Acer Aspire One AOA150 - USB SDHC Card Reader Not Recognizable By BIOS ver. 3305

GraysonPeddie · 03-13-2009, 06:05 AM

Hi, I don't know how to update my BIOS to the latest and I'm not able to bootup my SDHC card using my USB SHDC Card Reader.

This is the one I currently have:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16820208375

Sometimes, the BIOS recognizes my card reader, but most of the time, it does not. I've tested it in all 3 USB ports.

I'm trying to install Ubuntu 8.10 in my netbook. It runs Windows XP, with Ubuntu 8.10 on top with Wubi.

For some odd reason, when I plugged in my network cable to try to install Ubuntu, my USB card reader lights up upon BIOS POST! Wierd, but I got Ubuntu 8.10 installed. After an installation of Ubuntu, my USB Card Reader does not light up expect when I boot into Ubuntu.

In a side note (off-topic), since I only have two primary partitions: one for Windoze recovery and one for swap, along with logical partitions for Linux, Grub shows Windows NT/2000/XP (as far as I remember).

farslayer · 03-16-2009, 11:21 AM

BIOS updating on the AAO

http://aspireone.wikia.com/wiki/Updating_the_BIOS

BIOS v3309 appears to tbe the latest version. I do not know if it will address your porblem or not.

GraysonPeddie · 03-17-2009, 12:29 PM

Well, booting with my USB SDHC drive is not an option, so my only options is to flash from Windows (I hope it's compatible with Wine for Linux), but this file: http://www.acer.co.jp/one/file/Winflash.zip, appears to be down. I'll see if I can do a search for WinFlash for Acer Aspire One...

farslayer · 03-17-2009, 01:38 PM

I see some other postws that not all USB/SDHC units boot properly.. One post in the Ubuntu forums had a guy doing it successfully with an adapter he bought at walmart for $5.00, while another guy couldn't get his to work no matter what he tried.. so it could have to do with the particular adapter you have.

Too bad the AAO can't boot from the internal SDHC

GraysonPeddie · 03-17-2009, 11:20 PM

So, some flash drives can be recognized by BIOS, some drives cannot.

I'll just have to get another flash drive that is not a card reader.

Thanks.

farslayer · 03-18-2009, 07:19 AM

Ah I thought you were intentionally using the USB to SDHC converter so you could install the entire OS onto the SDHC card. (some peolpe do that for whatever reason).

I had no trouble with any of the regular flash drives I have used with my AAO.

Best of luck !

GraysonPeddie · 03-19-2009, 06:45 AM

Yes. I have a USB to SDHC converter to put an installer in the SD card and then install it into the hard drive.

When it comes to Linux, to work around this, I mount an ISO to my apache server in the /var/www/ubuntu/ folder, copy over the files that files with pxelinux.0, linux, and initrd.gz into /tftpboot/, and I changed the default in the pxelinux.cfg directory. I also specified the filename in the DHCP server. It's a lot of fun to install Linux over the network and it works.

But I won't do this when it comes to flashing a BIOS, which is a bad idea to host a BIOS flashing utility over the network.