Gentoo Linux on Acer Travelmate 653LC

last update 27. Jul 03

Summary

This is the german version of an Acer Travelmate 653LC. Other versions may behave different!

Part	Name
Processor	Mobile Intel(R) Pentium(R) 4 - M CPU 2.00GHz
Memory	512MB DDR-Ram (upgradeable to 1GB)
Videocard	ATI Technologies Inc Radeon Mobility M7 LW [Radeon Mobility 7500]
Soundcard	Intel Corp. 82801CA/CAM AC'97 Audio Controller
Harddisk	40GB Ultra-ATA 100
USB	USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0
NIC	Broadcom Corporation BCM4401 100Base-T
APM
ACPI	Works since Bios-update to version A34
Touchpad
Mouse	Typhoon USB1.1 7 button mouse
Function Keys	It's getting better and better!
IRDA
PCMCIA
Card Slots	from o2micro
CDRW
DVD

System information:

output of lspci: lspci.txt
current kernel configuration (kernel 2.4.20-gentoo-rc6): .config

Processor

The gcc3.2.2 seems to be a little buggy on Pentium 4 Processors. So i decided to use the following CFLAGS to compile my System: CFLAGS="-march=pentium4 -mcpu=pentium3 -O3 -pipe"
With these settings i actually didn't get any problems yet.

Videocard

Works out of the box with the radeon driver and XFree 4.3.0. (see XF86Config)

Soundcard

This onboard soundcard work with the i810_audio kernel-module. Remember that the soundcore module must also be loaded.

Harddisk

Performance Optimization with:
# hdparm -d1 -A1 -m16 -u1 -a64 /dev/hda
Enables DMA and other safe performance-enhancing options.

USB

You will have to use the ehci-hcd module to obtain USB 2.0

NIC

You will need to compile the bcm4400 kernel module. Google for it! (Gentoo has the sources in the portage tree)

APM

With the current kernel vesion 2.4.20 APM works, but didn't manage to power the notebook down correctly. Although the fan didn't manage to slow down. It ran at full speed. That's why I tried ACPI

ACPI

Thanks to a hint of Mikhail the ACPI problem is solved now. The trick is to update the installed bios. My previous bios version was A22 and I updated it now to A34. The kernel I'm using at the moment (2.4.20-gentoo-rc6) compiles without problems and the notebook doesn't hang on boot anymore! (My current kernel configuration can be found under .config)
At the moment I have compiled ACPI into the kernel and load the following modules at startup:

ac.o
battery.o
button.o
fan.o
processor.o
thermal.o

I havn't tried suspending at the moment, but with ACPI enabled the notebook turns off itself and I am able to monitor thermal, processor, fan, button, ac and battery.
if someone has any experiences with suspend etc. please let me know (bernd@bernd-linz.de).

Touchpad

Works great with the Synaptics TouchPad Driver. Just copy the synaptics module to your XFree modules directory (usually /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/input/), load the module with 'Load "synaptics"' in your XFree configuration file and add/replace a few lines there like mentioned in the packages INSTALL file. See my XF86Config file for more details.

Mouse

I wanted my Typhoon USB mouse and the internal touchpad simultaneous. First make sure that the following modules are loaded:

ehci-hcd #for USB2.0
uhci #fallback for USB1.1
input
hid
mousedev

Make the entrys in the XFree configuration file like this.
Finally add these two lines to a startup script (e.g. .xinitrc):
#xmodmap -e "pointer = 1 2 3 6 7 4 5"
#imwheel -k -p -b '67'
They bring the buttons and the scrollwheel in the right order and start imwhell for scrolling purposes.

Function Keys

The acer function keys are only working partly yet. Working:

NumLock
ScrollLock
Pos1
End
Touchpad on/off

Thanks to the Bios-Update hint from Mikhail (see ACPI) these buttons are now functionating too:

Display on/off
Brightness control

Thanks to the hints from Ansgar and Christoph respectively the awesome page of Bernd now these three function-keys are working too:

Sound on/off
Sound level

A short abstract of how to them working in english (according to Bernd's Page):
1. Extract your actual keycodes mapping table to a file with xmodmap -pke > keycodes.map
2. Edit this file so that the following lines do match:
```
keycode 160 = XF86AudioMute
keycode 174 = XF86AudioLowerVolume
keycode 176 = XF86AudioRaiseVolume
```
3. Activate the new associations with the command xmodmap keycodes.map. Now the keycodes for the sound functionkey have names and are accessible under X. (you can write this command in your .xsession file to run it automatically on X startup, or - for my KDE - add it to autostart)
4. Now actions must be assigned to the new associations. Under KDE i used the kmenueditor:
```
"XF86AudioLowerVolume"      setmixer vol -3
"XF86AudioRaiseVolume"      setmixer vol +3
"XF86AudioMute"             /home/bernd/bin/audio_mute
```
  I took the audio_mute script also from Bernd's Page

Unfortunately still not working are:

Display switch
Sleep (can perhaps be evaluated and used with ACPI)

For any help about this I would be very grateful (mail)

IRDA

Works (Many thanks to Christoph and Bernd's Page ! I had to do the following steps:

Load these modules:


irda.o
ircomm.o
ircomm-tty.o
irtty
irport

```
/bin/setserial /dev/ttyS1 uart none   
```
(Close the none existing serial port and free the used resources)

modprobe nsc-ircc irq=3 io=0x02f8 dma=3 dongle_id=0x09

(loads the module with the correct parameters)

```
irattach irda0 -s   
```
(creates the device irda0)
Only for my palm I did a
```
ln -s /dev/ircomm0 /dev/pilot
```

PCMCIA

Working with the following compiled into the kernel:

CONFIG_PCMCIA=y
CONFIG_CARDBUS=y
# CONFIG_TCIC is not set
# CONFIG_I82092 is not set
CONFIG_I82365=y

To identificate and configure the cards I use the pcmcia-tools cardmgr and cardctl.

Card Slots

Completely not working at the moment. No LINUX support. But many thanks to Christoph! He wrote an E-Mail to the vendors (o2micro) support an became the following answer:
> The Smartcard Reader is not a PCI device so that is why you may be seeing
> such a strange device ID. The reader is implemented as a PCMCIA device
> integrated into the Cardbus controller.
>
> As for linux, we are working on updating our driver. We are still in
> debate as to how to approach this release. Some of us want semi "Open
> Source" while others want to only ship binary.
>
> I will keep you on the "Needs Linux SmartCard Reader Driver" list.
So do write an E-Mail to (info@o2micro.com) too! Help us show them that we are interested in a driver!

Gentoo Linux on Acer Travelmate 653LC

Summary

System information:

This page is still under construction. More details soon available. If you have any tricks or hints for me please mail me.