Hardy & ATI

I finally achieved 3D with the open-source radeon driver on my Amilo (which have the Xpress 200M). I've been using it for the last two weeks with full compiz and by now only came upon several minor issues:
1) After resume from hibernation, the window shadows become garbled with green and red lines.
2) When starting Firefox, it will start full screened. Pressing F11 twice while in the address bar return Firefox to it's normal size.
3) Flash is slow. Solved by installing the Flash 10 beta, still consumes a lot of cpu, but works better.

I've used Ubuntu Hardy with the following repositories:
1) 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/tormodvolden/ubuntu hardy main' - supplied the git ATI driver.
2) 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/xorg-edgers/ubuntu hardy main' - supplied the git libdrm2. don't use the mesa from there as it does not works with compiz (white screen).
3) 'deb http://ppa.launchpad.net/stikonas/ubuntu hardy main' - supplied the git mesa.

Beside the packages I added to the device section in xorg.conf:

Option "EnablePageFlip" "1"
Option "ColorTiling" "1"
Option "AccelMethod" "EXA"
Option "DynamicClocks" "on"
Option "EXANoOffscreenPixmaps" "true"


Hardy Beta is now supported - fsca16xx

Last night I've pushed Ubuntu Hardy beta support to the installation script.

For those of you that use hibernation -

Currently, the wireless will not resume correctly, so after resuming, you should run the following lines to make it work:

sudo rmmod ath_pci ath_rate_sample ath_hal
sudo modprobe ath_pci


In the following weeks I'll make the script do that automagically on resume.

some updates for the fujitsu script

I've just made some updates to the fujitsu auto installation script. Its not "the" update I wanted to do, just some fixes.

Changes:

* use of newest atheros instead of ndiswrapper (should support AR5007).


I did not had time to get into the "add the missing bits to acerhk so that it will properly read the wireless led state".

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!