No mic on Acer 4315 - Ubuntu 7.10 pre-loaded
 

All sound works with the acer default install - except the microphone. Not tested headphones.

Acer support are unhelpful - when phoned they state that the microphone is not supported in linux... and then wuold not say any more. There were asked what the soundcard was, and did not reply. So - uggerbay emthay. Lets make sure.

Found this thread, but the mic issue is not resolved there.

Not listed on the Ubuntu Laptops list.

lspci -vvThe volume control says "Realtek (OSS Mixer)" with no mic slider. there are two sets of sliders: "volume" and "In-gain". Both are set at maximum.

But there is a "HDA Intel (Alsa Mixer)" entry which has a mic control. Cannot seem to get this to have any effect.

asoundconf list
Available Soundcards:
Intel


If sound works generally - it would seem the correct drivers are loaded.
I'm guessing the "realtek" is the "unknown 133" subsystem and acer have been cutting corners.

Google results focus on problems with getting sound at all (fixed in an early alsa update) and with getting speakers muted when the headphones are plugged in. While mic support gets mentioned, it is never a priority.

But surely some people want to voip?

Anybody met this before?

No takers?

I'd be interested if anyone knows if this mic works in windows.

However - here's what I've come up with:

Volume Control Applet - rt-click and select "Open Volume Control"

It displays the volume control dialog - with "Realtek (OSS Mixer)" displayed. This is the wrong device. In the dialog, go to file > change device, and you'll get a choice. You want the one called: "HD Intel (Alsa Mixer)".

Enable that, then go back to the sliders - make sure they are all maximum. Including mic boost.

Now the mic is very very quiet.

Check your recording application for an input slider. Make sure it is maximum.

My information is that this doesn't work in XP either - something to do with a cheap-as microphone.

Update:

I now have my sweaty palms on one of these.

Acer claim, in documentation included with the laptop, that there are four things which do not work due to "limitations of linux". Thems fighting words...

The four things are:

1. The acer e button
... what is this supposed to do? Launch Acer's windows only software. That's hardly a limitation in linux. Anyway, the button is easily mapped to something else.

2. Wireless button (but wireless works)
... not needed. Mapping this to bring up wireless or shut it down is non trivial though. The main issue is that Acer have installed an Aetheros wifi card with ndiswrapper. I suppose it could be enabled and disabled by loading and unloading the driver. However, this is a nice place to toggle the touchpad.

3. Modem
... scanModem identifies a connexant HSF modem is a component of the soundcard.
How does one configure these?

4. Microphone
... this remains a curly one. I have enabled all the tabs and maxed all the sliders. Using applications > sound and video > sound recorder produces nothing.

The recording level monitor returns an error "cannot connect to sound daemon" ... it's looking for ESD. Of course, this is a pulse-audio box mith the alsa plugins enabled.

What have I missed?


What Acer neglect to mention is that root is ext2 not 3 and swap is disabled along with Compiz (videocard blacklisted). Enable compiz and totem plays up. <sigh> But that's for later.

Conclude, this is not a "built for linux" box.

Hello Simon - we too have one of these - bought from "The Good Guys" in Bendigo, VIC.
And yes, we too lack a working mic input. :(

Does yours have the reboot bug and the PXE boot misconfiguration too? The latter
is just a boot order snafu created by Acer (D'oh!) but the reboot bug is somewhere
in their Ubuntu or GRUB reboot configuration - still wrestling with that off and on,
but the workaround is so easy that there's no hurry.

Acer have been worse than useless - been onto them via email, 'phone and am now
attempting telepathy, but no sign of intelligent life there. Which is a
pity, because it's (mostly) a very effective machine. They must have a
couple of engineers somewhere, but where?

FYI if you need TV-Out, the S-Video link needs to be connected at bootup, then it
all seems to work, albeit you can have either TV or LCD but not (yet) both.
Working on that....

Been very happy with our Acer 5684 WLMi and with the construction of this little
beast, but the Acer support? What a load of tying lossers.

Hope you get yours sorted soon - I'm sure it's just idleness or ignorance on
Acer's part - if the hardware is in there, we can access it with Linux. Been over
25 years since I used to write device drivers an' all that, but the tools are so
much more sophisticated now. How hard can it be? <grin>

All the best, Ben

Ahhh... thanx for reminding me.
I've made some progress since that last post: see

www.hbclinux.net.nz/acer4315.html

I found more problems, and more solutions. It seems the only component not going is the microphone. And I have a lead on that one.

