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FreeBSD with Laptop Acer Aspire 5100 WLMi

This summarizes my experiences with FreeBSD 6.2 and FreeBSD 7.0 on an Acer Aspire 5102 WLMi laptop.
This applies to Acer Aspire 3100/5100/5110 since they use the same Motherboard, and Bios.

X-Windows

The stock ATI driver in 6.2-RELEASE does handle the ATI Radeon Xpress 1100 chipset in this machine as ATI 200M, and it handles the 1280×800 screen size, but no 3D since AMD/ATI doesn’t provide drivers for FreeBSD and *BSD in General.

Identifier “Card0″
Driver “ati”
VideoRam 131072
VendorName “ATI Technologies Inc”
BoardName “RS482 [Radeon Xpress 200M]”
BusID “PCI:1:5:0″
I could control the Display brightness via the Fn key as well.

Note: The best video chips support comes from Nvidia since they provide native driver for FreeBSD and support Forum for FreeBSD as well

ACPI

It’s known Acer doesn’t offer the best ACPI standards, but it just works.

Aspire5102# sysctl hw.acpi
hw.acpi.supported_sleep_state: S3 S4 S5
hw.acpi.power_button_state: S5
hw.acpi.sleep_button_state: S3
hw.acpi.lid_switch_state: NONE
hw.acpi.standby_state: S1
hw.acpi.suspend_state: S3
hw.acpi.sleep_delay: 1
hw.acpi.s4bios: 0
hw.acpi.verbose: 1
hw.acpi.disable_on_reboot: 0
hw.acpi.handle_reboot: 0
hw.acpi.reset_video: 0
hw.acpi.cpu.cx_lowest: C1
hw.acpi.thermal.min_runtime: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.polling_rate: 10
hw.acpi.thermal.user_override: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.temperature: 44.0C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.active: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.passive_cooling: 1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0.thermal_flags: 0
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._PSV: 78.0C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._HOT: -1
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._CRT: 95.0C
hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._ACx: 50.0C -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1 -1
hw.acpi.battery.life: 100
hw.acpi.battery.time: -1
hw.acpi.battery.state: 0
hw.acpi.battery.units: 1
hw.acpi.battery.info_expire: 5
hw.acpi.acline: 1

Sound

The sound RealTek HDA (High-Definition Audio), aka Azalia, didn’t work, but the this chipset is finally supported by Eng. Ariff Abdullah in FreeBSD ! Yay ! See his page for HOWTO make your chip works like a charm Ariff Abdullah

Also you need to add this line in your /boot/loader.conf to make the sound drivers loaded and the chip works.

snd_hda_load=”YES”

Note: OpenSuse 10.2 isn’t able to make it work with ALSA.

WLAN

It worked with ndisgen tool which is builtin with the FreeBSD to convert windows drivers to Kernel Modules and make your wireless runs, check my blog, about how I did it.

HOWTO: FreeBSD 6.2 ndisgen with Acer Aspire 5100 5102 WLMi with Broadcom Wlan chipset 4318 Rev 2

ndis0: <Dell TrueMobile 1300 WLAN Mini-PCI Card> mem 0xc0200000-0xc0201fff irq 22 at device 2.0 on pci6
ndis0: Reserved 0×2000 bytes for rid 0×10 type 3 at 0xc0200000
ioapic0: routing intpin 22 (PCI IRQ 22) to vector 53
ndis0: [MPSAFE]
ndis0: NDIS API version: 5.1
ndis0: bpf attached
ndis0: Ethernet address: 00:16:cf:57:a3:7f
ndis0: bpf attached

Bluetooth

FreeBSD can detect the Bluetooh and run it with no issues.

dev.ugen.0.%desc: vendor 0×0402 USB2.0 Camera, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 2
dev.ugen.0.%driver: ugen
dev.ugen.0.%location: port=1
dev.ugen.0.%pnpinfo: vendor=0×0402 product=0×5602 devclass=0×00 devsubclass=0×00 release=0×0100 sernum=”"
dev.ugen.0.%parent: uhub1
dev.ugen.1.%desc: Broadcom Corp Acer Module, rev 2.00/1.00, addr 3
dev.ugen.1.%driver: ugen
dev.ugen.1.%location: port=2
dev.ugen.1.%pnpinfo: vendor=0×0a5c product=0×2101 devclass=0xe0 devsubclass=0×01 release=0×0100 sernum=”"
dev.ugen.1.%parent: uhub1
PowerNow!

This laptop has AMD Turion64 X2 and AMD PowerNow! works with no problems at all, PowerNow! done by Mr. Bruno Ducrot a good and helpful FreeBSD Commiter and other commiters in FreeBSD as well.

dev.cpu.0.%desc: ACPI CPU
dev.cpu.0.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.0.%location: handle=\_PR_.CPU0
dev.cpu.0.%pnpinfo: _HID=none _UID=0
dev.cpu.0.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.0.freq: 1592
dev.cpu.0.freq_levels: 1592/70000 796/19383
dev.cpu.0.cx_supported: C1/0
dev.cpu.0.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.0.cx_usage: 100.00%
dev.cpu.1.%desc: ACPI CPU
dev.cpu.1.%driver: cpu
dev.cpu.1.%location: handle=\_PR_.CPU1
dev.cpu.1.%pnpinfo: _HID=none _UID=0
dev.cpu.1.%parent: acpi0
dev.cpu.1.cx_supported: C1/0
dev.cpu.1.cx_lowest: C1
dev.cpu.1.cx_usage: 100.00%

Final note: in the future I will only buy laptop/notebook comes Nvidia Video Chips since they support FreeBSD very well, no more AMD/ATI for video.

