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Acer TravelMate 333T

Linux on Laptops

News


[Nov. 9th, 2005] After having moved both house and location within the past 6 months, and the old place wasnt condusive to multi-system usuage (terrible apartment wiring), I have started re-using my laptop. I reinstalled everything from scratch and am now using it once again as a wireless browser. Mandriva 10.1 [Mar. 23rd, 2004] The current project I am working on:
1 - building a scrap computer to run linux remotely. Ie. I dont need a video card, monitor, or keyboard/mouse. However, I do need a sound card, and an IR reciever.
2 - Set up this computer to autologin, and autoload xmms on boot. Login to it from my other computers and play, stop, prev, and next the songs in xmms.
3 - Get the IR working so that I can use a universal remote to control xmms from within that room.
Basically what I want to do is setup a remote mp3 jukebox. I want to be able to control the songs and everything without having a keyboard, mouse, and monitor. Want it stealthy.

Linux Infrared Remote Control

[Jan. 28th, 2004] Once again, some updates out of the blue. Added some info on my wireless setup (as much as I remember). Thats really about it.

[Sept. 2, 2003] I have finally updated this page. After almost a year, with not knowing my username or password, I have updated. My user name and password came to me like a bolt of lightning, so here I am. Updating....


Main info


I have a older Acer TravelMate 333T, it was given to me as a present in 1999(I think). It has got to be the thinnest Laptop out there, it is less an inch thick, speed was good at the time, a PII 400 MHZ. I tried to install linux on it when I first got it, and had nothing but problems, so I sold my soul to the devil and loaded Win98. After recently starting a job at a programming company I decided to resurect Linux.


Distribution:I started with Red Hat 7.2, but that distro would not recognize my pcmcia card, which I NEED for surfing. A co-worker who has tons of experience in Linux recommended Debian's woody release. I loaded it and that went great. I have since upgraded Debian to a testing/unstable "sid" version. I like having more up-to-date packages, and sid has been able to deliver those for me.

I am now running Mandriva 10.1. I wanted something a little more cutting edge, and Mandrake/Mandriva has worked incredibly right out of the box. I was impressed. Most of this page is geared towards when I was running Debian. But for the most part EVERYTHING worked out of the box with Mandriva. Even my wireless card.


Kernel: Once again started with different kernel than I am currently running. I started with the Debian default which was 2.2.20-IDEPCI. It booted great and immediatly recognized my network card. My soundcard was not recognized, and APM was turned off, no big deal, but I really like music when I work, so I needed to fix it.

First thing I did was make sure I had all the daemons and everything. I did a apt-get for the Esound Daemon, and played with all audio How-Tos I could get my hands on, but nothing. Then I realized there was no sound support in the Kernel. I tried to find the source so I could throw in the correct modules, but it doesnt exist.

Next thing I did was play around with 2.4.18, I downloaded the source, the images, everything. It immediately recognized the soundcard, but once again I had no network. After a very long time and many many re-compiles, it still did not work (The drivers I need are i82365.o and Tulip_cb.o, which will not compile with 2.4.18 for some reason).

Eventually I decided to try to go back to 2.2.20 since it has network and try to throw the sound drivers in it. I downloaded the pcmcia package and kernel image from the Debian package manager and installed them. After only 15 minutes I had audio and network running simultaneously. If only I had done that in the first place!!

To make a long story longer.....
I ended up with runnning 2.2.20 for a while.

I have since decided that I needed a new kernel, compiled to my likings. So I tracked down the newest release at the time, which happend to be 2.4.20 and downloaded the source. I tried unsucessfully for about 2 weeks to get everything just right, but have since done so.
I have had many an issue with my pcmcia card, but have since got it working. Im not sure its working the way it supposed too, but oh well. Heres the scoop:

I had read somewhere that the tulip driver (for my Linksys PCM200 pcmcia network card) had moved to the hotplug package for the 2.4 kernels, so I installed hotplug, compiled in support in the kernel, and Viola! Well, kinda. I had to modify my init.d files to do a
/sbin/cardctl insert
/sbin/ifup eth0

But now it works. I am not positive that this is what did the trick. Honestly I cant tell you 100% what I did to make it work. Just that it does now. Sometimes I amaze myself with getting stuff to work, then COMPLETELY forgetting how I did it.....

Wireless setup: Well I have wireless networking setup now, and everything appears somewhat normal. I have an Ambicom card which works pretty much flawlessly. I screwed around with linux-wlan0 for a bit and got it working fairly painlessly.

I did however encounter a problem with my APM. When I shut the lid of the laptop, everything goes to suspend. This is all fine and dandy, EXCEPT, my wireless card wont come back. So, I did the next best thing to fixing it, and just turned off APM. Much easier.

Components of my system:

Pcmcia: Linksys pcm200, works great with new kernel, and a little tweaking
These are the network modules I have installed with my kernel. These are both compiled as modules and not directly shoved into the kernel.

EtherExpressPro/100 Support (eepro100 Original Becker Driver)
EtherExpressPro/100 (e100, alternate Intel Driver)

And thats it for Network Devices. I also have
General Setup->Support For HotPluggable Devices=y

General Setup->PCMCIA/CardBus support->Yes to EVERYTHING, including:
PCMCIA/CardBus support
CardBus support
DataBook TCIC host bridge support (probably dont need this one)
i82092 compatible bridge support
i82365 compatible bridge support

Also under General Setup->PCI Hotplug support:
Support for PCI hotplug=y

My Wireless card is an Ambicom, I dont remember the model number, but if you look it up, you should be able to find it.


Audio: ESS Solo 1. Worked great with Red Hat, 2.2.20-IDEPCI does not support audio, which I found out the hard way. 2.2.20 works great. Worked immediatly when updating to 2.4.20 also. Just had to make sure everything was compiled as a MODULE and not directly into the kernel. BTW this used the esssolo1.o driver.


Touchpad/Mouse: no setup needed worked great


USB Mouse:Configured the kernel for USB, making sure I tried like EVERY setup configuration posted on the web. Modified my xf86config file, and away we go.

Details(Kernel Config):

Input Core->Input Core Support =y
Mouse Support=m
(I also did)Keyboard Support=m
USB Support->Support For USB=y
UHCI and OHCI=m
USB Human Interface Device(FULL HID) support=y
HID Input Layer Support=y

Then the XF86Config looks like:

Section "InputDevice"
        Identifier      "USB Mouse"
        Driver          "mouse"
        Option          "SendCoreEvents"        "true"
        Option          "Device"                "/dev/input/mice"
        Option          "Protocol"              "ImPS/2"
        Option          "Emulate3Buttons"       "true"
        Option          "ZAxisMapping"          "4 5"
EndSection


Video: no setup needed worked well, right out of the box.


Modem: haven't tried, I have a high-speed connection wherever I go, so I have no need for a modem


USB: Works well with my Logitech keyboard and mouse. Also works with my new Palm. I had to upgrade the kernel to 2.4.24 for compatitibilty, but works well now.
USB flash drive also works well.


APM: Works. Gives me a nice little applet to show power. Much needed on the laptop.


Serial Port:Works, I have set it up and tested it with my palm pilot.


Thats basically it!
Send me an email (mailto:jdolluc@cinci.rr.com) if you have a more specific question. I may not remember exactly what I did to get it fixed, but I can try to help!