There are numerous problems to get Fedora Core 4 working on an Acer Travelmate 3004WTMi, namely:
The worst problem is the interrupt controller problem. The BIOS assigns all high speed IO devices (LAN, WLAN, Firewire, USB) to interrupts 10 and 11. Whenever Linux tries to enable one of those interrupts, it gets a screaming interrupt it does not know how to stop except by disabling the interrupt again. This means that none of the IO devices work.
A buggy ACPI DSDT prevents the battery state from being reported. A workaround is to fix the DSDT and tell the kernel to use the fixed DSDT instead of the one provided by the machine BIOS. This is the DSDT patch I'm currently using.
If you enable uniprocessor APIC/IO-APIC, the kernel panics claiming it cannot renumber an IO-APIC. If you remove the panic line, it actually works in IOAPIC mode.
Detecting the Synaptics Touchpad requires passing usb-handoff to the kernel command line.
In order for x.org to work in native mode (and not VESA mode), the i810 driver needs to be updated to current x.org CVS.
The Sigmatel HDA Codec also needs patches for it to work which are not yet in RedHat's kernel.
To get the panel native 1280x800 resolution, VBIOS needs to be patched, just as with almost any Intel graphics adapter.
X is not able to switch to a text console and/or back. You get a black screen, which can only be recovered by restarting the X server.
On resume from disk (suspend2), X fails to get the display working, I get a black screen. This may be related to the VT switching problem.
VT switching between x.org and frame buffer consoles works though, so use eg. vga=0x317 on the kernel command line.
| 915resolution-0.2-2.src.rpm | Hack to add support for the native 1280x800 resolution to the Video BIOS |
| 915resolution-0.2-2.i386.rpm | Hack to add support for the native 1280x800 resolution to the Video BIOS |
| 915resolution-debuginfo-0.2-2.i386.rpm | |
| swsusp2-mkinitrd-4.2.15-1.acer2.noarch.rpm | an mkinitrd version that includes the lzf compressor needed for resume |
| swsusp2-mkinitrd-4.2.15-1.acer2.src.rpm | an mkinitrd version that includes the lzf compressor needed for resume |
| kernel-2.6.15-1.1833_FC4.root.i686.rpm | kernel, with a fixed DSDT, updated ipw2200, and suspend2 |
| kernel-2.6.15-1.1833_FC4.root.src.rpm | kernel, with a fixed DSDT, updated ipw2200, and suspend2 |
| kernel-debuginfo-2.6.15-1.1833_FC4.root.i686.rpm | kernel, with a fixed DSDT, updated ipw2200, and suspend2 |
| kernel-devel-2.6.15-1.1833_FC4.root.i686.rpm | kernel, with a fixed DSDT, updated ipw2200, and suspend2 |
| hibernate-1.12-1.src.rpm | hibernate (suspend to disk) userland support |
| hibernate-1.12-1.noarch.rpm | hibernate (suspend to disk) userland support |
| xorg-x11-6.8.2-37jnx.src.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-deprecated-libs-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-deprecated-libs-devel-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-devel-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-doc-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-font-utils-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-libs-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-Mesa-libGL-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-Mesa-libGLU-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-sdk-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-tools-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-twm-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-xauth-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-xdm-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-Xdmx-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-xfs-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-Xnest-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
| xorg-x11-Xvfb-6.8.2-37jnx.i386.rpm | X server with an update intel video driver |
Because no high speed IO devices work with the standard kernel and thus with the installation kernel, I found no other easy way than to copy the installation images plus the above RPM packages to the internal harddisk (eg. by using the preinstalled Windoze).
Thomas Sailer