Aspire 1524 WLMi




FEATURES:



FIRST IMPRESSION:

I bought the computer with Windows Xp Home edition preinstalled. About two minutes later I installed GNU/Linux Slackware 10.0, and I upgraded the linuxbox to Slackware Current and plain kernel 2.6.9 .

From Slackware 10.1 and linux 2.6.11.x, I went to install my first 64bit distro SLAMD64, a 64bit slackware distro optimized by Fred Emmott ... a very wonderfull creature :)

After I installed kubuntu 5.04 AMD64 , the old debian love :) ..... I was happy with that new, very good and smart distro ! .... but I missed the hard rock stability, the: "everythings works too much fine, it's not so funny ! :)", so I'm back to slamd64/slack world ! :)

This is a powerfull laptop, with a very big (and great) range of periphericals, a good chipset, a good video panel, and the hardware is ALL linux compatible.

The little problems I've found are more referring to the kernel's status (2.6.x serie, at last 'till the 2.6.11).

Obviusly, the batteries can not working, in the best situation, over 2 hours without plug in the elettric cable to the wall ;) ..... But I'm using it for CAAD works, so I can plug it ;).

Here are the negative issues :

1. There is no free driver for the video card nVidia GeForce FX;

2. and for the WiFi IPN2220 chip;

(no more acpi probs)



HARDWARE SUPPORT :

I bought the laptop some months ago, so I've not yet tried every device built in. I will try to update this document during my tests/ works .

Device

Reference

Status

Comment

BIOS

Phoenix v 1.09 (updated from 1.08)

OK

Boot on HDD, CD, network.

Power management

ACPI

OK

It works good; 32 and 64 bit mode.

Battery

Lithium

OK

2h 15 mn in powersave mode. Refilled in 1h 30mn while using the laptop; works on 32 and 64 bit mode.

CPU

AMD Athlon64 3400+

OK

Works in 32 and 64 bits mode. However, I'll keep with the 32 bits, and I'm waiting for full support by distro (Slackware) / driver (windows 64 bits Wifi driver still unavailable). CPU frequency scalable from 800MHz to 2200 Mhz.

Memory

512Mo, DDR333, two slots, extensible to 2Go

OK

The two slots are used. Upgrade requires therefore replacement of existing memory. On 64bit mode it's better upgrade till o 1,5 MB or 2 MB. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

Hard drive

TOSHIBA Model=IC25N060ATMR04-0, FwRev=MO3OAD4A, ATA100, 60 Gb, 4200rpm

OK

This is an IDE disk. I can not understand if we can upgrade to a SerialATA HDD. The southbridge VT8237 has full support to SATA 150 devices, so we may upgrade to a SATA device. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

hdparm -t /dev/hda : 29 MB/sec - ata100

hdparm -T /dev/hda : 980 MB/sec. - ata100

DVD DUAL +/-RW

Toshiba, TSSTcorpCD/DVDW TS-L532A, ATA33

OK

CD and DVD recording works. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

Graphics

nVIDIA

GeForce Go5700 FX , 64Mb

OK





Partial

OK, with: nvidia-7167-run2, patched with the last nVidia patch (see nV bullettin) and kernel 2.6.11.5 . Resolution 1280x800, color 32 bpp and 3D acceleration. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.



Xorg plain driver (nv) work, in 1280x800 mode too, but without 32 bpp color and 3D accelleration

Display

15'' WXGA TFT LCD, 1280x800 65Hz

OK

OK with nVIDIA driver.

External display

1280 x 1024, 75 Hz with both display, 2048 x 1536, 75 Hz alone

Partial

Depends on BIOS configuration:

Keyboard

Integrated

OK

Standard keyboard mapping (at least for the Italian layout). RF/Switch, display light, touchpad switch, screen brightness are hardware keys and work out of the box. Sound volume and mail and browser buttons are standard keys and can be programmed.

Touchpad

Synaptic, with scroll buttons

OK

There is no more problem with the kernel synaptic driver, the driver lost the synchronization. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

Ethernet

Realtek RTL8169, 10/100/1000 Mbits/s

IRQ22

OK

Use Realtek 8169R. Tested in 10 and 100Mbits/s, works fine. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

Wireless

InProcomm

IPN2220

802.11 b/g

OK

Requires ndiswrapper to load Windows driver. Tested and works fine in a 802.11g and b environment (with WEP). Supposed to handle WPA. Not yet ready for 64 bits.

It works only in 32 bit mode.

Modem

Intel 537, Agere System

Seems OK

K8N400 integrated winmodem, see alsa modules on kernel section sound modules. VIA AC97 modem PCI kernel modules. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode. Not supported by VIA platform driver either.

