Blog of Ginn Chen

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October 24, 2006

Some tips of making Ferrari 4000 laptop work with Ubuntu

1) Wireless card
Ferrari 4000 uses BCM4318 AirForce card.
You can follow the guideline here.

Here're my steps.
a) sudo vi /etc/modprobe.d/blacklist
add a line:
blacklist bcm43xx
then reboot
b) install ndiswrapper-utils from apt
If you're using Ubuntu 6.10 (Edgy), my experience is you have to install ndiswrapper-utils-1.8 instead.
c) download the wireless driver for Windows from acer
Here's the link for 32Bit. (I didn't try 64Bit Ubuntu on this laptop)
Unzip it somewhere find bcmw15.inf, go to the directory and,
sudo ndiswrapper -i bcmwl5.inf
sudo ndiswrapper -m
sudo modprobe ndiswrapper
d) Install some helper application to set wireless connection
My favorite is wifi-radar, someone suggests network-manager-gnome.
Or you can just use System > Administration > Networking, it should work.

z) Sometimes wireless connection is very weird, the red light blinks but cannot connect to any station, my solution is to reset the driver.
sudo modprobe -r ndiswrapper
sudo modprobe -i ndiswrapper
You can also use iwlist, iwconfig, etc. to diagnose your problem.

2) Install Ubuntu 6.10 on Ferrari 4000
I suggest you choose safe graphic mode while booting live cd.
If your screen is black during installation, use Ctrl+Alt+F1 switch to tty1, (bless you can see the cursor, if not use safe graphic mode and try again),
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Add the "MonitorLayout" line under

 Section "Device"
        Identifier      "ATI Technologies, Inc. Radeon Mobility X700 (RV410 PCIE)"

        Option          "MonitorLayout"         "LVDS, AUTO"

Press Ctrl+Alt+Backspace to restart Xorg.

3) If you see corrupt screen for tty after installation, add vga=791 option in /boot/grub/menu.lst.

4) How to disable tapping of touchpad?
I'm a Mac fan, I used to click the button not tapping the touchpad.
To do this, you need to set "Synapatics Touchpad".
sudo vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
Add Load "synaptics" after the "Load" lines.
Remove line Option "CorePointer" from InputDevice Section.
Add another InputDevice Section,

 Section "InputDevice"
       Identifier      "Synaptics Touchpad"
       Driver          "synaptics"
       Option          "Device"                "/dev/psaux"
       Option          "Protocol"              "PS/2"
       Option          "HorizScrollDelta"      "0"
       Option          "SHMConfig"             "on"
 EndSection

Change InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
to InputDevice "Configured Mouse" "SendCoreEvents"
add a line after, InputDevice "Synaptics Touchpad" "CorePointer"

Now you're install gsynaptic to help to make settings for your touchpad.

5) If you have to trouble with grub
For ubuntu, boot the live cd, mount your linux partition somewhere, and
sudo grub-install --root-directory=<your linux root> /dev/hda

For Solaris, boot installation DVD and enter the single user shell, your Solaris is recognized and mounted read-write on /a
cd /a/boot
installgrub -m stage1 stage2 /dev/rdsk/c1d0s0
It will ask you whether you want to install grub to MBA or just to Solaris partition.

Posted by ginn at 6:05 AM | Comments (3)