LinuxQuestions.org - ACPI woes, & xserver won't recognise touchpad on backtrack3 + eee pc.

I'm getting a great deal of stress out of trying to install backtrack 3 (on an eee pc, but I figured I'd post in this forum, since it's more of a linux-related issue than a eee-kool-aid party). It's also my first slackware distro. My biggest two problems:

First problem: ACPI
None of the ACPI functionality works. The screen stays on when the lid is down, the CPU temp reads at 0C, and twice in the last 4 days it has shut down, telling me that the processor has reached critical temperature. Where do I even start with this one? I've never had absolutely nothing working before!

Second problem: Touchpad
Ok, I'm a little farther along on this one. Try as I might, I just can't get it to run off anything other than the generic mouse device & driver. It's very aggravating, because it will go through seemingly random phases of jumping and clicking all over the place. I would like to actually use the synaptics driver, like this, say:

Code:

Section "InputDevice"

    Identifier  "synaptics"

    Driver      "synaptics"

    Option      "Device"          "/dev/psaux"

    Option      "Protocol"        "auto-dev"

    Option      "LeftEdge"        "1000"

    Option      "RightEdge"        "5400"

    Option      "TopEdge"          "1000"

    Option      "BottomEdge"      "4900"

    Option      "PalmDetect"      "0"

    Option      "SHMConfig"        "true"

    Option      "SendCoreEvents"  "yes"  

    Option      "HorizScrollDelta" "0"  

    Option      "RBCornerButton"  "0"

    Option      "RTCornerButtom"  "0"

    Option      "MaxSpeed"        "0.1"

EndSection

(the above is the exact same entry to xorg.conf as the stock xandros distro that comes with the computer). However, relying on that, I can't even `startx`. Here's the interesting part of `startx 2> log; cat log`

Code:

synaptics no synaptics event device found (checked 18 nodes)

Query no Synaptics: 6003C8

(EE) synaptics no synaptics touchpad detected and no repeater device

(EE) synaptics Unable to query/initialize Synaptics hardware.

(EE) PreInit failed for input device "synaptics"

No core pointer



Fatal server error:

failed to initialize core devices

giving up.

xinit:  Connection reset by peer (errno 104):  unable to connect to X server

xinit:  No such process (errno 3):  Server error.

Any suggestions as to why it wouldn't recognise the touchpad? Again, I emphasize that (having also tried out lots of minor variants), this is the entry from the OEM linux xorg.conf.