HI

  I have an Acer TM 8104 Laptop. I managed to load SL 4.2 onto it with the
acpi=off kernel option. However I encountered the following problems

1) USB ports would not work until I loaded a much later kernel from
kernel.org.

2)  WLAN. The correct driver ipw2200 was automatically recognised and
loaded but it proved impossible to make a connection. Searching the web
there seemd to be people in similar circumstances. One theory was that the
Acer external hot keys were not responding properly. The bluetooth button
is always turned on but the WLAN next to it isn't. There is an acer hot
key utility but it didn't seem to run on this model.

3) ACPI. despite trying all the recipes on the web to fix the acpi
(especially one detailed one based on debian for exactly my model) I had
no luck at all. SL does not seem to work even when a corrected and
recompiled acpi db is provided. It always simply hangs when booting
without the acpi=off flag.


My laptop has been back with Acer for two weeks so far being repaired
after only four months, but when/if I get it back I intend to give up on
the onboard wifi. CAN ANYONE RUNNING SL RECOMMEND A PCMCIA OR USB WIFI
CARD THAT THEY KNOW WORKS WITH SL SO I CAN GIVE UP ON MY LONG QUEST TO GET
THE ONBOARD CARD TO FUNCTION. I would be most grateful.

Thanks
Rob Henderson


On Thu, 16 Mar 2006, michal wlasenko wrote:

> hi,
>
> it's a short description of adventures with installing linux on acer
> travelmate 4102
> [intel 915 motherboard, wxga panel 1280x800, 1.73GHz pentium centrino,
> ati mobility radeon x700 graphics card]
>
> i tried a few distributions [fedora 4, suse 10, debian 3.1, scientific
> linux 4]. i was aiming at debian, but never mind which kernel i chose
> during installation, it always failed to recognize the sound card [on
> motherboard] and hung while booting. same with fedora. i've got suse
> installed, but it didn't recognize the network with dhcp, neither with
> cable or wlan.
>
> finally scientific linux worked. it's based on red had, so was
> installed with anaconda. at first, it didn't recognize the graphics
> card and wxga, but after downloading and installing the laptop drivers
> from www.ati.com [first install the drivers, then run
> aticonfig --initial --resolution=1280x800,1024x768,800x600],
> graphics worked fine. there's also no problem with sound.
>
> still to do: acpi and wlan. in principle, so you guys know how to
> activate both of them for red hat enterprise, fedora or SL4 ?
>
> cheers,
>

-- 
Dr Rob C W Henderson
Department of Physics    Lancaster University
Telephone : 01524 593617