Re: Installing Linux on an ACER Aspire 3681


Dances With Crows wrote:
On 8 Nov 2006 14:10:55 -0800, bill.sloman@xxxxxxxx staggered into the
Black Sun and said:
I've got SuSE 10.1 on a Linux Format (magazine) DVD, which my shiny new
laptop can read. Unfortunately, I can't see any way of getting the
laptop to boot from the DVD reader. ACER's web-site is unhelpful, and
the search strings I've tied with Google always seem to find stuff
from people who know how to change the boot options

The thing that usually works with x86s (unless the manufacturers were
completely high on crack) is to hold down a key, turn the machine on,
and continue to hold the key down. The x86 should eventually display
"Keyboard stuck key failure. Press FOO to run Setup, BAR to continue".
Press FOO, enter the BIOS Setup, hope it wasn't designed by Compaq.
Usually, FOO will be F1 or Delete or F2.

If you can get into the BIOS Setup, but Setup was designed by chimps or
was translated from Mandarin to English by someone who only spoke
Tagalog, that will require more fiddling on your part. You may wish to
take pictures of the problematic Setup screens with your digicam, then
upload them to your webspace, then follow up with a URL if this is your
problem. HTH anyway,

Thanks. That worked, and the SuSE 10.1 instillation is starting to
install as I type.

The BIOS was as cranky as you'd expect, but I started my career with
computers toggling in the 14-word RIM loader to get my PDP-8 in a state
to read the regular loader off paper tape, and I've gotten used to
cranky interfaces.

Previous experience suggests that I'll still have to do quite a bit
more fiddling to get everything right ...

--
Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

.

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