Problems Fixed on my Gateway MX3230

This summer, I got a new Gateway MX3230. Cheapest laptop I could find! I put Ubuntu 6.06 Dapper Drake on it, and had several fairly large issues to figure out. It’s working like a charm now, upgraded to Ubuntu 6.10 Edgy Eft, so here are some of the fixes I’ve found.

Setting Screen Resolution to Widescreen

Modify the /etc/X11/xorg.conf file:
sudo gedit /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Scroll down to the portion entitle Section “Screen“, and change all instances of this:
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
to this:
Modes "1280x768" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
Save the file.
Restart the X server (Press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace)

Getting Sound Working

Open Volume Control, go to Preferences, and select all tracks to be visible. Then go to the Switches tab, and UNCHECK External Amplifier.

Thanks to AlainM for that! Link on Ubuntu Forums

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17 Comments

  1. Hey dude great tips!! just last night i was running ubuntu 6.10, and felt like installing it.. but i wasn’t sure the screen res and sound were gonna work, i’m def trying this tonite.

    great site!
    jorge.

  2. JTF

    At least on the video portion of everything, I found I had to run the following command:

    “sudo gtf 1280 768 60″

    and then paste the outputted modeline with the others in the file to get it working. I’ll definitely try out the sound trick tonight though.

  3. Jordo EX

    My bro got a new gateway… but he’s in mexico on missions… and he likes windows more than Linux. anyways, KDE is better than gnome… i know you’re using gnome… ur gedit… i just clicked a random gateway on linux-on-laptops.com

  4. Sorry Jordo, but I much prefer Gnome to KDE.

  5. Imran Saeed

    Hello,
    I just bought a similar laptop MX3215
    And i installed Slackware 11.0
    I am trying to install the modem for last 5 days but havn’t had any luck.
    If u have some idea do contact me.
    imransaeed408@hotmail.com

  6. What is the type of modem installed in MX3230 laptop?

    Best regards, Dejan

  7. Art

    Wow, thanks for the great tips! I got my sound working and resolution set right, but I’m still having a problem with refresh, I think. The menus and desktop icons seem to transition smoothly, but as soon as I try to drag a window across the screen, it’s really “choppy”. Hope this makes sense. Anybody know why this might happen?

    I’m running Ubuntu 6.10 on a Gateway MX3215. I even tried the “sudo gtf 1280 768 60″ command that JTF suggested, and it outputs a message saying hsync: 47.70 kHz; pclk:80.14 Mhz etc….

  8. Hi Art,
    That choppiness still happens to me, though I don’t find it really bothers me. I think it’s because the drivers for the graphics card don’t support hardware acceleration, There’s a free driver for my graphics card called OpenChrome, but I haven’t gotten it to work yet.

  9. Derek

    Since this website comes up on a search for the Gateway MX3215 laptop as well, I thought I’d detail here how I got video and sound working on mine.

    I’m having to use the VESA driver, which was installed by Feisty Fawn (7.04). Switching to the VIA
    (UniChrome Pro) driver doesn’t work for me on this laptop.

    However, simply adding “1280×768″ to the modes line doesn’t work for me either.

    What I had to do was add
    HorizSync 36-64
    VertRefresh 36-60
    to the monitor’s section of my xorg.conf, in addition to adding the “1280×768″ to the modes line.

    More detail can be found here:

    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/DebuggingXAutoconfiguration

    For the audio, following the instructions above (about unchecking the “External Amplifier”) setting worked perfectly.

  10. Cris

    Just to help anyone else out with a similar issue … on my Gateway 3520 on the new Ubuntu Feisty, to get the sound working I had to do as mentioned above, but in addition:

    Uncheck Headphone Jack Sense
    Uncheck Line Jack Sense

  11. martin

    I live booted a slackware version 5.1.8.1 no problem with video but no wireless or sound
    would like to fix this and reburn the iso .I only have 256 megs on my gateway mx3230 so runs real
    slow. as well think that a live linux cd wouls be more secure for hotspots.

  12. […] the link on the audio: Trev’s Travels. Ignore the part about the video, it didn’t work on the MX3215, but the audio part […]

  13. Hi there,

    Great info regarding the sound issue

    I use puppy linux myself and had the same problem.

    Also tried it on Knoppix - same problem - need to disable external amp.

    Have you had any luck on enabling the wireless card on this laptop?

    Thanks,

    Kevin

  14. Hi Kevin,
    The wireless card worked for me out of the box in Dapper and Edgy. In Feisty, for some reason, it chops off the last letter of the ESSID, so if you want to connect to MyNetwork, you’ll need to enter it as MyNetworkX, or something. Just add any extra character to the end.

  15. Joel Scott

    I have a gateway MX3228 and have tried many distros. I couldn’t get sound in any of them… until now. I am running Fedora 7 and the above sound fix worked for me. I am sure it would have worked in other distros also. Great tip dude!!!

  16. BeM

    I also have the same laptop. The sound fix also worked for me, but the video was still a problem. I found that the video card in this notebook is a VIA UniChrome. I came across this help site from Ubuntu (via a forum that I was on) that shows how to install the UniChrome drivers and get the 2D support working on our notebooks.

    This is the link. — Please do be careful as this could mess up the video settings and you will have to go to the command line to fix it.
    https://help.ubuntu.com/community/OpenChrome

    But this did fix the issue with websites being choppy when scrolling and when you dragNdrop files.
    I also did at one time want to update to 7.04 but as someone pointed out that the wifi no longer was working with this upgrade.. (I have yet to find out why)

    –BeM

  17. I have the MX3228 I have tried to get sound and wireless with no luck. I tried Mandriva, Solaris and Ubuntu. I messed up the boot sector, so now i can’t even boot XP. Trying to boot with all of these distros messed up my DVD writer, The DVD is very finicky now. I bought an external drive but it won’t boot sometimes.

    Dan

    http://teachmedrums.com

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