Linux on Acer Travelmate 353TEV

Just a few notes, although everything worked out of the box.

For the LCD-only mode and no fancy VGAOut orgy, 4 MB of Video RAM are enough in the BIOS settings.

• Mouse (automatically set, no need for changes). The two additional mouse buttons in the middle are not usable (yet). The imps/2 protocol does not work.

  Section "InputDevice"
    Driver        "mouse"
    Identifier    "Mouse[1]"
    Option        "Device"        "/dev/psaux"
    Option        "Emulate3Buttons"       "on"
    Option        "Name"          "AutoDetected"
    Option        "Protocol"      "ps/2"
    Option        "Vendor"        "AutoDetected"
  EndSection

• Display (automatically set, no need for changes)

  Section "Device"
    BoardName     "AutoDetected"
    Driver        "trident"
    Identifier    "Device[0]"
    Option        "dpms"
    VendorName    "AutoDetected"
  EndSection

X reports the chipset to be a Trident CyberBlade/DSTN/Ai1.

I simply chose `use the default' during installation.

• Alsa Driver: snd-card-ali5451
  OR
  

• Kernel OSS driver: trident (Ali Audio Accelerated)

I verified that the sound on/off key (FN+F8) and the attenuation keys (FN+Arrow Up, FN+Arrow Down) generate key codes. These may be mapped to programs. I did not yet do so, though.

Automatically set, no need for changes. DHCP worked.

• Driver: eepro100

Well, so and so. It speaks Synaptics PS/2 version of the protocol. That is quite compatible with a PS/2 mouse, so X works out of the box, but the extension buttons are unavailable. Furthermore, sometimes under X the hot spot of the mouse suddenly jumps some pixels to the left, so that it is not where you see the pointer on the screen. This is very weird. It does not happen frequently, though.

A mouse on the extension PS/2 port also works but switches off the touch pad.

An additional USB mouse can be used together with the touchpad using GPM. Read about that here.

Read this, too.

The synps2 protocol did not work for me. After using that protocol, the mouse went mad again, and had to be reset as described before. I learned that this is due to a problem in the early 2.4.x kernels (a fix is described here).

Better yet, you can use a newer kernel (>= 2.4.9), which basically has the patch applied and sets the default in such a way that the mouse works by default. I have to check that, though, but the source code of the corresponding file in the Kernel looks perfect.

I had hoped I could configure two screens under X, but there is only one PCI device, so probably not. It seems that that's quite usual for notebooks.

For use with the kernel 2.4.7 PCMCIA drivers, the SuSE configure script /etc/init.d/pcmcia had to be modified to contain the following line at the beginning to specify the driver module:

PCMCIA=yenta_socket

If you use the separate pcmcia-cs package, the line must be:

PCMCIA=i82365

This is because the 2.4.7 native driver with the same name only handles ISA cards.

After that, PCMCIA worked (I tried both ways: Kernel and separate package).

When I tried to use a wireless LAN card, I only needed to change on character in the config file to get access (DHCP was automatically used). In /etc/pcmcia/network.opts:

DHCP="y"

• Checked that the IrDA port talks to my Nokia 8210 mobile phone. irdadump reveals that the phone is seen by the computer.

• pppd worked using the wvdial package. I could log into another machine via the IR-connected phone.

Normal speed works, the IrDA port appears as a normal serial device. You can attach it with irattach and the SuSE rc-script does that.

I think even FIR might be available since there is a module in the 2.4.7 kernel (ali-ircc) that loads fine and detects a chipset it knows (TFDS6000). I did not try very hard, but I could not use the modem with that driver, though. irdadump also was quiet with that driver loaded. So I don't know whether it can be made to work.

FIR is not very important for the modem connection, though.

The usb-ohci driver was used automatically and does not complain. It happily reports an Ali M5237 USB. Furthermore, when I plug in a USB mouse, usbmgr detects it and loads the appropriate driver.

For using both the touch pad and the USB mouse at the same time under X, you can use gpm in repeater mode:

gpm -t ps2 -m /dev/psaux -M -t ps2 -m /dev/usbmouse0 -R

A digital camera works at the USB-port, too. It appears as a new SCSI storage device that can be mounted then. Very easy. To make it automount, I used murasaki.

The ports need an additional cable that is plugged into a big connector on the backside of the Laptop. There seems to be no active parts in this cable since in contrast to the DVD combo, this works even if connected after boot. I tested it with an Atmel AVR Programmer and it worked.

Originally, I wrote this: The five additional keys on top of the keyboard do not create key codes. They seem to be unusable under Linux, which is very unfortunate since a keyboard cannot have enough special keys.

I used showkeys -s to see that no key code is generated for any of these keys.

Furthermore, the nice LED built into one of the keys to indicate email is not available. This would also be neat.

But now, Davide Guerri has written a patch to make the keys and the LED accessible and Leif Jensen has it on his page and helped to improve it. It is here.

Thanks a lot!