acer5050

last update 12.11.06

I was looking for a good 64bit laptop and a cheap one as well. I found this ACER at Circuit city for $750
It came with windows MCE 2005 and a HD with 3 partitions
1. 4.5G restore partition
2. 58G system
3. 58G drive D

I replaced the HD and installed windows XP Pro+Linux
the tested distributions were :

32 Bit
mandriva 2007 Powerpack
64 Bit
openSuse 10.2beta1
fedora 6

Hardware

General Hardware Specifications of Acer 5050-5410:

Hardware Components	Status under Linux	Notes
AMD Turion 64X2 1.6 ghz TL50	Works	No special procedure required during installation
14.1" LCD Display	works	Generic LCD, nothing special
ATI Radeon Xpress 1100*	Partially Works	read VGA
1GB DDR2	works	Nothing special
120Gb HDD 5400 rpm	Works	replace with 100G 7200 RPM
Dual layer DVD+RW drive	Works	Nothing special
Integrated 10/100 Ethernet	Works	No special procedures
Integrated 802.11G Wireless card	Works	read wifi
Internal 56k	Untested	Untested
AC97' Audio (ati SB450)	no	read audio
3 USB 2.0 Ports	Works	nothing special
Media keyboard	Works	read keyboard
suspend	Works	read suspend
card reader 5 in 1	no	no support for it in Linux

Special Keys

Email key	Does not work
Browser key	Does not work
Sleep key (Fn + F4)	Does not work
Screen Blank Key (Fn + F6)	Works.
Touchpad On/Off Toggle Key (Fn + F7)	Works.
Sound Mute Toggle Key (Fn + F8)	Does not work
Audio player control keys (Fn + Home/PgUp/PgDn/End)	Does not work
Volume Control Keys (Fn + UpArrow/DownArrow)	Does not work
Screen Brightness Control Keys (Fn + LeftArrow or RightArrow)	Works.

* on acer spec the ati use 128M of shard memory but in the bios I saw that I can set it to up to 256M
lspci

installation process :

mandriva 2007 Powerpack
install1ed using dvd media with no problems, the sound worked on the first boot and stopped after the second boot.
I replaced the fglrx driver with a new one from the ati site
the "suspend-to-ram" worked out of the box but not the "suspend-to-disk"
the cpu scaling didnt work (I loaded the powernow-k8 manually and the powernow run but didnt change the speed as far as I could tell)

openSuse 10.2beta1 64Bit
I installed suse using NFS server and the first boot was slaw. I got a lot of errors about the sata controller.
I skipped the DSL/ISDN/MODEM setup at the wizard and added 2 more software sources and logged in to the system.
the wifi didnt work out of the box and I needed to install the development package and compile the driver.
the media keyboard buttons were working (2 out of 4 )
lsmod
messages log
P.S read the mini howto boot into setup to save CD

fedora 6
I installed FC using NFS server with no problems during the install but again (as I expected)- the wifi card did not work.
I installed the wifi and the audio died as expected. none of the Media keyboard were working and I needed the install it manually

VGA
the ATI xpress 1100 is o/b low end vga for laptop. On mandriva I used the built-in fglrx driver and the new one from ati site. the new (2.29.6) is a little bit faster (i get 220 FPS)

WIFI
on mandriva 2007 i get the driver built in (ver 0.9.2) but I am using the new version because the old one is not working with kernel 2.6.18 and up
the new version is simple to install (lass the 5 min) and working perfect

AUDIO
on all linux distributions I had the same problem: the sound card was working on the first boot and stopped after that
I tested it with alsa 1.0.12 and 1.0.13 no meter what i did, I kept getting the same results. I will keep working on it.
on suse 10.1 its not even working on the first boot :(

KEYBOARD

SUSPEND
the "suspend-to-ram" is working on all distributions but the suspend to disk isnt
I didnt spend time testing it because I am not using it maybe if I will use it in the future I will check it out

BIOS
DISCLAIMER: This information is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. If you fry your system by using this information that’s _your_ problem. Not mine. I accept no responsibility for what happens with this information whatsoever.
I found a new bios that fixes the sound/wifi problem in ACER Europe ftp site (num 3109.zip)
I used the software withing the zip to update the bios after I backed up the old bios. The first time I tried it - the bios burn fail with error on chk_sum (or something similar) but after I tried to burn the old bios I got the same error. I decided to ignore the error and disable the chk.
After I burned the new bios I recognized a change in the ati VGA card restricted to 128M instead of 256 (the setting on the older bios), but my wifi/sound problems were FIXED so new my laptop is Linux compatible
Here is a link to my old BIOS and the new one

Email (feel free to send any comments/doubts/solutions/etc.) to nadav{do not spam}.mavor.com - please put "5050" in the subject - it helps me to find your email among spam.
Sorry for my English. I'm not a native speaker, but did my best to write the document in English with the help of my wife .