Acer 4315 support
 

[QUOTE=Flymo;3114650]Hello Simon - we too have one of these - bought from "The Good Guys" in Bendigo, VIC.


Acer have been worse than useless - been onto them via email, 'phone and am now
attempting telepathy, but no sign of intelligent life there. Which is a
pity, because it's (mostly) a very effective machine. They must have a
couple of engineers somewhere, but where?

Hi, I too bought this unit, mine from TGG Taylors Lake Victoria.
I had an issue with the swap partition which was not enabled!continual freeze, 100% CPU use and similar being the result, but with great ans speedy assistance from ubuntuforms.org I got it fixed. No more freeze ect.
I searced high and low for tech support & in the end, I submitted a Comment thru Acer Australia website, I had to furphy the OS as Linux was not included, but doing so resulted in getting a reply (4 weeks later!)
I was given a number to ring, 1300 366 567 which is Customer Support Highpoint Aust. where I had to Register the unit. I was instructed to ask for Second Level Support if I require Help with the Ubuntu Shipped unit in future (whilst under Acer warranty).Oh, yes the Blacklisted Graphics Card.Well, I am aware of the Command line to work around it, but as yet, have not done so, bit nervous about it actually. Would love to have the eye candy etc, 3D cube. At 61 caution is my middle name!
Anyway, perhaps you may like to utilise that phone number yourself?
Cheers
Frances

I have a contact in NZ who is trying to get an Acer tech to talk to us here. He's having trouble!

I'm updating that page (post #5) fairly continuously - there is a recipe for everything except the mic. I haven't tested the modem one as that involves removing updates (I'll wait for Hardy) but if someone would give it a go?

Someone very keen could try coreboot on it. I'd love to know how this works.

I an report that Compiz-Fusion works nicely provided you prepare properly. No actual crashes though some eyecandy doesn't work quite right. (Shift switcher eg.) I'll have a go installing the forbidden extras later.

Just a simple observation to add to the knowledge base. (I also bought one of these Melbourne with the sales at the Good Guys in January).

I note on Simon's page that he talks about having to hit the power button twice to boot up. I have noticed that this is only the case when running on battery power. When on mains power (provided you wait for the front light indicators to come on) you hit the power button once - wait a few 5-10 seconds and it actually continues to boot through. But on battery power - yes you do need to hit the power button twice.

Just wondering if anyone is planning the upgrade to Hardy when it is released - I am probably too cautious to be in the first round of upgraders.

Overall, I find it to be a very pleasant machine to use.

Robert

I'll be upgrading to 8.04 close to release day, and using that install as the basis of a custom ISO (fingers crossed) which should have everything functional out of the box.

You've read the site, so you know the plan is to present this to Acer. I don't know what demand for the ISO will be like - it may be low enough for me to stick it on that same site :/ or, maybe, LQ will host it for me?

You are correct that the power-button-twice is not needed on mains. Perhaps this- is a feature to prevent accidental power-ups?

How goes suspend and hibernate for you?
(Please confirm the exact model.)

Solved: Sort of...

The microphone works out-of-the-box with Hardy Heron.
New page: Hardy Aspire.

Most issues are solved in this release - except suspend. Weirdly, hibernate works and suspend doesn't. Go figure - well... I will!

Simon

Thanks again for all your efforts on this. I note that you are doing a 'fresh install' of 8.04. Did you have to do anything special to get the wireless working this time - or does it just work (ie no stuffing around with ndiswrapper or madwifi?). I assume that a fresh install means that you have to reinstall all applications from scratch again also - not much fun on limited bandwidth?

Does anyone know if this all works as well with the update function as opposed to the fresh install route?

I note you say that the mic works (internal mic or front ports)? I assume that it is partly due to the updated Alsa mixer in 8.04 and that the mic is now picking up full volume recording.

regards

Robert Wright

See the new page: acer4315+Hardy for details. Yes, you have to install the madwifi driver. There was no fuss with this, it's a naive wget over ethernet - no brain required.

