Linux on Acer Travelmate 516TE

Hardware configuration:

• Processor Intel Pentium II 330 MHz
• 64 MB SDRAM
• 256KB 2nd level cache (integrated)
• Hard disk: IDE 4.3 GB
• CD-ROM: ATAPI 20x
• 13.3'' TFT display, 1024x768
• PCMCIA bus: O2Micro OZ6832/6833 Card Bus Controller
• Video Chip: NeoMagic NM2160 (MagicGraph 128XD) with 2,5 MB memory
• Sound chip ESSSolo1 1969
• Internal modem: Lucenta Win modem
• Touchpad: Synaptics
• External connector: USB, IrDA, PS/2 mouse, VGA, serial port, parallel port
• D-Link DFE-650TX (10/100Mbps dual speed)
• Preinstalled software: Windows 98

In the past I was running RedHat on both my laptop and my desktop computer. After updating to 7.0 I decided to change the distribution. Nothing worked anymore (neither my PCMCIA network card nor the touchpad under X). More and more graphical frontends try to make the system easier to manage but in my opinion the system gets less transparent. Best of all there was no xdm included in the distribution (only kdm and gdm). Here you can find my old laptop page about installing RedHat 6.2.

To install Debian 2.2 just follow this steps:

1. Chane the size of the Windows partition (I used Partition Magic 3.0 from PowerQuest and changed the size to 800 MB).
2. Create the Debian 2.2 CD set using the pseudo-image-kit.
3. Boote from CD 1.
4. Follow the installation steps (I made a 200 MB swap and a 3.4 GB native parition).

Thats it, after following the steps above I had a running system and a working PCMCIA network card (but without APM support)

After the CD installation I edited /etc/apt/sources.list and added some sites providing Debian packages. Using dselect I updated potatoe to woody.

ACER Bios:

• Enable PnP OS. Or pcmcia will hang at boot time.
• Enable APM.
• A BIOS update is available here.

X

I used XF86Setup to create a XF86Config for xfree-3.3.6 and modified it manually. To make the touchpad work under X I start gpm with the -R option and read mouse actions from /dev/gpmdata (see below). After updating to woody (which includes X4) I started dexter and chose the xserver driver "neomagic", "dev/gpmdata" for the mouse port (gpm -R!) and (after choosing medium) a the 1024x786 @75 Hz monitor type. Next I disabled all resolutions but 1024x786. After saving the /etc/X11/XF86Config-4 I changed the DefaultDepth from 24 to 16 colors (else X does not run.

Display

When using the internal and external display simultaneously I cannot have a resolution of 800x600 on both displays, only the following resolutions are possibel (under Linux and also under Windows):

APM

To make APM work I recompiled the linux 2.2.17 kernel with APM support and after that recompiles the pcmcia-cs kernel modules. It is not possible to suspend my notebook to disk (hibernation). amp -S switches to standby mode, apm -s or Fn + F3 to suspend (to RAM) mode. When suspending to RAM the notebook still discharges my battery very fast and I do not know if this is really suspend to RAM (but I can verify that there is a difference between standby and suspend as the network card LEDs stop blinking in suspend mode).

APM kernel configuration:
[*] Advanced Power Management
[ ] Ignore USER SUSPEND
[*] Enable APM at boot time
[*] Do CPU IDLE calls
[*] Enable console blanking using APM
[*] Power off on shutdown
[ ] Ignore multiple suspend/standby events
[ ] Ignore multiple suspend/resume cycles
[*] RTC stores time in GMT
[ ] Allow interrupts during APM BIOS calls

To build a .deb package for the kernel and the pcmcia I did the following stps (kernel-source-dir may be /usr/src/linux):

• cd kernel-source-dir
• make menuconfig
• make bzImage modules
• make-kpkg clean
• make-kpkg --revision=1:custom.02 kernel_image
• cd /usr/src/modules/pcmcia-cs
• make config
• debian/rules KSRC=kernel-source-dir binary-modules

Touchpad

The Synaptics touchpad works like a regular two-button PS/2 mouse.
There is a configuration programme called tpconfig with which you can control e.g. how double taps act as left mouse clicks.
Gpm version has support for the special funtionality for synaptics touchpads: gmp -t synps2. In order to use this in X11, start gpm with the -R option and change your XFree86 config to use the repeater data that is written to /dev/gpmdata in the msc format.
I changed /etc/gpm.conf and modified the Pointer section in /etc/X11/XF86Config-4

PCMCIA

Works fine. For details see /usr/share/doc/HOWTO/en-txt/PCMCIA-HOWTO.txt.gz. In order to give my notebook different IP addresses at work and at home I use schemes in my /etc/pcmcia/network.opts, see the PCMCIA-HOWTO for details.

Sound

I selected to compile the ESS Solo1 driver into the kernel but it also works as a module.
Sound kernel configuration:
[M] Sound cars support
[ ] ...
[*] ESS Solo1 (Experimental)
[ ] ...

IrDA

Don't know.

USB

Don't know. You may try the 2.[34] kernels.

Modem

I downloaded and installed the kernel module ltmodem.o here. The driver does not work with kernel 2.2.17 but there is a kernel-patch to get the binary only driver to work with 2.216+ kernels (I had no time to test it yet). In order to get the modem work together with the 2.4 kernel you may have a look here

Synchrinizing my home directory

To synchronize my home directory on my laptop, at home and at work I use catchup. To connect my notebook to my PC at home I use PPP over a null-modem-cable because my PC has no network card (the null-modem-cable can in addition be used for kernel debugging over serial line). To establish the connection I execute
pppd -detach crtscts lock 192.168.1.2:192.168.1.1 /dev/ttyS0 115200&
on the laptop and
pppd -detach crtscts lock 192.168.1.1:192.168.1.2 /dev/ttyS1 115200&
on my PC.

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