Acer Aspire 3000 Re: [nzlug] Old Kernels

[Simon Bridge]

On Sat, 2006-07-22 at 09:28 +1200, Dirk Pilat wrote:
> Hi ,
> 
> well, Thomas Winischhofer, the guy who maintains the 'sis' drivers  
> for X.org, has even worse to say (from http://www.winischhofer.eu/ 
> linuxsispart1.shtml):

Like I said - goes fine at 1024x768, no dual head and no 3D
acceleration. That's pretty much what Tom says too.

> Unfortunately, I paid 1600NZ$ for the machine, and while I like its  
> big screen, sturdy overall impression and keyboard, there is no  
> beating about the bush that Acer sold me a lemon: when I buy a  
> machine for that price, I expect at least half-baked engineering.
> 
> No Planet Tux Racer for me.

But perhaps we're talking about different machines?

Mine is the Aspire 3003 ... this is the card:

> 0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX/M661FX/M661MX/741/M741/760/M760 PCI/AGP (prog-if 00 [VGA])
>         Subsystem: Acer Incorporated [ALI]: Unknown device 0083
>         Control: I/O+ Mem+ BusMaster- SpecCycle- MemWINV- VGASnoop- ParErr- Stepping- SERR- FastB2B-
>         Status: Cap+ 66MHz+ UDF- FastB2B- ParErr- DEVSEL=medium >TAbort- <TAbort- <MAbort- >SERR- <PERR-
>         Interrupt: pin A routed to IRQ 7
>         BIST result: 00
>         Region 0: Memory at e8000000 (32-bit, prefetchable) [size=128M]
>         Region 1: Memory at e2100000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=128K]
>         Region 2: I/O ports at a000 [size=128]
>         Capabilities: [40] Power Management version 2
>                 Flags: PMEClk- DSI- D1+ D2+ AuxCurrent=0mA PME(D0-,D1-,D2-,D3hot-,D3cold-)
>                 Status: D0 PME-Enable- DSel=0 DScale=0 PME-
>         Capabilities: [50] AGP version 3.0
>                 Status: RQ=256 Iso- ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA+ ITACoh- GART64- HTrans- 64bit- FW- AGP3+ Rate=x4,x8
>                 Command: RQ=1 ArqSz=0 Cal=0 SBA- AGP- GART64- 64bit- FW- Rate=<none>

I think the little booklet I got with the machine said there was 128Mb
dedicated video RAM and 128Mb shared, but I don't have it [the booklet]
here. If dedicated RAM is present in mine and not in yours, then this
may explain the difference in our experience (Tom's notes suggest that
dedicated video-RAM is vital).

The lspci notes suggest that the smb driver may produce 3D accel - no
dice. Tom's notes suggest that it may work with an AMD CPU.

In contrast to Tom's reservations, the Acer Aspire series came off
overall best in the (was it) "Linux User & Developer" magazine feild
testing linux on different laptops. I have the issue buried in this junk
somewhere... though I recall a rueful feeling when I read that the test
model was one of the top-of-the-line from the series and not mine.

Overall, I agree that this is a minimal laptop (mine was marketed to me
as such) - and if you feel ripped off, it is by the guys who charged you
more than NZ$1000 for it.

Sure - you cannot play Tux Racer and Google Earth is a tad jerky. Some
people will see this as "unusable"... fine.

Personally, I want the hardware to behave as advertised and ACPI to
work. I believe I've been moaning on about my problems at length some
time ago - all working for some months now and some idea of what would
make a good linux laptop.

Personally, I'd like to hear more about intel chipset video... I
understand they have open source drivers? Perhaps I'm misinformed?