Aspire One SSD Optimisation

[wizard10000]

Re: Aspire One SSD Optimisation

Yeah, teh Googlez shows this is a popular mod. How did it go for you? I'm tempted to try it on my Mini 2140. Me hates Broadcom.

Easy peasy. The WLAN card was cheap - $28 at newegg

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16833106061

since it's a two-antenna card it hooked right up and once I figured out the BIOS fubar it worked just great - and the driver is open source

Flash the BIOS first, though - as my Mini 110 flat refused to boot as long as the Intel card was in the slot, so I had to take the netbook apart one extra time, remove the card, flash the BIOS and then disassemble the netbook One More Time and reinstall the card.

Intel's driver will irritate you, though - they think a blinking radio LED is a feature when it's really a pain in the backside. You can shut it off by sticking

options iwlagn led_mode=1

somewhere in modprobe.d but note that Intel moved the option from iwlcore to iwlagn somewhere between Natty and Oneiric.

wizard@wizard-netbook:~$ sudo iwconfig wlan1
wlan1 IEEE 802.11abgn ESSID:"xxxxxxxx"
Mode:Managed Frequency:2.437 GHz Access Point: BC:AE:C5:C3:1B:A8
Bit Rate=300 Mb/s Tx-Power=15 dBm
Retry long limit:7 RTS thrff Fragment thrff
Encryption keyff
Power Managementff
Link Quality=62/70 Signal level=-48 dBm
Rx invalid nwid:0 Rx invalid crypt:0 Rx invalid frag:0
Tx excessive retries:1385 Invalid misc:110 Missed beacon:0

[oshunluvr]

Re: Aspire One SSD Optimisation

Back to the ssd...

4K alignment is reccomended. There's a couple of ways to achieve this. With fdisk you can use either of these commands

sudo fdisk -H 224 -S 56 /dev/sdX
sudo fdisk -H 32 -S 32 /dev/sdX

The first gives you a 128kB alignment, the second 512kB. Either will work for an ESB of 512kB and 4K alignment and then your whole ssd is aligned. Others advocate starting the first partition at 63, but one of the above options seems smarter.

EDIT: and if you need MSDOS compatibility, start the first partition at sector 2 if you use the above fdisk commands.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Aspire One SSD Optimisation

Easy peasy. The WLAN card was cheap - $28 at newegg

I've already torn down my Mini a couple times, that'll be the easy part

Did you run into any problems flashing the hacked BIOS?

[wizard10000]

Re: Aspire One SSD Optimisation

I've already torn down my Mini a couple times, that'll be the easy part

Did you run into any problems flashing the hacked BIOS?

None at all, but mine''s a Mini 110 and the BIOS isn't the same.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Aspire One SSD Optimisation

None at all, but mine''s a Mini 110 and the BIOS isn't the same.

Understood. I downloaded a hacked Mini 2140 BIOS a while back. I was thinking of making this a weekend project, but I just got called to play my French horn at recording session on Saturday for a locally-produced movie. Fun!

[wizard10000]

Re: Aspire One SSD Optimisation

Understood. I downloaded a hacked Mini 2140 BIOS a while back. I was thinking of making this a weekend project, but I just got called to play my French horn at recording session on Saturday for a locally-produced movie. Fun!

I did have to dig a little to find a DOS-based flash utility - I threw it up on my VPS for you. I'll PM the link. I just made a bootable FreeDOS SD card with the utility on it, copied the current BIOS to a file on the SD card and flashed the thing.

[SteveRiley]

Re: Aspire One SSD Optimisation

I did have to dig a little to find a DOS-based flash utility - I threw it up on my VPS for you. I'll PM the link. I just made a bootable FreeDOS SD card with the utility on it, copied the current BIOS to a file on the SD card and flashed the thing.

Sounds simpler than I was anticipating. Got the file, thanks. Maybe I can do this tonight.