Plymouth in Beta 10 nearly bricked my Acer Aspire One

[sideways]

The Beta 10 LiveCD has rhgb enabled still. I thought I would experiment with removing it from the boot parameters allowing plymouth to do its stuff (it worked in alpha). The result was a blank screen and my Acer Aspire One subsequently refusing to boot under any circumstances! Just a blank black screen after power on :eek:.

I tried removing the battery, waiting an hour, restarting, bashing the unit about a bit (the usual fix-all method), to no avail. I now owned a shiny blue brick, but luckily, as I was searching for rma instructions to return the unit I recalled that macles Aspire One blog (http://macles.blogspot.com/2008/08/acer-aspire-one-bios-recovery.html) had bios reset instructions.

Thank the lordy, it worked :) ( Bios image from http://support.acer-euro.com/drivers/notebook/as_one_110.html ),

I've never seen a computer behave like that before - the boot screen was completely blank even during the bios reset, so I had to just wait for about a minute and hope the process was working.

Either the Acer Aspire One is pretty flaky or Plymouth is pretty dangerous.

[nick.stumpos]

ouch, but i would bet the former

[JBLoudG20]

I ask the question, why RMA a product that you broke? It wasn't defective.

[sideways]

I ask the question, why RMA a product that you broke? It wasn't defective.

I answer the question:
It broke running software, that's rma'able as far as I'm concerned

[reashlin]

No point in not trying to get your money back on a new prduct I suppose.

I've done it with a graphics card i bricked with a firmware update. RMAd it claiming it just broke and had a replacement within 2 days.

[JBLoudG20]

I answer the question:
It broke running software, that's rma'able as far as I'm concerned

So you would also RMA the intel NIC cards that were affected by the bug in the devel kernel? You'd also return an M rated tire because it blew out at 85MPH?

I guess we just don't see eye to eye on ethical issues.

Glad to hear you were able to fix your computer, though!

[sideways]

So you would also RMA the intel NIC cards that were affected by the bug in the devel kernel? You'd also return an M rated tire because it blew out at 85MPH?

I guess we just don't see eye to eye on ethical issues.

Glad to hear you were able to fix your computer, though!

Ethics? geez, if I boot up a linux distro and it breaks my computer then I blame the hardware. The ethical case is for Acer to provide a solid product, not a half-assed rushed attempt at a pc (The design of this machine is dire, to access the empty dimm slot you have to completely dismantle the unit, even though there is an access panel underneath (which accesses nothing!)

In this case the failure may have been a result of putting the wrong vesa mode into the boot parameters or me resetting the machine too early. Whatever, if you read that macles blog it seems a common fault with the Aspire One for all sorts of reasons, it's a pretty flaky machine.

Remember - customers good, companies evil

[scottro]

The BIOS issue is a known Acer problem in the first generation of the Aspire ones. The fix sometimes works and sometimes doesn't, and it was quite unclear if attempting it would void the warranty or not. My Acer, after three weeks, gave that black screen of death as it's become known on the Aspire One forums, and I took it back. I didn't feel like risking voiding the warranty and even had I been able to fix it, I would have been unsure about trusting it after that. I will probably buy another, but a later model with an updated BIOS. In this case, yes, Sideways is quite justified and if you placed a poll on the Apire One user forums, I don't think you'd find anyone who would consider him wrong about this.

It is an Acer defect--mix it with a Fedora Beta and anything could happen. :)

[Dangermouse]

My acer one had to go back last week:(, same issue just blank screen, which was immediately after i did full f9 update, oh well its gone now, wish i new about the possible fix before, as it was so handy to carry about with me.:)

[sideways]

scottro, Dangermouse, thanks for the confirmation of the Acer Aspire One flakiness, sorry to hear it has caused you much inconvenience.

The bios reset is a simple fix, just that people are either worried about warranty or haven't been made aware (I don't think Acer sanction it as an "official" fix). I have the bios (renamed to ZG5IA32.fd) and flash_it.exe app (remove underscore) stored on the LiveCD USB stick now (they take less than 1mb of space), so in future I can fix this is under a minute.

Beta 10 is working well on the Aspire One, just that my persistence overlay got corrupted (yet again) after I'd tweaked the interface to perfection (aaargh), I'm gonna restore it and hope that the separate persistent home partition remained intact, otherwise I'm on to bugzilla for backup solutions for the overlay (aside from copying the whole usb disk)

[joe.pelayo]

Hi guys.

I have just bought an Acer Aspire One (last Saturday) and would like to ask you a method by which I can tell if it has a 'safe BIOS'. In other words, how can I see if I have an 'updated' model?

