Acer 243FX

ACER TM243FX C2.5GHz/ 14.1"TFT/ 256MB/ 20GB/ CD/ bez OS

Mandrake Linux on Acer TravelMate 243fx

This document aims to help you install Mandrake Linux (9.2 in my case) to Acer TM 243fx Laptop.

You will need:

• mandrake Linux CDs

• any live or rescue CD (first CD from fedora core in my case)

• mandrake kernel-source rpm package

Insert your first Mandrake CD into CDROM drive and let it boot. Press ESC and type alt1 what will start booting process by using kernel 2.2.18.

Select packages you want to install but don't remember choose option SELECT SPECIFIC PACKAGES where you have to choose libncurses5 in development tree and choose also vim editor.

After successful installation insert your rescue CD and boot from it.

With Fedora CD I did chroot /mnt/sysimage

Then I inserted a CD with kernel-source rpm package and did

mount /dev/hdc /mnt/cdrom

then install it by typing

rpm -Uvh kernel-source.rpm

WARNING !!!

There is a bug in mandrake kernel source when compiling USB Mass Storage. I found patch on this address: http://www.mail-archive.com/cooker@linux-mandrake.com/msg129656.html

So you can patch kernel manually by editing drivers/usb/storage/unusual_devs.h. Find section:

UNUSUAL_DEV(  0x04e6, 0x1010, 0x0005, 0x0005,
                "SCM",

                "SCM USBAT-02/ZIO-CF",
                US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_ZIOCF, init_ziocf,
                US_FL_SINGLE_LUN),

and change it to

#ifdef CONFIG_USB_STORAGE_ZIOCF
 UNUSUAL_DEV(  0x04e6, 0x1010, 0x0005, 0x0005,

                "SCM",
                "SCM USBAT-02/ZIO-CF",
                US_SC_SCSI, US_PR_ZIOCF, init_ziocf,
                US_FL_SINGLE_LUN),
#endif

That's all.

type make menuconfig

and configure your kernel. Don't remember not to choose local-apic option because of what default Mandrake kernel doesn't boot. You can see my own config file here

If you have compiled kernel copy this new kernel and replace the old one:

cp arch/i386/boot/bzImage /boot/vmlinuz

and type lilo to write boot information into MBR

then reboot your system and your new kernel should boot. If not you made anything bad.

As far as ACPI is concerned it should work by default. I compiled ACPI as modules and after installing acpid these modules use to be loaded during boot process.

I haven't noticed any problems with hardware but I don't use IRDA nor internal Modem.

Ethernet card is detected as far as the driver is compiled by default in kernel.

I have little problems with sound card when mandrake tried to use module snd-intel8x0 with what was sound card playing too quietly even if I set volume to 100%. Changing to module i810_audio solved the problem and everything went alright for the sound card.