Acer Aspire 3000 ZL5 - ArchWiki

# Acer Aspire 3000 ZL5

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This page provides a variety of configurations and optimizations for getting the Acer Aspire 3000 Series of Laptops running fast and smooth. Specifically for the Acer Aspire 3000 ZL5 and based off the article for the Acer Aspire 3003 WLMi

## Drivers

Note that you need to install some drivers like SiS manually by pacman and b43 module (Broadcom Wi-Fi driver) needs you to manually download and extract latest firmware using b43fwcutter.

## Internet

To get the wireless working you need the b43-fwcutter tool and firmware module: Wireless network configuration#b43

What I did was download all the broadcom tarballs, extract them, and then ran this:

     $ find . -name '*.o' -type f | xargs -P1 -I{} sh -c 'echo "CUT {}";b43-fwcutter {}||echo "{} FAILED"'

See here for wireless configuration.

## Sound

Add this to `/etc/modprobe.d/modprobe.conf`

    options snd-intel8x0 index=0

Add the packages alsa-utils and alsa-oss.

Unmute settings, then save.

     sudo amixer set Master 90% unmute
     sudo amixer set PCM 90% unmute
     sudo alsactl store

## Xorg

I use ratpoison because its lightning fast on my acer, and because I am a poweruser. If you have to use a GUI, go with xfce4. KDE and gnome are outrageously slow on the acer.

### /home/user/.xinitrc

This is what the

     $ startx

command uses.

    xsetroot -solid black
    #exec startxfce4
    exec ratpoison

### /etc/rc.local

    fbset -a -depth 32

## Kernel

If you want to compile a custom kernel that contains the modules used by your acer 3000 ZL5 for faster boots (among other benefits), see Kernels#Compilation.

Here is the list of modules:

    MODULES="sisfb ac battery button processor thermal cdrom agpgart amd64-agp sis-agp tpm_bios tpm tpm_tis k8temp i2c-sis96x i2c-core evdev pcspkr psmouse serio_raw mmc_core pci_hotplug shpchp rtc-cmos rtc-core rtc-lib ssb ac97_bus snd-mixer-oss snd-pcm-oss snd snd-page-alloc snd-pcm snd-timer snd-ac97-codec snd-intel8x0 snd-intel8x0m soundcore pata_sis scsi_mod mii sis900 pcmcia_core pcmcia rsrc_nonstatic yenta_socket usb-storage usbcore ehci-hcd ohci-hcd option usbserial sd_mod sr_mod st b43"

### sisfb

If you want to specify your own resolution using custom video driver, then you have to set video option in kernel parameters. For example if you want to user resolution 1280x800 with 32-bit color depth at 76Hz (which is recommended for Acer Aspire 3000) then you can use this option:

    video=sisfb:mode:1280x800x32,rate:76

You can also play with memory consumption like this, but its not needed and it can cause some problems, if you do not know what are you doing:

    video=sisfb:mode:1280x800x24,mem:12288,rate:76

## Hardware

The hardware of this laptop. Note that because the single hard-drive is so terrible compared to modern drives, I bought a PNY 4GB usb drive that I use for swap and tmp.

### lspci

    00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 760/M760 Host (rev 03)
    00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202
    00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS963 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 25)
    00:02.1 SMBus: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS961/2 SMBus Controller
    00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE]
    00:02.6 Modem: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Modem Controller (rev a0)
    00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] AC'97 Sound Controller (rev a0)
    00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
    00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.1 Controller (rev 0f)
    00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller
    00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 91)
    00:06.0 CardBus bridge: Texas Instruments PCI1410 PC card Cardbus Controller (rev 02)
    00:0b.0 Network controller: Broadcom Corporation BCM4318 [AirForce One 54g] 802.11g Wireless LAN Controller (rev 02)
    00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] HyperTransport Technology Configuration
    00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Address Map
    00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRAM Controller
    00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Miscellaneous Control
    01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661/741/760 PCI/AGP or 662/761Gx PCIE VGA Display Adapter

### lsusb

    Bus 003 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
    Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0001 Linux Foundation 1.1 root hub
    Bus 001 Device 002: ID 154b:6545 PNY
    Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub

## Related articles

- xf86-video-sis
- Wireless network configuration#b43
- Touchpad Synaptics
- Misc.
  - CPU frequency scaling
  - Pm-utils
  - Laptop Mode Tools
  - Wacom Tablet

Category:

- Acer