On the tip of a plastic spring

First, let me say BAHHHH!!!!

Now, my Amilo's touchpad left button has stopped working - it even sounds physically broken... Anyway, the technicians at store of which I bought this laptop from said:"This was caused by improper use so warranty is the null and void".

Unhappy, I've decided to take it to my own hands. In order to check it out I had to almost strip the laptop entirely. I mean, the only 2 thing that were left complete were the motherboard to the bottom panel and the screen which was just seperated as is from the rest of the machine.

I was amazed to find out that I had 3 broken plastic springs which are suppose to place both of the buttons in place: 2 broken on the left button an 1 on the right button. More then that, I found out that a plastic spring was completely missing as if it was never there. Some further investigation showed me that it was truly never there and the lack of it was the reason that it broke in the first place! It was designed to take the pressure but in order to lower the manufacturing costs this stabilizer spring has just been left out + reassuring the purchase of a newer model when the old has supposedly become cripple.

BAHHHHH!!!!! When I'll have some free time (probably in 4 months from now), I'll install some real springs below the buttons - that should be suffice to make it last for at least 2 more years.

acpi acer hotkey pooler for my amilo

Recently I've started a fork of the acer_acpi kernel module to also pool the 3 hotkeys.
On another note, the patch I've made for acerhk was finally entered the mainstream.

I've moved on to acer_acpi since it supports 64bit distros as well.

I'm up to my ears in homeworks and projects (last year to end my undergraduate degree - yeppieee) so it will probably go gold by May 08.

Work notes:
1) listen for _Q10 (wireless key) event - after it is done, also add the browser and fancy fan buttons.
2) rig the wireless button to run the wireless activation/deactivation method in acer_acpi
3) ask for merge and go mainstream.

some of (1) has already been done.

This will also make the lives of Amilo LI1718 owners much easier...

UPDATE 8/12/07: current work is posted on http://fscamiloa16xx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/acer_acpi_hkey/
The AML Method PHSR change the values of INF (button id) ,BCMD (0x8B = button pressed) and SMIC (0x00/0xff). When loading this module with debug=4 and press one of the 3 buttons, you'll see (in dmesg) that it sensed the key press. Bad news, SMIC is not updated to 0 as expected and therefore it will act as if the button is being pressed over and over again. Some mutexes are MIA and should be added. acpi-devel list seems to be inactive - so I'll keep searching for a way to acquire an AML mutex...

Behold at that installation script

Finally it is here!

The auto installation script for Amilo A1650G for 32bit Ubuntus (Feisty,Gutsy) is here.

Features:
1) Make the hotkeys work - all of them (besides change display)!
2) Notification bubbles and Cool n' Quiet - done by info2 @ubuntuforums.
3) Make wireless work - only if you have the Atheros 5005g. I'll be happy to add Broadcom if I had testers with that configuration.

Requirements:
1) 32bit Ubuntu >= 7.04
2) Amilo A1650G or similarly hotkeyd laptop
3) internet connection

HowTo:
Open a console and run:
wget http://fscamiloa16xx.googlecode.com/files/fsca16xx.sh
chmod 755 fsca16xx.sh
sudo ./fsca16xx.sh

Wait a bit till it's Done.
Log out, Log back in and viola!

Last Edited: 29/8/07

Amilo A1650g the overheater

Recently I've been having some serious overheating issues with this awful laptop (the main reason for the hatred is the video card).

I didn't understood why all of a sudden, Feisty has become "heavy" as have suse and mandriva.... well, suse was already heavy to begin with. tried: Mandriva 2007.1 (spring), Opensuse Gnome 10.3 beta 2, Ubuntu Feisty and Gutsy...

I used acpi -t to track the temperatures and I was able to reach 87 Celsius degrees and have occasional shutdowns (+90 degrees)...

And yesterday I found out why.

My laptop's cooling ribs were clogged up for good - I even found a feather there. I disassembled the largest panel in the back of the laptop and then just the fan (without the cooling ribs). I used a slightly wet cue-tip to clean the fan side of the cooling ribs. The amount of dust there were unbelievable!

Now I'm glad to say that it's working again at nominal temperatures. WinXP in Virtualbox helped me reach a nice temperature of 67 Celsius degrees. It's sad though that if I ran Firefox into a site with a rich flash content - I'll reach 75 Celsius degress, which is much higher then running a virtual machine. Someone have to make the flash plugin better!

