Acer Travelmate 8172

This is an article about running Gentoo on an Acer TravelMate 8172 series laptop.

Laptop Specifications
Hardware specs may vary. These are the specs for the model Acer TravelMate 8172-33U3G32nkk:


 * Intel Core i3-330UM 1.2GHz 3MB cache
 * 3GB DDR2 RAM (2 slots)
 * Intel HD Graphics (on-CPU)
 * Integrated HDA Conexant Audio
 * 11.6in TFT LCD Screen (Widescreen), 1366x768 WXGA
 * 320GB 2.5in SATA Hard Disk
 * 3x USB 2.0 ports
 * VGA output
 * Broadcom tg3 Gigabit ethernet
 * Broadcom brcm80211 Wifi 4357 abgn
 * 5in1 Card Reader
 * Dock connector

Printout of lspci:

Printout of lsusb (builtin devices, no external devices connected):

Printout of lsmod (builtin devices, no external devices connected):

Information from :

Drives and Storage

 * Hard Drive controller works using ahci driver in the kernel.

Graphics Chip
TODO

WLAN Card
You'll also need the firmware:

You will also need to rename firmware files, see.

2.6.38 kernel driver is capable of seriously spamming syslog with "Short CCK" messages. This was patched for 2.6.39, but hasn't been backported as of 2.6.38.7.

Sound Chip

 * Works under alsa using the HDA driver. Codec is Conexant.

Webcam

 * Works using uvcvideo driver.

Card Reader

 * Is a PCI device. SD Card portion works using SDHCI driver.

Fingerprint reader

 * Untested

WiFi, HDD LEDs

 * HDD LED works
 * WIFI LED blinks very rarely, not sure whats going on

Problems

 * thermal zone driver seems to be confused and fan seems to turn on way too often and too early