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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi
F8-x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi
by
SvenGöran Bergh
Table of Contents
1 Introduction....................................................................................................3
1.1 Version.....................................................................................................3
1.2 Quick reference guide..............................................................................3
2 Installation.................................
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi 10.3.3 Other observations........................................................................20 10.4 TV-out...................................................................................................21 10.4.1 Load detection...............................................................................21 10.4.2 NTSC or PAL.................................................................................21 10.4.3 Initialization..................
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi 1 Introduction This document is primarily designed for my own records for future use. However, it is always nice if it may help others to get started with Linux on their laptops. The steps to get things to play on the Acer Ferrari 3400 Lmi are described here. Most procedures are general and may be useful for other hardware as well. ! ! ! WARNING ! ! ! However, I must warn those of you that still enjoy the luxury of an independent mind and free will. St
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi Hardware Status Details Notes CPU OK Mobile AMD Athlon 64 No configuration needed. 3000+ Frequency scaling works out of the box. PCI Bridge OK VIA VT8237 No configuration needed. [K8T800/K8T890 South] Display OK 15” SXGA TFT No configuration needed. (1400x1050) Graphics OK ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 Full functionality with the card 128 MB, 8x AGP radeon driver, see below. RAM OK 512 MB DRAM (extended No configuration needed. to 2GB) Hard drive OK Original:
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi Hardware Status Details Notes PC-card OK Texas Instruments No configuration needed. PCI4510 PC card/Cardbus Bluetooth OK Cambridge Silicon Radio No configuration needed, see comments below. IEEE 1394 OK Texas Instruments No configuration needed, Firewire PCI4510 IEEE-1394 see comments below. USB OK VIA, 4xUSB 2.0 No configuration needed. Infrared OK See below for configuration. Card reader OK 5-in-1 (MMC, SM, SD, MS No configuration needed. [Pro]) 2 Inst
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi vmlinuz initrd=initrd.img libata.ignore_hpa=1 3 Hard drive No hassle what so ever, but my own reflection is that the standard hard drive does not match the “high end gear” profile of this laptop. When the laptop was released 120 MB drives was the latest of the greatest and 100MB drives were off the shelf goods in most stores. However, a smaller drive would have been ok at a higher speed, at least 5400rpm. 3.1 Upgrading the drive I am addicted to VMware
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi 4.1 Potential problems There are no problems regarding loading modules or mounting an external IEEE 1394 drive, and if you are patient you managed to browse the content as well. The problems starts when you try to transfer larger amounts of data. The process stalls and chokes up the system log with messages like: kernel: ieee1394: sbp2: aborting sbp2 command kernel: scsi1 : destination target 0, lun 0 kernel: command: Write (10): 2a 00 02 e1 bc 5
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi 4.2 Configuring Firewire If you experience the problems mentioned above, and you are running kernel version 2.6.13 or earlier, put the following line in your /etc/modprobe.config: options sbp2 serialize_io=1 max_speed=2 The serialize_io=1 option tells the scsi drivers to only send one scsi command at a time. Unfortunately, this setting has a small impact on performance, but it is the fix that makes things work. In kernel version 2.6.14 the default value
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi optimizing performance you just want things to work. 5 USB USB support works as expected. I have noticed no problems whatsoever with the USB ports. Especially with the desktop enhancements introduced with FC5 it works like a charm. Absolutely no configuration needed. 6 5-in-1 Card reader The 5in1 card reader utilizes the USB interface and is operational right after installation. Analogous to the USB ports there is no hassle at all. 7 PC-card I have
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi Config Button Work Comments Mail yes x x E-mail button, ex: launch Thunderbird WWW yes x x WWW button, ex: launch Firefox P1 yes x x x User button, ex: launch NetBeans P2 yes x x x User button, ex: launch VMware FnF1 yes x x x User button, ex: FnF2 yes x x x User button, ex: FnF3 yes x x x User button, ex: FnF4 yes Sleep-button recognized by ACPI. FnF5 yes x x Toggle external display, XF86Display FnF6 yes Dim display, no configuration needed FnF7 yes