For a fresh install you want no more than 1gig of RAM. If you want to hibernate, and your installed RAM is wore than 1gig, then create another gig or so as a swap file.

Feel free to put root on the rest.

If you're worried - right now, I am working on release 1 of a customization suite. I'll have at least an oem image and a set of packages (with scripts) to enable everything that can be enabled.

With the update function, you'll probably have to recompile the madwifi driver. You'll also have to puh up with Acer's broken configuration. Do a clean install.

The Linuxant HSFModem driver seems incompatible with Hardy though - we'll have to await updates. Installing it renders hardy unbootable. Installing, then removing the driver disables the microphone (!?) which could be what happened in the pre-install.

The driver uses it's own alsa, which, to my mind, means it will break on any upgrade anyway.

Suspend to RAM may need a modified dsdt (acpi reports there are none in initramfs, but that's not actually a problem). I note that the linux dsdt project doesn't list the 4315 nor 5315. <sigh> Which means I'll have to dissassemble it myself.

----------------------
Some people have written to me to say "Use Windows, it just works". Huh - I have to say: rapcay! Huge quivering piles of steaming green crud! (Yes: I have just cleaned my kbd.)

A WinXP Home install process fails at boot (doesn't recognise sata drive - so I have to set "SATA=IDE" in bios. This used to be routine for linux.) Once installed, I still need to get drivers for (you'll love this) audio, VGA, modem and wifi. I can play mp3s out of the box... I just can't hear them!

Drivers are available for download from acer - I think you need the 4310 drivers though. Some people report no sound even with the drivers - so, all in all, linux is doing quite well. Oh... suspend and hibernate crash the system.

Then I have to install an AV suite (clamAV chosen) before updating the system from MSN. This will take a while - more than a coffe break. Now: SATA drivers are available in the update - but, I now cannot use them! (With fedora I used to install in IDE mode and change over post-install, when the drivers came available.)

And then I must install all the apps which come out of the box with Ubuntu. If I stick to MS approved commercial sources, I'm spending some NZ$2500 ... on a $NZ600 lappy. It can be done with freeware - to end up with a 2-3min boot (from power-on to a useable desktop) vs Hardy's 30 secs (on a slow day).

What about Vista? Only Vista home basic will work at all... and that's if you added an extra 512MiB RAM. This laptop was marketed as "Windows Vista Capable". Make your time. 'Nuff said.

Ubuntu 804 Hardy now on our Acer 4315
 

Hi Simon, *excellent* website! Many thanks for all your work.

Thanks to you we now have Hardy Heron on board in our 11Gig partition, replacing LinuxMint 4 which would work really well as a Live distro but presented problems with WiFi once installed. Think that the non-functional Atheros drivers were remarkably resistant to removal in some obscure fashion. <sigh>

Live, we could invoke NDISwrapper and no worries, even had the 5211 drivers in the LinuxMint distro. No WiFi solution yet found once installed. Ah well. :(

But Hardy Heron rocks, bigtime! I know it shows weakness, but I just love the bling of Compiz-Fusion. Windows simply cannot compete - at the time of purchase this ACER 4315 was the cheapest laptop available to us by far, yet it is demonstrably superior in eye candy to Vista on any high end machine I've seen so far.

Took it into 'PC World' for a laugh - asked for 'another one like this please' and blew their tiny minds. That's right, I am small minded. :)

Used our Acer-provided 5211 drivers and NDISwrapper GUI again, no probs, just worked. We get a functional WiFi switch with this approach, but no LED. Must look at your website again, sort out the other keys.

You are so right about what happens with Vista on one of these, they just waddle along - and that's before adding the essential anti-malware etc. Just waiting for the howl from all the innocents who install Vista SP1 and break their brand new PC.


Thanks again for a great resource. Keep up the good work!

All the best, Ben

Thanks for that - I hope Acer appreciate these efforts too.
I take it this is an Acer Aspire 5211 or 5684 WLMi we are talking about? Can you provide a full model number? - I can add it to the site as "also works with".

I think Flymo is actually using the Acer 4315 - but is talking about the 5211.sys windows wifi driver used in ndiswrapper to drive the 5007EG wifi card. At least that is what I have as the driver on an as yet unchanged 4315 with the orginal Acer linux install.

regards

Robert