Acer Extensa 4620

The Acer Extensa 4620 is a great laptop for the $500 spent. I have successfully run Gentoo, OSX86 and (meh) Windows Vista this machine.

This article is a restore of the one before the wiki server crashed. Extra special thanks to the guys who saved this document!

Overview
o SATA HDD 160Gb Western Digital WD1600BEVS o HL-DT-ST DVDRAM GSA-T20N, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive o NetLink BCM5787M Gigabit Ethernet o Broadcom Corporation BCM94311MCG wlan mini-PCI (rev 01) o Modem AC97? (not tested) o Texas Instruments 5-in-1 Multimedia Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS PRO/xD) o (IEEE 1394): Texas Instruments PCIxx12 OHCI Compliant IEEE 1394 Host Controller (not tested) o SuYin crystal eye webcam (works using uvcvideo module) o Synaptics touchpad o S-Video (intel video driver sees port, not tested) o VGA output (intel video driver sees port, not tested) o IRDA??? (unknown, not tested) o hot-keys??? (may work using Keytouch, not tested) o Shiny-Led multimedia keys??? (may work using xbindkeys, not tested)
 * CPU: Intel Core 2 Duo Mobile T2370
 * RAM: 2048 MB (2 x 1024 DDR2-SDRAM)
 * CHIPSET: Intel GM965 Chipset
 * DRIVES:
 * VIDEO: Intel Graphics Media Accelerator X3100
 * AUDIO: Intel HD Audio
 * NETWORKING:
 * MISC:

Disk
I installed from the live CD 2008.0 in hopes that the wireless card would work. It didn't, even after I loaded the firmware. I did notice that both the b43xx and b43 modules were loaded, so maybe they were conflicting. Not sure.

Kernel
Linux 2.6.25-gentoo-r7 x86_64 Intel(R) Pentium(R) Dual CPU T2370 @ 1.73GHz GenuineIntel GNU/Linux

ACER ACPI
Warning: After I do modprobe acer_acpi my wireless card no longer works. Perhaps if it was added in autoload conf BEFORE b43 it would work??

The directory /proc/acpi/acer/ is created with the following modifiable options:


 * wireless (enable or disable the wireless radio)
 * version
 * threeg
 * interface
 * brightness (set the brightness of the screen)
 * bluetooth (enable or disable the bluetooth radio interface (if present))

Example to enable the wireless:

Devices
We enable PCCARD/PCMCIA support, SATA support, ethernet card, 3D graphics using the onboard Intel X3100 card, sensors and CPU temp monitor, LCD brightness control, multimedia cards reader, touchpad and LED support (needed for acer_acpi module).

Hardware
output of lspci

BIOS
Acer Extensa 4620 BIOS updates are available here. Before I installed Gentoo, I booted into the pre-installed Widoze Vista and updated the bios to the most current release. I originally attempted to hand roll a FreeDOS bootable CD with the driver updates on it but I did something wrong. The CD would boot (sort of), say "FreeDOS" and just hang there.

Graphics
See this guide.

Wireless
See this guide.

Sound (hda-intel card)
Getting sound playback to work was easy, it just worked. Getting the built in mic to work in skype was not intuitive. Follow these steps to get the built in mic working perfectly with skype. (I have not tried other applications, but they may work after this too)

First make sure your kernel is properly configured. All sound goodies built as modules (kernel section).

reboot your machine ( doing /etc/init.d/alsasound restart doesn't seem to work )


 * press f5 to show all controls
 * Set MASTER to your loudness pref
 * Set PCM to 100
 * Line In to 0
 * Mic Boost to 0
 * Capture to 84
 * Digital to 0
 * Input Source to Front Mic (you would think 'internal mic' would be the built in one, but it's NOT!)
 * Internal to 50
 * press esc to exit

Start Skype set Options --> Sound Devices --> Sound In to HDA Intel (hw:Intel,0) uncheck 'Allow Skype to adjust mixer levels' Click Apply and you should be good to go!

Webcam
Using linux-uvc the webcam is correctly identified as Acer CrystalEye webcam (064e:a101).

uvcvideo: Found UVC 1.00 device Acer CrystalEye webcam (064e:a101).

Please remember to add your username to the video group if you want to use the webcam as a normal (not super) user.

If you want to check if the camera is correctly identified and working, you should try luvcview package ([1]). It is available in portage (although still masked). Launch it with this command:

luvcview version 0.2.1 Video driver: x11 A window manager is available video /dev/video0

A good command to record video from the camera is the following (it uses ffmpeg [2]):

Skype version 2.0.0.13 supports video capture and works perfectly with the Acer camera.