Posted by By: Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri | 2007/01/25 | Open Source - FreeBSD | Trackback | Comments [RSS 2.0]

8 Responses to FreeBSD with Laptop Acer Aspire 5100 WLMi »»

Comments

Alin

Comment by Alin | 2007/02/01 at 00:08:14

Hi, I have a Acer Aspire 5101ANWLMi and i install FreeBSD 6.2, amd64 version! it boots but i have a problem when i halt the system. It just hangs after it shows Uptime message! I thing i should recompile the kernel and disable what i dont need. I am asking you if get same probleme and if u can give me some advice. Tks
Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri

Comment by Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri | 2007/02/01 at 09:20:48

Alin,

I faced the same problem it’s related to USB devices in the kernel.

Try to disable ehci device and let me know if this fixed it for you.

#device ehci # EHCI PCI->USB interface (USB 2.0)
Alin

Comment by Alin | 2007/02/02 at 00:42:22

I recompiled the kernel with “device ehci” disabled and it works . Pressing the power button will power of my laptop as aspected! My sound works with snd_hda module. Soon i will try to install the wireless card driver(i don’t need it right now).

What is “device ehci” for? Can i use my usb port as usual?
Is there a way to make the CardReader works in freebsd?
Did you made some fine tunnig with sysctl or something else!

I found this blog very useful! Thanks!
Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri

Comment by Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri | 2007/02/02 at 22:26:30

It should work with no problems, the problem with it is due to Acer poor ACPI sandards, they don’t follow the standards at all.

The best one use ACPI is IBM thinkpad laptops.

If your WLAN is from broadcom check my blog about it here http://blog.wearab.net/arab/2006/12/22/howto-freebsd-ndisgen-with-acer-aspire-5100-5102-wlmi-with-broadcom-wlan-chipset-4318-rev-2/

As for CardReader I didn’t try to make it work since I never used

As for sysctl here is my sysctl.conf entries for the laptops in general too.

# Better time counters, especially for laptops (honors power saving modes)
kern.timecounter.hardware=i8254
kern.timecounter.hardware=ACPI-fast # If available

One more good thing,

There is a new project for emulating Linux drivers on FreeBSD, first tests are made with Linux webcam drivers.

http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/FreeBSD/linux_bsd_kld.html

Maybe this some way to port certain usb-multimedia-devices to FreeBSD.

So now you can install them from the ports too

http://www.freshports.org/devel/linux-kmod-compat/

Add new port for linux-kmod-compat - emulation layer to build
linux device drivers as FreeBSD kld modules. Details at

http://info.iet.unipi.it/~luigi/FreeBSD/linux_bsd_kld.html

Two ports for webcam drivers that use this package are coming in
a matter of minutes.

NOTES:
+ This is only for 6.x and 7.x, no support planned for earlier versions.
+ At the moment only i386 but have patches for 64-bit architectures
that should be committed soon.
+ This port installs a file in /usr/share/mk . After some discussion
on the ports list this seems, to be the most reasonable thing to do.
portlint complains about it.

http://www.freshports.org/multimedia/linux-gspca-kmod/

This port builds a kernel module with the ‘gspca’ USB webcam driver
using the adaptation layer in devel/linux-kmod-compat
The web site for the original gspca driver (for Linux) is
http://mxhaard.free.fr/index.html

http://www.freshports.org/multimedia/linux-ov511-kmod/

This port builds a kernel module with the ‘ov511′ USB webcam driver
using the adaptation layer in devel/linux-kmod-compat
The sources are taken from the Linux kernel 2.6.x

Enjoy it
Alin

Comment by Alin | 2007/03/01 at 21:12:23

After some time in linux with my laptop i am back on FreeBSD but i have other questions about this laptop.

- how i can enable power saving and cpufreq on freebsd and if it workds for my Aspire?
- what is the best solution for touchpad? (i want scrooling on pad and scrooling on 4 diraction button)
- is there someone writing a FreeBSD driver for Broadcom Wireless driver based on rev. enge. documentation from linux driver or where can i search for a project like that?(i whant to help)
- when i log in, my keybord is not responding on first touch of any button and it works normal after that. Why is this happening, is not a big problem but is there a fix?

About using linux drivers in freebsd by an extra layer, i admit this is a solution, but it will place freebsd in a shadow! Best solution is writing native drivers and soportting USB bus as much as posible!

Thanks for your help!
Zork

Comment by Zork | 2007/03/14 at 19:57:50

You wrote:

“no 3D since AMD/ATI doesn’t provide drivers for FreeBSD and *BSD in General”

Can’t you use AMD’s Linux driver with FreeBSD via binary emulation?
Jerry

Comment by Jerry | 2007/03/28 at 00:59:51

Thanks for the report and comments! I have been looking for FreeBSD on an Acer laptop for quit some time, and think this blog looks very helpful. My next project will be to install FreeBSD 6.2 on an Acer TravelMate 4650. As soon as I got something useful results to report you will hear from me.

The idea is, to create a multiboot laptop with FreeBSD and XP.

Regards,

Jerry
Amsterdam, Netherlands
Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri

Comment by Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri | 2007/04/19 at 11:11:54

Zork,

Someone works in AMD’s Linux driver with FreeBSD via binary emulation, but no results yet, beside I don’t know why AMD just doesn’t do what nVidia does.

nVidia driver works via linux emulator now.