FSC Amilo A1650g Ubuntu Fiesty 32bit How-To

Last Updated: 3/7/2007

3/7/2007 Added Distribution ready wireless button support (see "way 3") which also fixes the wireless scan/connect issue when enabling/disabling the wireless led.
26/6/2007 Added: Distribution ready wireless button support (see "way 2")

Specs:
AMD Turion 64 ML-32 / 1.8 GHz
512MB RAM
60GB HD
ATI Xpress 200M (Shared) - Crippled By Design
SD/MS CardReader
TV-OUT
CRT-OUT
PCMCIA Slot
Firewire
LAN
Modem
4 USB
DVDRW+
Atheros 802.11a/b/g
1200x800 Display
Fancy HotKeys

How-To
Installation did most of the magic. The following were automagically detected and operational:
AMD Turion 64 ML-32 / 1.8 GHz
512MB RAM
60GB HD
Firewire
LAN
4 USB
DVDRW+
Builtin SD/MS CardReader


The Rest is as follows

ATI Xpress 200M
FGLRX Doesn't work well for me, suspend sometimes stuck at turn off etc...
Xgl is a mess in Ubuntu so Compiz/Beryl is out of the question for now till AIGLX in fglrx.
On that front, a bunch of good faithed people has gathered to hack the RS480 down, so hopefully by the next version of Ubuntu, the opensource driver will be able to supply 3D support (with AIGLX) for the CBD Xpress 200M.

Fancy HotKeys
Most of the HotKeys are recognized and are configurable. The following HotKeys were detected upon install:
HELP, SLEEP, BLANK_SCREEN, BRIGHTNESS UP/DOWN, SCROLL LOCK, NUM LOCK, HOME, END.
MUTE, VOL UP/DOWN - might needed some tuning which was done through gnome's System->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts.
WWW_BROWSER became operational after acerhk was loaded (read ahead).

To get wireless button working there are 3 ways:

way 1:compile a prepatched version of acerhk - this will add support for all of the missing buttons (wireless, browser, fancy fan, display...)
downside: You have to repeat this process upon each kernel update.

I've set up a place in google code for this - http://fscamiloa16xx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Fiesty/
1) Run uname -r at the console, if there exist a folder that matches the output and you are using the 32bit version of ubnutu. download the file and put it in:
/lib/modules/$(uname -r)/kernel/drivers/input/misc/
you'll have to overwrite the existing file.
If such folder doesn't exist, you can use the patch I made against acerhk 0.5.35 recompile it and put the acerhk.ko file in the folder mentioned above ('make install' places it in the wrong folder).
(patch is at http://code.google.com/p/fscamiloa16xx/downloads/)

2) add at the end of the file /etc/modules:
acerhk

3) add at the end of the file /etc/modprobe.d/options
options acerhk autowlan=1

Restart and start using the buttons.
(or:
sudo rmmod acerhk
sudo modprobe acerhk
)

2. way 2: force the acerhk that comes with ubuntu to a certain settings
downside: this will make the wireless and browser button operational, but the display will be recognized as ''start media" and fancy fan will not be operational

1) add at the end of the file /etc/modules:
acerhk

2) add at the end of the file /etc/modprobe.d/options
options acerhk force_series=5020 autowlan=1

Restart and start using the buttons.
(or:
sudo rmmod acerhk
sudo modprobe acerhk force_series=5020 autowlan=1
)

3. way 3: dont use acerhk at all
downside: none of the three buttons above the keyboard will be operational, wireless will always be switched on regardless of the wireless led state.
upside: WIRELESS IS FINALLY SCANNING AND CONNECTING WITHOUT A HASSLE!!! YYYPPPPIIIEEEE!

1) add at the end of the file /etc/modprobe.d/options
options ath_pci rfkill=0


Atheros 802.11b/g
To make this baby running you should fix the hotkeys (as stated above) and then press the wireless button. the wireless card driver works out-of-the-box except for the fact that area scanning is awful - you'll have to know the accesspoints names and enter them manually in order to connect. (unless way 3 was used).

To be updated on good news.

FSC Amilo A1650g Ubuntu Edgy 32bit How-To

Specs:
AMD Turion 64 ML-32 / 1.8 GHz
512MB RAM
60GB HD
ATI Xpress 200M (Shared) - Crippled By Design
SD/MS CardReader
TV-OUT
CRT-OUT
PCMCIA Slot
Firewire
LAN
Modem
4 USB
DVDRW+
Atheros 802.11a/b/g
1200x800 Display
Fancy HotKeys

How-To
Installation did most of the magic. The following were automagically detected and operational:
AMD Turion 64 ML-32 / 1.8 GHz
512MB RAM
60GB HD
Firewire
LAN
4 USB
DVDRW+
SD/MS CardReader

The Rest is as follows

ATI Xpress 200M
Since ATI support the DRM's global warning, the opensource radeon driver for the ATI Xpress 200M can only support 2D stuff. Therefore I had to install the crippled ATI fglrx driver to properly use some features of the Video Card.
Installing was done by the Restricted Driver Manager

After the installation of the packages, I had to run:

sudo aticonfig --tvf PAL-B --ovf Xv

To ensure that the TVOUT output will be PAL-B (you may replace with your local tv format) and that video overlay will be Xv.

