Acer Aspire 5024WLMi Problems

aster · #1 2005-07-04, 05:27 AM CDT

Hi all,
I recently bought an Acer Aspire 5024WLMi laptop (AMD Turion 1.8GHz 64bit, ATIX700 128MB, 512MB RAM) and installed FC4 x86_64 version. Everything works fine (and very fast I have to say) but I have three problems. (The only hardware problem I managed to solve is to set the resolution to 1280x800.)

Firstly the ACPI doesn't seem to work properly. If my laptop works with ac current directly, then klaptop appears and displays correct messages (battery not present etc., although I can't still hibernate my system). But when I use the battery, klaptop does not even appear although I /sbin/modprobe the battery module. It seems that the battery is unreachable. Power management says that I have a partial ACPI installation, which is not so helpful. Are you aware of any solution to that problem?

Another problem involves my WLAN. The controller is Broadcom 54g, reported as unknown device 4318 (rev02) by /sbin/lspci. The problem is that I can't turn on my WLAN , since I think it is software controlled (the button takes no effect under Fedora). Is there a way to enable the WLAN? I think that if I manage to enable it I will be able to use it via ndiswrapper and the 64bit-version of the windows drivers.

My last problem involves lm-sensors. I sensor-detect as root but it keeps responding that no sensors are found or that the sensors are unreachable. Is there any incompatibility between the Turion processor and lm-sensors?

Thank you in advance

russian_knight · #2 2005-07-08, 10:58 PM CDT

I have Acer Aspire 5014, but problems are similar.

I can say only about battery. Acer use so called "smart battery system" or just "smart battery" which is not supported by linux kernel. There exist one project for implementing sbs - https://sourceforge.net/projects/sbs-linux/ , but, unfortunately, i cannot compile DSDT for my laptop. Try, maybe you are more lucky then me.
Also i read that freedesktop hal project started implementing sbs, but there is no further information.

P.S. Sorry for my english.

brageo · #3 2005-07-17, 03:07 AM CDT

The WLAN button on the Acer probably works, but the LED don't......

I use the ipw2200 driver for my wireless on my Acer 8204. It should be able to turn the LED on with the options LED=1 when loading the driver, but haven't tried it.

You have to fix the DTDS so the ASPI are correct to get the batterystatus.

Look for info at http://www.whoopy.it/linux/ACPI_prob..._resolved.html

Regards

Georg

wiggle · #4 2005-07-17, 11:29 AM CDT

Hi,

yesterday I installed Windows XP Professional (Yes, yes its a linux forum, don't kill me!!!) on my Acer Aspire 5022WMLi and I wondered why my WLAN does'nt work. I pressed the WLAN-Button with no result, but later I found out that I had to install Acers Launch Manager to enable the button. So the button seems to be controlled by software.

aster · #5 2005-07-17, 01:00 PM CDT

The wireless button is software controlled for sure wiggle. Therefore it is rather difficult to enable the wireless under Fedora. I think I'll wait for an appropriate driver to come out from the community. It's all I can do for now.

Brageo, my WiFi is not constructed by Intel, so I think that ipw2200 will not work for me. I'll give it a try though. As regards to the battery problem I tried to follow the steps in that guide you posted but I ended up with a ruined kernel and I was forced to reinstall Fedora. It seems that I am not so keen on compiling the kernel. I think that there should be an easier way, don't you?

infiltrator · #6 2005-07-19, 07:28 AM CDT

Aster, Can you please let me know how you got the X700 to work? I've been struggling to get it to work on my Acer Ferrari 4000 and it should be a similar setup to your machine. I'm getting a blank screen when X tries to load

aster · #7 2005-07-19, 09:47 AM CDT

Well infiltrator, I suppose you use the x86_64 version of Fedora Core 4. If so, you have to doenload and install the fglrx driver released by ati and do some modifications to your xorg.conf file.

More specifically, download the fglrx driver from here (make sure you download the rpm designed for X.org 6.8 X-Windows version) and install it as root by typing rpm -Uvh fglrx64_6_8_0-8.14.13-1.x86_64.rpm (note that compat-libstdc rpm is needed). You may experience some dependency problems that seem to be unsolvable. Although, you can surmount these difficulties by using the command rpm -Uvh fglrx64_6_8_0-8.14.13-1.x86_64.rpm --force, with the --force switch typed for that reason.

After you have successfully installed fglrx, type (as root) kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or use another editor if you don't have kate installed) and apply the modifications shown to the attached file (xorg.conf modifications). Save the modified xorg.conf file.

