This laptop (the exact model name is Acer Aspire 5633WLMi) has the following hardware specs:
Most hardware components worked out of the box after installation. In particular, the graphics card is automatically supported by the framebuffer as well as by the proprietary nvidia driver. The network driver uses the b44 kernel module, wlan chip is also automatically supported by the ipw3945 module.
Some selected hardware devices with comments:
| PCI bus | PCI description | comments |
|---|---|---|
| 00:1b.0 | Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02) | Works with snd_hda_intel module. Input channels don't work. |
| 00:1e.0 | PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2) | ???? |
| 00:1f.0 | ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02) | ???? |
| 00:1f.2 | IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) Serial ATA Storage Controller IDE (rev 02) | accessing sg devices messed up in kernel |
| 00:1f.3 | SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02) | ???? |
| 01:00.0 | VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation Quadro NVS 110M / GeForce Go 7300 (rev a1) | Proprietary nvidia kernel module and nvidia Xorg module |
| 05:00.0 | Network controller: Intel Corporation PRO/Wireless 3945ABG Network Connection (rev 02) | Use ipw3945 kernel module, not yet in mainstream kernel |
| 06:01.0 | Ethernet controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4401-B0 100Base-TX (rev 02) | Use the bm44 kernel module |
| 06:04.0 | CardBus bridge: ENE Technology Inc CB-712/4 Cardbus Controller (rev 10) | Works out of the box. |
| 06:04.1 | FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc ENE PCI Memory Stick Card Reader Controller (rev 01) | No drivers yet. |
| 06:04.2 | Class 0805: ENE Technology Inc ENE PCI Secure Digital Card Reader Controller (rev 01) | Detected by the sdhci kernel module; No SD Card to test |
| 06:04.3 | FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc: (rev 01) | mmc card reader? no drivers yet. |
| 06:04.4 | FLASH memory: ENE Technology Inc Unknown device 0551 (rev 01) | mmc card reader? no drivers yet. |
| USB Bus | USB ID | USB name | Description | Comments |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Bus 004 Device 002 | 0a5c:2101 | Broadcom Corp. | Bluetooth device | Works out of the box. |
| Bus 001 Device 002 | 046d:0896 | Logitech, Inc. | Acer OrbiCam | Not yet supported by gscpa |
The BIOS of the laptop is broken as its DSDT has several errors (it was apparently compiled with the broken Microsoft compiler). To fix them:
apt-get install iasl, but I installed version 20060608 manually)/proc/acpi/dsdt to a temporarly location and make it user-read-/writable.iasl -dc dsdt. You should get a file dsdt.dsl, but probably also lots of compile errors on the command line:IASL compile errors of the original BIOS
dit[0123])Return (0×00) calls to the code pathes without return value. iasl -sa dsdt.dsl. This will generate the file/etc/initramfs-tools/DSDT.aml and re-generate your initramfs (typically using the update-initramfs command).
[17179570.276000] ACPI: Core revision 20060707
[17179570.276000] ACPI: Looking for DSDT in initramfs... found /DSDT.aml ... successfully read 23993 bytes from /DSDT.aml
[17179570.276000] ACPI: Using customized DSDT
[17179570.276000] ACPI (tbget-0289): Table [DSDT] replaced by host OS [20060707]
Note: On Kubuntu this works just fine, because they use the ACPI DSDT in initrd patch, while other distributions (most notably Debian) refuse to do so. For these distributions, you have no choice than to compile every kernel yourself with the patch applied!
Works with the ACPI DSDT patches from above.
Driver included in the alsa packages (snd_atiixp_modem module). You'll also need the sl-modem-daemon ubuntu/debian package to use it.
Simply load the acerhk module with the following parameters
modprobe -a -k acerhk force_series=290 usedritek=1
To let the module automatically be loaded, simply put the following line into /etc/modules:
acerhk force_series=290 usedritek=1
This enables all the acer special keys (Fn+F[1-8] keys, P, e, Mail, Web, and multimedia keys). They generate scancodes, and most of them are automatically mapped to the correct keycodes. those, that are not correctly mapped, dmesg will produce an output like:
[TODO]
To fix these, you can manually call setkeycodes to assign a keycode to the scancode. I did this in /etc/rc.local:
# Help (?) button does not generate keycode # Fn+F1 Help -> KEY_HELP=138 setkeycodes e026 141 # Fn+F2 Acer eSetting -> KEY_SETUP=141 setkeycodes e027 139 # Fn+F3 ePowerManagement -> KEY_MENU=139 # Sleep (Zz) button does not generate keycode # Fn+F4 Sleep -> KEY_SLEEP=142 setkeycodes e078 154 # Fn+F5, switch display -> KEY_CYCLEWINDOWS=154 # Black screen ([*]>[ ]) button does not generate keycode, but works # Fn+F6 black screen setkeycodes e072 230 # Fn+F7, disable touchpad setkeycodes e071 231 # Fn+F7, enable touchpad setkeycodes e033 222 # Euro key, above "<-" key setkeycodes e034 223 # Dollar key, above "->" key # setkeycodes e059 224 # dim brightness setkeycodes e059 225 # Fn+"->" brightness Up -> KEY_BRIGHTNESSUP=225 setkeycodes e055 232 # disable wlan chip (orange LED), (/sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw3945/0000\:05\:00.0/rf_kill goes from 0 to 2) setkeycodes e056 233 # enable wlan chip (orange LED), (/sys/bus/pci/drivers/ipw3945/0000\:05\:00.0/rf_kill goes from 2 to 0) setkeycodes e057 146 # Bluetooth on->off -> KEY_DELETEFILE=146 setkeycodes e058 145 # Bluetooth off->on -> KEY_SENDFILE=145 setkeycodes e077 228 # Bluetooth button pushed to the right # setkeycodes e073 148 #Acer P -> KEY_PROG1=148 # setkeycodes e074 149 #Acer e -> KEY_PROG2=149
Reading CDs and DVDs, as well as watching DVDs works just fine. Burning CDs and DVDs also works fine with kernel >=2.6.18
Does not work (yet?).
tifmxx project: http://openfacts.berlios.de/index-en.phtml?title=TI_FlashMedia_xx12/xx21_driver
The sound card works nicely with the snd_hda_intel ALSA kernel module. However, kmix does not allow you to properly change the volume of the input channels (actually, the input channels don't work properly at all). I don't know if that's a problem of the driver or of kmix.
The device is an internal USB device, which can be activated via a switch on the front side of the laptop. Works out of the box.
It's a USB Acer/Logitech OrbiCam with USB ID 046d:0896. The later versions of the GSPCA Probject (http://mxhaard.free.fr/download.html) supports this camera, but that module cannot be used together with the em2880-dvb (for my DVB-T stick, see below), because it still uses the „old“ v4l interface.
Bus 005 Device 002: ID eb1a:2881 eMPIA Technology, Inc.
This DVB-T receiver works just nicely with the em2880-dvb kernel module (it still has to be manually loaded until it is moved into the kernel source tree, so put it into /etc/modules). An installation howto can be found at linuxtv.org. Please note that you will also need to download the firmware and make sure the module loads the correct firmware file!
After restarting the laptop, the device worked just out of the box. Starting kaffeine detects the DVB-T receiver and scans for TV stations (and correctly finds the three stations available in Vienna, Austria).
Even the remote control works (added as /dev/input/event3) and generates the numbers 0-9 and the volume up/down/mute functionality. Other buttons generate keycodes, but are not assigned to the correct actions by default.
The analogue TV receiver works with the em28xx kernel module alone, which is automatically loaded when plugging in the stick. Only the dvb module needs to be loaded manually.