TV-OUT + CRT-OUT
The TV output plug on this laptop is SVIDEO while my TV's input is RCA. It took me a year to figure out the following method:
requirements - A cable equipped with an SVIDEO plug on one side and 2 RCA on the other side, an adapter plug with 2 RCA inputs and 1 RCA output.
1) Plug the SVIDEO to the laptop and only 1 of the 2 outputs to the adapter plug input. Plug the plug adapter output to the tv input.
2) Run the following command on the console (NOT AS ROOT!):

aticonfig --enable-monitor lvds, tv
aticonfig --ovon 1 #<----only if you wish to use Xv to watch movies, #else change the video player setting to X11
3) Now the picture will be shown on the tv in greyscale - if not return to step 1, connect the ouput which was not connected and disconnect the one that is connected (in other words, switch between them) and then retry step 2.
4) Connect the other output and now you shall have colors. If you still don't have color onscreen, try using a different tv format with:

aticonfig --tvf NTSC-M #<---just an example: you should use your local format
5) Now the you can see that only part of the desktop is visible on the TV. Thats because of the screen resolution, lower it to 1024x768.

Note: similar procedure should be done in Windows - as I said before - Crippled By Design!
Getting the CRT-out is simpler - just connect the cable and run the following command (not as root):

aticonfig --enable-monitor lvds,crt
Fancy HotKeys
Most of the HotKeys are recognized and are configurable. The following HotKeys were detected upon install:
HELP, SLEEP, BLANK_SCREEN, BRIGHTNESS UP/DOWN, SCROLL LOCK, NUM LOCK, HOME, END.
MUTE, VOL UP/DOWN - might needed some tuning which was done through gnome's System->Preferences->Keyboard Shortcuts.
WWW_BROWSER became operational after acerhk was loaded (read ahead).

Hotkeys at work!!!! This is how:
(PLEASE NOTE: the scripts work but are ugly because of the following reasons:
MADWIFI driver in the Ubuntu kernel doesn't yet support changes in /sys/class/net/ath0/device/power/state)

I've set up a place in google code for this - http://fscamiloa16xx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/Edgy/
1) install hotkeys ("sudo apt-get install hotkeys")
2) download the file fsca16xx.def and put it in /usr/share/hotkeys (you'll need sudo for that)
3) download fsc-cpuspeed.sh and fsc-wireless.sh and put it in /etc/acpi and make them executables (you'll need sudo for that):
sudo chmod 755 /etc/acpi/fsc-cpuspeed.sh
sudo chmod 755 /etc/acpi/fsc-wireless.sh
4) download the file hotkeys.desktop and put it in /usr/share/gnome/autostart/
5) Please NOTE: this step will allow non-root users to change the frequency scaling algorithm and is crucial for the Fancy Fan button. You may skip this step if you're "security breach" register has been turned on.
download the file 70-fsc-special-settings.sh and put it in /etc/acpi/start.d (make it executable)
sudo chmod 755 /etc/acpi/start.d/70-fsc-special-settings.sh
6) last and trickiest: run uname -r at the console, if there exist a folder that matches the output and you are using the 32bit version of ubnutu. download the file and put it in:
/lib/modules//kernel/drivers/input/misc
you'll have to overwrite the existing file.
If such folder doesn't exist, you can use the patch I made against acerhk 0.5.34 recompile it and put the acerhk.ko file in the folder mentioned above ('make install' places it in the wrong folder).
(patch is available at http://code.google.com/p/fscamiloa16xx/downloads/)
7) restart and start using the buttons.
(or:
sudo rmmod acerhk
sudo modprobe acerhk
sudo hotkeys -Z -t fsca16xx
)

Atheros 802.11b/g
To make this baby running you should fix the hotkeys (as stated above) and then press the wireless button. the wireless card driver works out-of-the-box except for the fact that because of the wireless led (which why we use acerhk)
Alternative:
add acerhk to /etc/modules and then restart and
echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled
to turn on
or
echo 0 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled
to turn off

After each time the wireless button is pressed for activation, the following script should be run:
#!/bin/sh
echo 0 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled #acer wireless off
sudo rmmod ath_pci
sudo rmmod ath_rate_sample
sudo rmmod ath_hal
sudo rmmod wlan_scan_sta wlan
sudo killall NetworkManager
sleep 2s
sudo modprobe ath_pci
sudo NetworkManager
echo 1 > /proc/driver/acerhk/wirelessled #acer wireless on