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Hardware Components
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Status under Linux
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Notes |
| Pentium M Processor, 1.6 GHz (730 / 533Mhz FSB) | Works | No special procedure required during installation. |
| 15" SXGA+ TFT Display | Works | Select Generic LCD Display in Installer |
| NVIDIA 64MB Video (1400x1050 ) | Works | Download NVIDIA Linux driver |
| 512MB, DDR2, 2DIMMs | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| 80 GB Ultra ATA 100 Hard Drive | Works | works as hdc, but should be used as sda |
| No Floppy Drive | N/A | USB Floppy works |
| Integrated Network Card, Broadcom Tingon3 | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| Internal 56k Modem, Intel 810 | Works | No special procedure required during installation |
| DVD-Super Multi Dual Layer | Works, see below | Conflicts with USB on IRQ14 when on ide0, use scsi |
| Internal miniPCI IPW2200 | Works | Uses IPW2200 package |
| AC97 Soundcard | Works, ALSA driver | No special procedure required during installation |
This laptop is operating under Kernel version [2.6.12.2]
First of all I had a nightmare getting this laptop to work with a recent kernel, all my first attempts to use a 2.6 kernel died on boot. If you have no need to use a 2.6 kernel a 2.4 kernel will save you a lot of headaches! Although in the same breath I can't in good conscience recommend a 2.4 kernel!
My first problem was that I was only getting a blank screen upon boot. This was resolved by adding the kernel parameters:
gentoo noacpi acpi=off |
This at least allowed me to boot past the boot loader, but is only a work around as later you will want to enable ACPI to get all the yummy features. I've recently found the pci=noacpi parameter, this might resolve the conflict without disabling acpi completely, but I haven't tried it.
My second problem was that even after booting, the distribution (I tried a few) simply could not find my DVD ROM drive. Yes I know I'd just booted from it, loaded the kernel, and ran the install script but after it left emulation mode, there was no DVD ROM drive. Which made installation a pain. I discovered the reason behind this was that the ide0 channel was conflicting with the USB on irq14 when using the default ide driver in the 2.6 kernel tree. For some reason kernel 2.4 was fine. I haven't looked too deeply as to why this was the case, but I have discovered a solution.I was using gentoo 2005.0 which used the 2.6 kernel (which didn't work) so I swapped to an old CD and used gentoo 2004.0, which worked to some extent but this particular distribution had a fault in it and even after using the cdcache kernel parameter I couldn't change the CD to the 2005.0 one to proceed with installation. I ended up using an ancient gentoo 1.4 CD to boot my system using a 2.4 kernel using the cdcache kernel parameter, then manually copying the 2005.0 installation files over (stage3 and portage in my case) and then proceeding as normal with the install. I'm sure that any 2.4 kernel distribution would work perfectly fine as a host operating system to install gentoo from.
However, this still doesn't help me with the ide0 channel conflicting with the USB. So after some googleing, I found this article that was extremely helpful. I had to compile a custom kernel that disables the IDE completely and then enables the PIIX driver (under the SCSI subsystem). I also had to change a source file in the libata.h library file. The kernel identifies the hard drive as sda and the DVD as sr0. Previously my hard drive was hdc and the dvd was hdb
cut and paste from above article:
In 'menuconfig' I disabled IDE completely (CONFIG_IDE is not set)
and enabled CONFIG_SCSI_ATA_PIIX (in low-level SCSI drivers).
After building kernel and installing grub, my system could see harddrive
as sda, but couldnt see DVD drive (it was partly detected during kernel boot,
but with strange numbers and no drive name).
When I change include/linux/libata.h like mentioned in that topic
(changed #undef ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI to #define ATA_ENABLE_ATAPI),
rebuilt the kernel and rebooted everything worked - my disc and DVD
were dtected correctly, and were visible as /dev/sda and /dev/sr0.
Next thing I noticed, is that hard disc under 2.4 (and visible as /dev/hdc)
was working horribly slow. It has DMA disabled and no way to enable it.
After those changes (to /dev/sda) it works correctly
After I got the custom kernel up and running everything went smoothly, I was able to download under windows the ipw2200 package, and then install it under gentoo. Once my wireless was up and running (which works perfectly) I did an emerge sync && emerge -U world. You have to be careful installing things like ALSA and the NVIDIA kernel as these seem to destroy all your good work with the custom kernel. I'm sure that with some tweaking things can be made to get along happily but I'm far more interested in actually using the laptop for work than playing with customisations. Hopefully someone will post another (more complete) article on how to tweak the 4651LMI to peak performance and I can steal all their good work!
Hopefully this helped some people with the same laptop get up and running with Linux. I found very little documentation on this problem, but considering this is such a recent model laptop this isn't surprising. I shall hope to update this guide as and when I have the time, and maybe add some screen shots. Feel free to contact me with any questions, if I can answer I'll happy to. Its also nice to hear from people having success with Linux on an Acer 4650.