After that you're done. Press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X and enjoy your new resolution.

infiltrator · #8 2005-07-19, 12:43 PM CDT

All I can say is.... Aster - YOU are the MAN!

Got it working

Many thanx... now the figure all the other goodies out

I even managed to changed the resolution to 1680x1050 so it's running at full size

Many Thanx

aster · #9 2005-07-19, 03:40 PM CDT

Glad you made it work infiltrator

. Good luck with the remaining unrecognized hardware (if there is any)... Linux is surely worth giving it a try and this forum undoubtedly does a good job.

jlchannel · #10 2005-07-20, 06:18 PM CDT

Use "setkeycode" and pressing WLAN button to make it enable.
And make sure
cat /sys/devices/pci0000\:00/0000\:00\:1e.0/0000\:02\:04.0/rf_kill is "0"

aster · #11 2005-07-21, 01:03 AM CDT

Dear jlchannel, when I press the WLAN button and then type dmesg I get the message

atkbd.c: Unknown key pressed (translated set 2, code 0xd6 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e056 <keycode>' to make it known.
atkbd.c: Unknown key released (translated set 2, code 0xd6 on isa0060/serio0).
atkbd.c: Use 'setkeycodes e056 <keycode>' to make it known.

I dont know what keycode to use in order to make Fedora understand that this button refers to WLAN. Can you give me a piece of advise about that?

In addition I don't quite understand what do you mean when you say that I have to make sure that "cat /sys/devices/pci0000\:00/0000\:00\:1e.0/0000\:02\:04.0/rf_kill is "0"". That path doesn't exist on my system.

Thank you for your help in advance...

Fellfrosch · #12 2005-07-23, 11:01 AM CDT

@aster

thx man... your stuff worked perfectly on my Acer Aspire 1692..... 1280x800 with 3D Acceleration..

I was trying for ages to get this working......

ngs

Regulus · #13 2005-08-12, 05:21 AM CDT

Quote:

Originally Posted by aster

Well infiltrator, I suppose you use the x86_64 version of Fedora Core 4. If so, you have to doenload and install the fglrx driver released by ati and do some modifications to your xorg.conf file.

More specifically, download the fglrx driver from here (make sure you download the rpm designed for X.org 6.8 X-Windows version) and install it as root by typing rpm -Uvh fglrx64_6_8_0-8.14.13-1.x86_64.rpm (note that compat-libstdc rpm is needed). You may experience some dependency problems that seem to be unsolvable. Although, you can surmount these difficulties by using the command rpm -Uvh fglrx64_6_8_0-8.14.13-1.x86_64.rpm --force, with the --force switch typed for that reason.

After you have successfully installed fglrx, type (as root) kate /etc/X11/xorg.conf (or use another editor if you don't have kate installed) and apply the modifications shown to the attached file (xorg.conf modifications). Save the modified xorg.conf file.

After that you're done. Press Ctrl-Alt-Backspace to restart X and enjoy your new resolution.

Aster,

I cannot tell you just how much time I've spent trying to get FC4 working on my 5024WLMi .... Then I found you're posting re:how to get the x700 working... Marvelous, I could kiss you!

PS. Any joy with the ACPI or WLAN yet.... Plus, this is probably trivial to you but did you get the clock running at a normal speed & the touchpad working? I have, so on the off chance you've not sorted these pop a msg on here and I'll reply.

aster · #14 2005-08-12, 05:46 AM CDT

Regulus thanks a lot for your post. In fact I managed to get a normal speed for the clock and (partial) functionality of the touchpad using the noapic and i8042.nomux kernel parameters while booting.

Regarding the WLAN I think I finally found the appropriate drivers, which I attach (note that these drivers are the 64-bit version of the drivers for Broadcom 54g used by Acer). I used ndiswrapper and after ndiswrapper -i <xxx>.inf I typed ndiswrapper -l and I got the message

bcmwl5 driver present, hardware present

Although, I don't have a wireless network around at the moment and therefore I cannot test the functionality of the WLAN. You could try it and post the results. I have to mention that the LED is still not working.

Finally, I didn't have any success with ACPI yet.

Regulus · #15 2005-08-12, 08:26 AM CDT

Cheers aster,

I'm gonna give the WLAN a try asap, and I know there's a net hereabouts so I'll be able to confirm wether it works or not!

Will get back to you soon.

PS I found a fairly new driver for the touchpad .... I'll root around, remind myself where / what / how ... and put the details up here also..... It's a bit sensitive, but there are loads of options to play around with which will no-doubt resolve that... I just haven't got around to making any adjusts yet ..... the x700 / WLAN / ACPI have been taking up all my time. But slowly ticking each niggle of the list! Thanks again.