My new AA1 D150-1920 10.1 inch.

I just got my AA1 10.1 inch today it came with XP SP3, 160Gb HD, 1Gb RAM. At this moment I am running Mandriva 2009.1 Spring from the SDHC card without effecting the HD. First thing I found out was that the Acer Recovery software allows you to make recovery software at any time and not just the first time you use your computer.

Hibernate works right out of the box (going to the login screen and then screen saver), Suspend works with one small glitch (after recovering from suspend the wireless fails to reconnect automatically. This is overcome by using the wireless switch to turn off the wireless when turning it back on it connects automatically). Since I am running off the SDHC card I can not say at this moment as to whether the card readers works out of the box. However, it does work correctly with the live USB. Sound works (still not much volume but enough) and plugin in the headset turns off the internal speakers and turns on the headset. At this point the recording from the mic doesn't seem to work but that may be just a setting problem. Had to manually set the display to 1024x600 the first time I booted up. Quiet fan, slightly warmer than the 8.9 inch SSD version. Styling is much better, text is visually larger than on 8.9 inch screen. Wireless LED worked out of the box as does the wireless switch. All the Fn buttons work as advertised. To be able to boot from the SDHC card I had to go into the BIOS and enable the F12 boot option.

 

How do you boot off of a SD Card? I've never done this before.

 

I've never seen a computer that would do it before. I just hit F12 when the computer is booting and it show a selection of things it can boot from if there is a system available and the SDHC card shows as a USB drive.

 

My D150-1669 will boot from an SDHC 8GB card. The card was made bootable when I installed Puppy Linux V4.2. I have Puppy also loaded on a USB stick. If both are plugged in then F12 gives me a choice of either and the HD. When you hit F12 the BIOS looks for bootable devices. If the boot sector is not present on the device then it won't show up on the list.

 

Is running the OS off of a SDHC card slow?

 

It does seem a little slower but quite a bit faster than the Live USB. Of course the SDHC card is one that I have used for quite a while as my home partition and so it is rather used and SD cards do slow down after a while.

 

Hmm. Interesting. I want to buy a 16GB SDHC and put some sort of Linux o nit.

Then pull the HD :twisted:

Psuedo-ssd?

 

I think I'll try that. Let you know. Well I tried it and it worked. I removed the Hard Drive, set the BIOS to boot from the SD card reader and it booted fine. Just like from the old Floppy drives.

 

There is a netbook version of Ubuntu 9.04 available as an IMG file, not an ISO. It acts as a Live-USB on boot. Their site has the download and installation instructions. I found the DiskImager program doesn't work but FlashNul does. Just be careful that you're writing the image to the correct drive. After booting from a USB stick you can then install it on an SD card and boot from there in the future. If you put Grub and the MBR on the SD card you can modify it in Menu.lst to offer XP on the HD. With the card inserted you'll have the choice of Ubuntu or XP. Without the card you get XP as it would normally. This method does not alter the HD in any way. The SD card could contain any version of a bootable OS providing the boot mechanism is on the card. With the Acer F12 option you can force it to boot whatever you want.

 

With Mandriva 2009.1 Spring it sees the Windows and puts a line in Menu.lst allowing you to boot to Windows without you having to make any changes.

 

Hey cool, thanks for the tips!

I was able to get ubuntu 8.10 on the sd card by using unetbootin and the .img of netbook ubuntu by using diskimager.

So at the moment, I can get two different ubuntu images working on my 2GB SD card.

I imagine the steps are very similar (probably the same) for doing this to a USB memory device - I will use a USB "drive" when I get around to installing ubuntu on the 16gb SDHC.

Now just trying to figure out how I can get this to work with XP Pro ISO and Norton Ghost ISO.


A few things I have noticed about the netbook remix
- Wireless range isn't that great
- Battery life is about 6 hours (just SD card, no HD), opposed to around 8 in Windows (with HD)
- Interface is much, MUCH different than past ubuntu interfaces.

 

Did you actually run it that long or are you going by the battery report?

 

Just going by the report - I'm sure it's fairly inaccurate. I do know that it will run 8 hours in Windows. I'm afraid to run the lithium ion battery down to 0% again.

What did you do or guide did you use to get linux on the SDHC? I just purchased a 16gb SDHC and 8gb thumb drive (to replace my stolen one).

 

I originally wanted to use the SD card as home on my 8.9 inch with an 8Gb SSD to have more room. When I tried to do this I could not because the SD reader was not seen by the BIOS meaning I could not format it. Then I learned that if I placed the SD card in a USB card reader then I could format it. So I tried to install Mandriva putting my Home partition on the SD card in the USB SD card reader. Then I tried putting the SD card into the SD reader to see if the OS would see the SD card and use it as Home and it worked. So when I got my 10.1 inch and checked to see if the BIOS could see it and since it did I just tried to install Mandriva on the SD card and it worked. So I guess I would have to say I didn't use a guide. I just tried to do it and it worked.

 

I got it running off of the SD card! Right now I have only one partition set up, although I might make a 4GB NTFS partition that can be read in Windows.

Running Ubuntu netbook remix. I would have went with regular 9.04, but the artheros wireless card wasn't picked up and I didn't feel like playing with drivers for it. The first issue was the just plain strange interface for the netbook remix.

When I installed it, I pulled out the hard drive to avoid any screw-ups. Booted from USB Flash device and installed to the SD card. Quite easy actually.

Haven't noticed that it is absurdly slow, but it was extremely slow during the update process but the memory cards don't read/write fast enough for heavy activity.

 

I have found that booting from an MMC/SD card to be really reliable, and really quick on the D150.

Im running Linux BackTrack 3 from SD, with no probs at all.


Oh... almost forgot,

My name is Griff, I'm new here, hello everyone!!!!

 

Hi guys,
I just bought an AOD 150 as well and I was thinking to install XP Pro on it and LInux too, but i have a problem......when booting with the bootable USB pen drive, even if I press F12 at the start up, the system go straight to loading the already installed OS . I went into the BIOS and I discovered the F12 Boot option was disabled and greyed out, so I was not able to enable this essential option. I also updated the BIOS to the latest available version (1.08) but nothing changed!
How did wwere you able to abilitate the F12 Boot option in your BIOS? Is there any particular key combination to do that?

Thanks in advance,

Marius

 

It was enabled by default on mine

 

It sounds like in the latest models of the AOA 150 ACER has decided to set the BIOS to lock the F12 boot option. When I contacted the ACER customer service by e-mail (apparently this is the only way to contact them) they told me this operation "calls a higher level of expertise" and so I had to call a fee customer service which would charge me at least $59.99 for the first 30 minutes of assistance. This is ridicoulus! They recognized my ACER is under warranty and they ask me to pay for a basic operation like this, considering also that the F12 boot option in the BIOS was locked by factory setting.

Marius

 

Mine was set to off as default but I just click on it to enable it. As for Acer support where are you? I ask because I have a 17 inch AA9300-5005, an AA1-A110 and an AA1 D150-1920 and so have been in contact with support on more than one occasion mostly for backup disk and just information and I have never had a problem or had to pay for service. I am in central Texas, USA.