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Acer Aspire One Netbook Laptop

Started by MrJinx, 2008.09.05, 21:10:55

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melf

I uninstalled bootmanager and installed air-boot. That worked well and gave me possibility to add another primary partition. Now using ACPI 3.11 /SMP /APIC mode. Only annoying thing is the wlan driver.
/Mikael

MrJinx

I would like to use Airboot as well. I have Window partition as a primary (C:)and eCS as a logical extended (D:).
I have 17gig free for a 3rd partition. There is a special build of Mac OSX for the Acer. I wanted to install GOS. Either product poses bootmanager issues and I seem to recall Airboot is constrained. GRUB has to be removed from GOS. I'm not even sure what issues are involved with OSX.
This leads me back to the wireless issue again. To use the acer with Max OSX, the wireless mini pciE atheros card has to be changed out for another card.  Intel cards are not seen by the Acer bios. It is recommended to use a broadcom card made by Dell. It turns out that card is well supported by Genmac and can be had on eBay for $30 US or less.

You have to open the Acer to change it.  No access cover. There are good detailed instructions on www.aspireoneuser.com. There is one person that has fitted their unit with a touchscreen, GPS, 3G modem, Bluetooth and replaced the atheros card. Amazing they got all that stuff in the little chassis. 

Saijin_Naib

Isn't it cool to see the mods that people can do? There are similar mods for the Cloudbook/G Netbook but I'm still waiting to get one.

melf

Wlan function is really strange.

As said before the contact is intermittent, it's about 30 s to a minute and then out. But I still have an IP-number and I'm still able to wiew "hot spots" in the surroundings. I also seem to be able to view computers on my home network via the NET VIEW command, bur I can't access them.

How do one explain this? Can I receive signals, but not send or what?
/Mikael

EugeneGorbunoff

please try to change parameters related to APM (suspend, .., power economy) in windows .inf file,
I don't know which variables are responsible for this. Some users adjust power of signal, etc:
http://ecomstation.ru/projects/genmac/genmac.faq

melf

Thanks for your input Eugene!  As a non technician this file offers "too much". There seem to be myriads of possible entries, so I really don't know what to do.  The extendedChanMode , mentioned in the FAQ does not exist there.
/Mikael

MrJinx

Well, Just to let everyone know, I have thrown in the towel on the atheros AR5007EG wireless mini pcie card for a variety of reasons.
1. I have tried about 9 variations of the Atheros drivers in Genmac unsupported mode. Either they don't work or exhibit the same problem of 30 sec connectivity.
2. I'm going to add Mac OSX on this device in the remaining 17gig freespace I have. In order to use MAC OSX on the Acer, The Atheros card needs to go bye-bye. It is replaced by a Dell 1390 mini pcie wireless card that is a Broadcom 4311 chipset with a pci id of [14E4:4318] happily supported by Genmac.  ;D I got one on eBay this morning for $15 USD and included free shipping.

3. Acer does not make it friendly to replace the card, Fortunately I'm well versed in laptop repair and the www.aspireoneuser.com site provides great instructions for doing this.

Melf, Check out this link, http://www.aspireoneuser.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=14&t=3193
and the forums in general to see the # of complaints on all platforms concerning the Atheros card. It may really be an issue of Acer's BIOS more than the quality of the card...

It is supposed to get here in 3 days. I'll post the results.
If we had drivers for the USB touchscreen and USB Bluetooth, I'd order those right now and do the whole device in one shot.

I am researching the CPU ram as there are stories it can be upgraded to 2gig.

There is also a guy in Mexico that has a mod to turn the Aspire one into a full tablet PC. The finished product looked so good, Acer needs to be thinking about it!
 

melf

Well, good louck with your rebuilding of your Acer! I will not try  it..

