part of the metal LCD frame if you by different (more flat) type of wifi antennas.

2) maglev fan from x200 fits perfectly in my X62s, u need to cut off the old fan from the cooling system. Now the laptop doesn't awake all my family when starts to rotate.

3) If you have temperature around 105C change the thermal pasta. This + maglev fan reduced the temp from 105C to 73C under heavy load.

[fatpolomanjr]

How do you change the wifi antennas to something more flat? Cutting the metal frame is the worst.

[flyingfishfinger]

Both miniDP and miniHDMI seem to work fine on mine. Tested with generic / cheapest VGA adapters I found on Amazon; both work OOTB on both Windows 7 and Ubuntu, no driver installs or anything necessary.

As far as battery is concerned, I seem to be able to charge & discharge without problems and BatteryBar reports everything correctly....

R

[Bibin]

I got my MiniDP working with a VGA adapter. Neither a MiniDP to HDMI nor MiniDP to DVI adapter would work, though. On the bright side, the VGA one was fully cooperative, and hotplugged without issues.

[mdancer]

How do you change the wifi antennas to something more flat? Cutting the metal frame is the worst.

You need to by new one

[fatpolomanjr]

Do you have a link or an item name? I wouldn't know what to look for.

[mrj47]

Ok, some hardware tips:

2) maglev fan from x200 fits perfectly in my X62s, u need to cut off the old fan from the cooling system. Now the laptop doesn't awake all my family when starts to rotate.

What do you mean by cut off?

[Bibin]

I made a writeup for bringing the X62 to 60Hz: http://mikejmoffitt.com/articles/0048-x62-sxga60.html

[sloggy]

I've accepted that my battery is dead and ordered a replacement. I'm absolutely in love with the machine and haven't experienced many of the issues I've read about (my fan is almost dead silent), though i've noticed that scrolling down webpages and playing games causes a terrible screen tearing effect. anyone have a fix?

[fatpolomanjr]

though i've noticed that scrolling down webpages and playing games causes a terrible screen tearing effect. anyone have a fix?

If you're experiencing horizontal tearing in Chrome, disable smooth scrolling in chrome://flags. For the gaming, Bibin's fix (50Hz to 60Hz) probably addresses the issue.

[Bibin]

The Intel graphics driver in Linux offers the TearFree option, which can be enabled in an X configuration file.

[flyingfishfinger]

Has anyone done any experiments with the extra internal USB port mentioned on 51nb? I did see a small 4-pin header by the main fan on the bottom side of the motherboard; by pin count it's USB 2.0...

R

[nkwsky]

Hi,

I did find this from 51nb.com (http://forum.51nb.com/thread-1712217-1-1.html), does it help with speaker problem in Linux?

From Google Translate:

this method requires the use of hda-verb alsa-tools within
the Debian / Ubuntu, you can install using sudo apt-get install alsa-tools .


As follows:

New Intel HDA /etc/modprobe.d/snd-hda-intel.conf to change the order of each codec.
Change ALC662 led a card, that is, / dev / SND / hwC0D0

# - X62 the Intel HDA the Order ------
Options SND-HDA-the intel Model = Auto index = 1,0



in /etc/rc.local added hda- verb command setting GPIO Realtek ALC662 the control amplifier chip PAM8403.

# - X62 ALC662 the GPIO ------ FIX
/ usr / bin / HDA-to verb / dev / SND / hwC0D0 SET_GPIO_MASK 0x01 0x01
/ usr / bin / HDA-to verb / dev / SND / hwC0D0 SET_GPIO_DIRECTION 0x01 0x01
/ usr / bin / hda-verb / dev / snd / hwC0D0 0x01 SET_GPIO_DATA 0x00

on again. Perhaps you want to alsamixer Unmute Speakers after rebooting.



Update:
I found the need to reset the sleep ALC662 of GPIO.

[Bibin]

I'm not sure if that helps, but in my case I ripped out the amplifier and constructed my own solution in hardware for the speakers. The amplifier the X62 comes with has serious interference issues, with both the fan and GSM signals.

[Seggybop]

I'm having trouble with the mini displayport. It works for a few seconds, but then gets stuck in a continuous loop of connecting/disconnecting the display, causing both the laptop and external display to turn on and off as long as it's plugged in. I'm using a Dell 3007WFP-HC with dual-link DVI to mDP adapter, but I don't think that should matter. Windows 10, latest drivers. Has anyone experienced something like this?

[Bibin]

I've only had the mDP "just work" or "just not work" so far.

[fatpolomanjr]

Hi,

I did find this from 51nb.com (http://forum.51nb.com/thread-1712217-1-1.html), does it help with speaker problem in Linux?

Some things got mixed up in translation, like the proper syntax for hda-verb. I installed alsa-tools then added the following lines to /etc/rc.local:

Code: Select all

/usr/bin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 SET_GPIO_MASK 0x01 0x01 
/usr/bin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 SET_GPIO_DIRECTION 0x01 0x01 
/usr/bin/hda-verb /dev/snd/hwC0D0 SET_GPIO_DATA 0x00 0x01 

You can also just enter those commands as root in a shell. I still have not gotten the sound working in Linux, but hda-verb will probably help if I can figure out the correct parameters to pass to it.

Edit: Someone mentioned updating their kernel to 4.6.4 in Ubuntu did the trick, but that might not have been for ALC662 realtek drivers, but some other realtek audio drivers.

[flyingfishfinger]

Anyone know how to turn OFF the internal LCD from boot when an external screen is attached?
I don't see any BIOS options to that effect, but maybe I'm missing something. I'm thinking of the old "LCD", "External" or "both" selection.

R

[mdancer]

Ok, some hardware tips:

2) maglev fan from x200 fits perfectly in my X62s, u need to cut off the old fan from the cooling system. Now the laptop doesn't awake all my family when starts to rotate.

What do you mean by cut off?

Here are some photos how it looks like

http://pasteboard.co/6gQ2RBmsQ.jpg
http://pasteboard.co/6gP8No4yF.jpg

[mdancer]

Also X62s has buggy IOMMU implementation in bios. I use gentoo linux and I had screen freezes and X.org crashes until I added

Code: Select all

GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX="intel_iommu=igfx_off"

to /etc/default/grub

Another problem is that some of usb3 devises don't work in the usb3 port. Adding iommu=sof to GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX solves the problem. Maybe it fixes usb2 stability issues as well, I didn't have time to test it carefully. This option however impacts virtualization performance.

[mdancer]

I made a writeup for bringing the X62 to 60Hz: http://mikejmoffitt.com/articles/0048-x62-sxga60.html

Just want to mention that you can change edid without reflashing it using

Code: Select all

Option "CustomEDID" "eDP1:/etc/X11/edid.bin"

to ' Section "Device" ' in your xorg.conf file

[Bibin]

I made a writeup for bringing the X62 to 60Hz: http://mikejmoffitt.com/articles/0048-x62-sxga60.html

Just want to mention that you can change edid without reflashing it using

Code: Select all

Option "CustomEDID" "eDP1:/etc/X11/edid.bin"

to ' Section "Device" ' in your xorg.conf file

While that's true, it doesn't help in Windows (without similar EDID override work). I wanted a solution that is OS independent, but an EDID override is certainly useful for situations where that's less convenient.

[mrj47]

What do you mean by cut off?

Here are some photos how it looks like

http://pasteboard.co/6gQ2RBmsQ.jpg
http://pasteboard.co/6gP8No4yF.jpg

Was the original x62 fan just taped on?