For those of you buying an Acer Travelmate 634LC I’ve put online some info on having it run Debian GNU Linux. Not as fast as my Medion laptop but it’s more power efficient and has a bigger screen (15.1" 1400×1050).
##Quickspecs
- Mobile Pentium IV 1.8GHz
- ALI Chipset
- 15.1" TFT
- 32MB videocard with TV-Out
- 512MB DDR RAM
- 30GB HDD
- DVD/CDRW
- 3 hour battery
- 56K modem
- 10/100Mbit Ethernet
- Firewire
- SmartCard
- CardBus/PCMCIA
- Acer port replicator
- Infared
The longer specs, and how to get stuff working (Using Debian GNU/Linux and Kernel 2.4.19):
Audio:
The normal kernel driver complains about interrupts. The ALSA driver however works great. Load snd-ali5451, snd-mixer-oss, snd-pcm-oss.
Modem:
Haven’t tried the modem yet, but it’s supposed to be a Lucent Winmodem if you want to try.
Network:
Works great with the standard 8139too driver in de 2.4.19 kernel.
Firewire:
Use the OHCI kernel driver and it seems to work. I have no actual firewire equipment to test it though.
USB: (v1.1)
Also use OHCI driver to get this running. Works fine.
IDE Controller:
Use the ALI15xx IDE driver. Works ok. Needed hdparm to turn on 32-bit mode; DMA mode is on by default. I run:
hdparm -c 1 -u 1 /dev/hda
on boot.
PCMCIA/CardBus/SmartCard:
The CardBus/PCMCIA part works fine with the standard CardBus driver. The laptop also has a smartcard reader. O2 Micro however stopped their Linux support for the smartcard reader. Make sure to send them a friendly email to complain about that. They did supply me with (useless to me) binary drivers for RedHat 6.2. (Read this.)
Video:
I downloaded the AGP and XFree driver from the nVidia site. They work great, including OpenGL and TV-Out. Keep in mind that the nVidia X driver is called ‘nvidia’ and not ‘nv’ like the original X driver. 1400×1050 sure is a lot more useful than 1024×768 🙂
IRDA:
Worked using the SIR drivers (loading irtty, ircomm-tty and ircomm). Could not get the ALI FIR driver to work.
ACPI:
The ACPI in kernel 2.4.19 has problems shutting the machine down. I used a patch for 2.4.19 from http://sourceforge.net/projects/acpi. (Make sure to reconfigure the kernel.)
APM:
Suppose it could work. I prefer using ACPI.
Touchpad:
I used the synaptics driver from mobilix.org. Works great.
DVD/CDRW:
IDE DVD-player and CD (Re)Writer. Configure kernel for SCSI emulation to use the writing features. Also put append="hdc=ide-scsi" in your lilo.conf.
Some output for those interested:
00:00.0 Host bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1671 Northbridge
[Aladdin-P4] (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] PCI to AGP Controller
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5451 PCI
AC-Link Controller Audio Device (rev 02)
00:07.0 ISA bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M1533 PCI to ISA Bridge
[Aladdin IV]
00:08.0 Modem: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5457 AC-Link Modem Interface
Controller
00:0a.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C
(rev 10)
00:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host
Controller (rev 46)
00:0f.0 USB Controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] USB 1.1 Controller (rev
03)
00:10.0 IDE interface: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M5229 IDE (rev c4)
00:11.0 Bridge: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] M7101 PMU
00:13.0 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6933 Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
00:13.1 CardBus bridge: O2 Micro, Inc. OZ6933 Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
00:14.0 USB Controller: Acer Laboratories Inc. [ALi] USB 1.1 Controller (rev
03)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV11 [GeForce2 Go]
(rev b2)