PCMCIA

Texas Instruments PCI7420, accepts 1 Type III or 2 Type II card

CardBus system

OK

Work fine. I tried it with an Hamlet combo card (pcmcia modem, and ethx100Mb). It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

Card reader on pcmcia card

Acer pcmcia card reader

Not work, at least for now

I would try to work with it, but I have a digital camera with a Xd card, and it's not compatible. I've a report that confirm it works with the standard pcmcia storage module (Before you insert the pcmcia card you must put the sdX card into).

USB

VIA VT6202

OK

4 USB2 ports. uses UHCI controller. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

Parallel port

VIA VT6202

OK

Nothing to say here. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

Firewire

Texas Instruments PCI7x20

OK

Tested with a IEEE1394 network connection, ethX. It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

S-Video out

NTSC/PAL

Unknown

Not tested.

Infrared

VIA module

Not tested

Will certainly work in SIR mode. Not tested.

Sound

VIA Vynil Audio

OK

It works in 32 and 64 bit mode.

Microphone/Line-in

Common jack for both

OK

Works with microphone, appears as “Mic2” ALSA device.

Headphone/Line-out

Common jack for both

OK

Works with headphones.

OS

Windows XP Home

Unknown

Tested. It's not GNU/Linux, but it isn't XP Pro too .... a little bit unstable.

Softs

Works 7.0, NTI CD & DVD-Maker

Unknown

Not tested. Will certainly be useless.

You can get here my sample of dmesg, lspci,. lilo.conf, xorg.conf and lsmod , this is the Slackware / Slamd64 config files, but they work also on Kubuntu 5.04 amd64.

There is also an other contribute by Hans Ullrich: He uses a Debian, my second love ;) , Debian AMD64 port and He gave me his XF86Config-4 file.

Lspci command show us several usefull infos, but I think the most important is the VIA chipset K8M800 (nbridge K8M800 + sbridge VT8237). The VT8237 southbridge has a fully SerialATA support ! ... 64bit cpu + SATA support (SATA HDD) will permit us to upgrade the laptop for a very long and smart life !

Now the only “partial bottleneck” is the 4200rpm HDD. I have a similar desktop computer and I can see the real difference about them. But is it possible to connect a SATA HDD ? ... is there the special hardware connection ?

Besides on board there is a gpu VIA Unichrome but may should be disabled by the nv36 gpu.

If anyone can help me to detect if we can plug in a SATA HDD, without open/destroy the box ... can email me. If we will able to plug it , we will have the powerfull laptop I've ever seen ;)



INSTALLATION:

The Slackware installation has no problem. Migrating to Linux kernel 2.6.x series was easy, also because the Slackware 10.1 is really ready for the 2.6 kernel. It's simple but not for guys with a fragile heart ;)

Kubuntu is coming with a native kernel 2.6.x support, with some younger mechanism as HAL and dbus (from freedesktop.org), so is a more userfreindly distro. It's smart and the installation process in more simple, but not as such as a Suse ;)

Apart the wifi card and the soft modem the others devices were found from the install process. I think that with others distros the install process would be more simple .... but the machine not so much smart ;)



CONCLUSION:

Now that 2.6.x kernel is able to shutdown the laptop ;) .... I'm waiting only a good caad prog to erase the ntfs partition ;)

This laptop works very good in 64bit mode with every devices (apart ndiswrapper, we can also patch the vanilla kernel yust like kubuntu). But I'm sad to say you that you will not find a great boost performance in 64bit mode. Now I can understand what Patrick Volkerding say about 64bit mode, at least in this moment. But anyway Fred Emmott had made a very good, smart and stable works and this is very good for us. Thank you Fred !!!

Kubuntu Team has made a very very good too, so we have to decide what it will be better for us ;)

You can always switch from different distros as I'm doing ;)

Remain the SATA issue, I hope to have some usefull information, probably I will write to acer support (but they will not reply, just seen)

... but we can not (still) have everything, I have worked with several laptops, but this is the most powerfull I ever seen :)



THANKS TO:

Thanks to Linus and the others Developers, they have made a very good and smart kernel, Thanks to Patrick Volkerding and ... and the Slackware Team ? ... Thanks to Fred Emmott and his wonderfull slamd64, thanks to Acer, Thanks to Ubuntu Project about the very great work and their filosophy ... and .... at last, thanks to the Guy I had copied the web page :)

Thanks to Kolja and eci team (flashtux) for thier support on eciadsl 64 bit mode and slamd64 rc1.

Excuse me about my english ...

When I will have new infos I will update the web pages :)

... If you are looking for some others specific information you can email me to mikj---AATT---michelemariottini.itREMOVEme

Thanks also to Daugirdas Tom Racys and Hans Ullrich about thier help/work :)

Casentino 13/08/2005

mikj :)




This report is listed at TuxMobil - Linux on laptops, notebooks, PDAs, mobile phones.