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi me was: Button X key-code Default X key symbols Mail 236 - WWW 178 - Fn-F4 223 none, but triggers KPowersave suspend->RAM Fn-F5 214 none, but generate a Capability changed event that is received by the X-server. Fn-F8 160 - Fn-NumLk 77 Num_Lock Fn-Scr Lk 78 Scroll_Lock Fn-Home 97 Home Fn-End 103 End Fn-up 176 - Fn-down 174 - These are the buttons that are the simplest to get working. Save these X key codes for future use. First we need to get the other key
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi Button scan-code P1 e074 P2 e073 Fn-F1 e025 Fn-F2 e026 Fn-F3 e027 8.1.3 Linux key-codes 3. Next, figure out what Linux keycodes that are available by looking at the Linux scancode – keycode mapping. # getkeycodes Plain scancodes xx (hex) versus keycodes (dec) for 183 (0x010x53) scancode equals keycode 0x50: 80 81 82 83 99 0 86 87 0x58: 88 117 0 0 95 183 184 185 0x60: 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0x68: 0 0 0 0 0 0
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi # Buttons: P1 P2 setkeycodes e074 151 e073 152 # # Buttons: FnF1 FnF2 FnF3 setkeycodes e025 131 e026 132 e027 133 5. In order to avoid a restart to load these setting, issues the very same commands. # setkeycodes e074 151 e073 152 # setkeycodes e025 131 e026 132 e027 133 8.1.4 X key-codes revisited 6. Repeat step 1 and use xev to figure out what X keycodes these buttons got. I got th
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi keycode 135 = XF86Launch3 keycode 140 = XF86Launch4 keycode 248 = XF86Launch5 keycode 214 = XF86Display keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume 8. The setting above are loaded the next time X is started, but to load them without a restart of X do: # xmodmap verbose /etc/X11/Xmodmap ... ! ! executing work queue ! keycode 0xec = XF86Mail keycode 0xb2 = XF86WWW keycode 0xc9 = XF
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi 9.1 Suspend I am glad to see that both Suspend to Disk and Suspend to RAM works like a charm. Previous there has been a lot of struggle, if at all possible, to get a stable and reliable ACPI support. OK, I know that suspend has been around for a while by now, but hand on the heart has it been user friendly and reliable? I have not had that experience. So a reliable ACPI support right out of the box feels really luxurious. Even the special sleep key,
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi + Svideo or VGA0 + Svideo. This is a common limitation for most graphics hardware. Note: The output names differ depending on the driver used. The names used in this document relate to the radeon driver. If you use some other driver use xrandr q to find out the proper names (provided that it supports RandR). 10.1.1 The radeon driver Support for the ATI Mobility Radeon 9700 chip in the Ferrari is provided by the radeon driver. This driver supports al
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi the fly by the command line tool xrandr, and there is no need to restart the X server. 10.2.1 Virtual screen size RandR works its magic by means of a virtual screen that is larger than the a single monitor. The size of the virtual screen is reported as the maximum value by the command: # xrandr q Screen 0: minimum 320 x 200, current 1400 x 1050, maximum 1400 x 1200 ... In this case the size is 1400x1200, which is the default virtual screen size for this
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi 1280x720 60.0 1024x768 60.0 800x600 60.3 640x480 59.9 Svideo disconnected (normal left inverted right x axis y axis) In the xrandr q output above we see that the new virtual screen size is recognized in the maximum value. Furthermore, we see our three supported outputs, VGA0 (external display), LVDS (internal display), Svideo (TVout). For the report above an external monitor is connected but not activated. Still
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi we design a script to run once FnF5 is pressed. The FnF5 button should provide a simple, basic and robust functionality that works for any external monitor. I prefer to toggle through the available connected external outputs, while keeping the internal monitor alive. Furthermore, each connected external output is present in two operating modes. First the external output mirrors the internal display, then it extends the desktop by operating sidebysid
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F8x86_64 on the Acer Ferrari 3400LMi 10.3.1 Simple benchmark In order to compare different settings we need some kind of benchmark tool. A simple tool that comes with the glxutils package found in most distributions is glxgears. It may be rough, rudimentary and lacking a lot of hype features, but it is present and sufficient for our needs. An interesting exercise is to explicitly disable hardware acceleration and comparing the result with the default xorg.conf. Without hardware accelerati