I saw you had problems with your sound from headphones. That works here with latest uniaud from Paul.  Another finding is that atheroscard consistently gives me another 30 s if using reconfigure  on wlan. That may be a clue for others with same problem, I  don't know.
/Mikael

MrJinx

I received the new Dell 1390 card on Saturday and installed it Sunday. Much to my surprise, The FCC ID said 4318 but in reality it is a 4311 chipset that was not supported by genmac until yesterday when I first got "Unsupported" mode working and now have it working in supported mode! It is so nice to have working internet connectivity!
Putting the card in was not fun, The thin film connectors for the touchpad and the keyboard require tweezers and good vision or you will never get them back in place.
I learned so much from figuring out the genmac structure, I am now working on the RTL 8103E (Wired) driver.
None of the Realtek drivers for OS/2 seem to work with it. The driver loads but never talks through the port.

If I get this going, It is only down to the USB camera. ANd this device is 100% supported by eCS.

I would like to see if SCITECH could be made to work somehow. This device supports dual head and under Panorama can't be switched to the external VGA. I'm sure creating a 1024x600 mode should be easy . It's getting Scitech to understand the TFT display operates at 1024x600 that is the problem. I use a lot of SDL apps and I find Panorama acts up with some of them in some strange ways.

ddan

"None of the Realtek drivers for OS/2 seem to work with it. The driver loads but never talks through the port."

This sounds typical of crossed interrupts; it's the behavior I got with an audio card that was recognized but wouldn't actually play until I re-arranged interrupts (probably by turning off unused COM port in BIOS). Think I'm safe saying that if the driver loads then it recognizes the corresponding hardware present. The SCSI ASC.ADD thread has an ongoing flail about interrupts; seems to be a growing problem for OS/2.

morc

Yesterday i tried to install ecs 2.0 RC5 via usb-cdrom.

1st try did not work. Bootet from CD but after Bootscreen "Please insert ecomstation CD".
I found Melfs hint http://bugs.ecomstation.nl/view.php?id=2202 and tried with modified config sys (put basedev=usbd.sys /I13 top of config.sys). Installing phase 1 worked fine  :); but after reboot phase 2 didn't find the source (only hard disk was available) :(. As i have two partitions on the laptop i rebootet from the cd renamed the 2nd partitoon to "ECS_CDRUN" (i don't know if this is necessary) and copied the hole cd via xcopy an this partition. After rebooting from hdd i choosed this partition when installer asked for source and phase 2 finished without problems.  ;D

Actually i have no sound, no network and touchpad isn' working either. (i didn't install any addidtional drivers yet)
I try this evening.



melf

For sound, use Paul Smedleys latest uniaud. It works very well. Touchpad , you have to press Fn-F7 twice. Of som reason it starts locked. Wlan is (intermittenty) working with patched genmac, see earlier postings on Acer one.

eCS runs very smooth on this machine!
/Mikael

MrJinx

Paul Smedley has 2 builds of uniaud, Be sure to use the HDA version or you will still have no sound.
The I13 switch has to be removed from config.sys before the 2nd phase. It boots from HD and the USB drivers from eCS can take over at that point. At the end of phase 1, before the reboot, you can choose management console and edit it from there. saving the need to copy the CD contents. Pay attention to my previous posts on this subject. I ended up using a hardware workaround to solve the wireless problems if you don't mind $15 and trading the internal mini pcie card. I'll share private drivers i have working if you go that route. Windows and Mac OSX are happier too. :D 

Saijin_Naib

Do you think that a program like Unetbootin could be adapted to make bootable USB drives from the eCS ISO files?

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net

It makes bootable Linux on USB flash such an easy process, eCS would benefit much from this.

BigWarpGuy

Quote from: Saijin_Naib on 2008.10.30, 09:50:05
Do you think that a program like Unetbootin could be adapted to make bootable USB drives from the eCS ISO files?

http://unetbootin.sourceforge.net

It makes bootable Linux on USB flash such an easy process, eCS would benefit much from this.

It would be neat if some one could port it to OS/2-eCS.  ;D Perhaps one could create a bounty for it?  ???
I tried it and it works well with Linux. Would it be difficult to use the source to create a native OS/2-eCS program?  ???

8)