I would hate to brick mine, how did you do it? Just by attempting to load F10? Sorry if I missed something in the above posts.

EDIT: Further details about my AAO. According to the BIOS:
System BIOS Version: v0.3109
VGA BIOS Version: Intel V1585

On top of the screen it says: InsydeH20 Setup Utility. Rev. 3.5


Thanks.
Joe.

[scottro]

There seems to be debate about the BIOS issue. Some folks feel you should try to fix it, others feel, and I tend to agree with them, that it should go back.

For what it's worth, I'm writing this from my AA1--the new 6 cell one, 160 gig hard drive. I just wiped XP and put Fedora on it, as well as Ubuntu because it tends to work when Fedora won't. Both (F10, from the Beta live CD and Ubuntu's latest Intrepid) are working pretty much out of the box. Fedora is Fedora of course, and I had to do my usual with sound, but I think sound usually works out of the box for Gnome users. Ubuntu is Ubuntu and it basically just worked. (Inclulding sound in console and fluxbox without any work on my part.)

The wireless works without problem on both, no need for MadWifi.

Of course, I've only had it for two days, so no guarantee I won't get the black screen, which seems to wait three weeks before striking.

However, joe, it won't be putting Fedora on it that will brick it. Just search the forums for black screen of death and you should find some posts about which bios versions are worth upgrading and which don't need it. (The aspireoneuser forums)

[BobNutfield]

I'm glad I came across this thread. I am receiving an AA1 (120GB mech drive) on Monday as a gift. I had demo'd it a few weeks ago. I knew that the Linpus that came with it would have to go right away. I had intended to put F10 on it, but it has not been stable at all on my main Laptop (still get the occassional hard lock up), so I was going to put Intrepid instead, which has been stable for me. But, I was not aware of the BIOS issue described here. I had assumed it would be no different than installing on any other unit I have done a hundred times before, albeit via USB stick instead of CD.

I am now rethinking whether I even want one. Thanks to the posters for this information.

Bob

[scottro]

If you're getting the 120 gig one, I suspect it will be little or no different. I just got the 160 gig one, and with the USB, stick, have already installed F10 and Ubuntu Intrepid without issue.

On the other hand, the black screen of death usually shows up after 3 weeks if it's going to show.

According to some, it's been fixed in later versions being sold, but no one seems to really know. I would definitely go with it, especially if it's going to be a present. :)

[BobNutfield]

Thanks, I am getting this as a birthday gift from my wife. I had told her I wanted a netbook, and after doing a little research, this one seemed to be the best value: mechanical hard drive, good memory, Atom processor, etc., for the least amount of money. She would get anyone I want, I had just told her to get this one. I might read a little more about the Dell and MSI, which cost more, but I have not read anything about these kinds of problems.

Fedora 10 is still very unstable on my main laptop (Toshiba with ATI graphics). I am getting at least two hard lock-ups a day, and the hard reboot is very bad for hard drives. This only happens when Firefox is running, so I am suspecting the flash 10 I installed from Adobe's site. I would rather have Fedora than Ubuntu on a new netbook, but I suppose I will wait until the stable release.

[scottro]

Part of the issue there may be ATI. (However, I don't want to say go ahead and install F10 then have you hunt me down and kill me. ---Hrrm, in the UK? Well, yeah, go ahead and install F10.) :)

Seriously, it hasn't given me many issues, but then, I'm used to Rawhide so things like sound not working, or something else going wrong are simply minor, usually (though not always) easily fixed things.

The advantage at this moment of F10 and/or Intrepid Ibex are that the 2.6.27 kernel that they are using supports the wireless card. Sad to say, you seem to use the LED light support.

F9 and Ubuntu Hardy Herring--errm, Heron, will then support the card by using the MadWifi drivers (it's relatively trivial) and the LED lights too. :)

The thing is, that most of these offering SSD drives are, perhaps in an effort to keep cost down, offering an apparently low quality rather slow one, which is what turned me off with the Dell. Also cost.
As for the Wind, it was simply a matter, for me, of it costing so much more than the Acer.

I think the AA1 with 1 Gig of RAM (upgrading RAM is decidedly non-trivial--one has to take the whole thing apart, including the rubber feet on the bottom--seriously, there are screws hidden under the feet) will meet your needs. Ubuntu might be the better choice at present, it's also beta (at least Intrepid) but it seems a little further along than F10.

Still...I really do wonder if most of your problems are due to the never ending issues that so many distributions seem to have with ATI.