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• Contact: DHughRedelmeier
• Brand: Acer
• Make : Aspire
• Model: 5570-2792

• Website: http://www.acerpanam.com/synapse/forms/portal20.cfm?recordid=538&formid=3404&website=AcerPanAm.com/canada&siteid=7297&words=all&keywords=&areaid=17

• S/N: Only needed if you have a Canonical supplied laptop

Current Issues

System Info

bios-version:v1.3221
system-manufacturer:Acer, inc.
system-product-name:Aspire 5570Z
system-version:Not Applicable

Hardware details

Notes

Making room on the hard drive

The computer came with Microsoft Vista Home Basic in three partions:

• 8G Partition 1: some kind of rescue partition
• 36G Partition 2: Most of Vista, NTFS (C:)
• 36G Partition 3: almost empty NTFS data partition (D:)

Gparted did not seem to be able to resize the partitions so I did the following steps in Vista (several reboots may be necessary). The goal was to make C: smaller and D: surplus. See http://jamespaulp.wordpress.com/2006/08/19/tip-of-the-day-get-rid-of-that-page-file/ http://vistarewired.com/2007/02/16/how-to-resize-a-partition-in-windows-vista/

• switch to manually controlling the pagefile (Start: control panel: system: advanced: performance settings: advanced: virtual memory)
• enable a Vista pagefile on D:
• disable the Vista pagefile on C:
• shrink C: (It won't shrink as much as I'd like -- it only gave up 10G) (Start: right-click Computer: manage: storage - disk management: right click c: shrink)
• copy the little content from D: to C: (I found one file within d:acer)
• enable a Vista pagefile on C:
• disable the Vista pagefile on D:

I then installed Ubuntu. During that process I deleted D:. So I had lots of space.

The reason that I moved the pagefile back and forth is that in theory shrinking cannot move a pagefile so shrinking C: might have been less effective with the pagefile on it. But shrinking was still not very effective so moving the pagefile might not have made a difference.

It may be that the rescue partition could be safely deleted if you have a reinstallation DVD.

Screen

Initially only 1024 x 768 was supported on the LCD even though the native resolution is 1280 x 800. I saw this inexplicable line in /var/log/Xorg.0.log:

(II) I810(0): Not using mode "1280x800" (no mode of this name)

There seemed to be an implicit modeline with that name, and to be sure, I added an explicit one. The message remained. After installing 915resolution (but not configuring it) and rebooting and other likely irrelevant actions, 1280 x 800 (the native resolution) was used by X.

Sound

I played with gnome-volume-control to get sound to work. I can get sound out of the headphone jack but not out of the built-in speakers. I can get the built-in microphone and the microphone jack to work.

This thread might help: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=538891 . In particular, to get sound out of the speakers, go to the gnome-volume-control, Edit->Preferences, select "Surround", close Preferences; fiddle with "Surround" slider and muting.

802.11g wireless

The wireless is based on an Atheros chipset and is only supported by non-free drivers. Too bad that they did not use the Intel chip.

0a:03.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications, Inc. AR5005G 802.11abg NIC (rev 01)

Ubuntu Feisty recognized the chipset and loaded the unfree ath_hal code. Unfortunately madwifi + ath_hal did not work. There was no clear log message. On another distro (BackTrack 2.0) with similar driver, ath_hal seemed to balk at the chipset: wifi%d: unable to attach hardware: "hardware revision not supported" (HAL status 13)

I blacklisted the mandwifi modules ath_hal and ath_pci by listing them in /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist.

The Ubuntu Feisty ndiswrapper has problems with Atheros drivers and with multiprocessing. ndiswrapper has been fixed to work and that version was checked into the ndiswrapper svn repository on 2007 May 9 (thanks Giri!). You must also find a suitable Windows XP driver for the Atheros chip. I used ftp://ftp.work.acer-euro.com/notebook/aspire_5570/driver/Wireless%20Lan%20Driver%20802abg%20Atheros%20Ver.4.2.2.7.zip

wlan0 (the wireless interface) needs an entry in /etc/network/interfaces. If an "auto" statement is used, the wireless networks show up in the network manager. But it also seems to add about a minute to boot time.

multimedia card reader

The Multimedia Card Reader is based on a TI chip and hasn't worked yet:

0a:09.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCIxx12 Cardbus Controller
0a:09.2 Mass storage controller: Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD)

Gutsy Addendum

I'm now installing Gutsy on the notebook. I don't get to do much testing because the notebook is not mine. So take everything with a grain of salt.

Screen: just works at the correct resolution now. No need for 915resolution.

Sound: see what I added to "Sound" (above) re. speakers. They do work.

802.11g wireless: The madwifi driver now works! No more fiddling with NDISwrapper.

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