EEE 1201N Updates – New BIOS & Hackintosh info
There is a new BIOS up for the 1201N - version 321 (previous released was 318). The description on the site only says "Update brightness table." so it dosen't sound to exciting.
Meanwhile, in the Hackintosh area, the 1201N has finally gotten it's own official thread over at Insanely Mac- 209533. There is now a bit more information up front about the state of OSX on the 1201N. Not much changes, no networking at all unless you swap out the WiFi PCie card.
Wiki for tracking useful tidbits about the 1201N and Gadgets
I'm adding to my wiki, which is a easier way to store useful links, notes and processes than this blog. For instance, I have a page for the 1201N and for Ubuntu. There is more content coming and start to get my issues with the 1201N and Ubuntu 9.10 fixed.
Current Issues with 1201N and Ubuntu 9.10
Issues that I'm trying to fix:
1. Dual monitors (using the VGA out)
Issue: Connecting a monitor or projector to the VGA is a PITA. The Nvidia Control panel detects it, but cannot enable it without re-writing a new Xorg.conf file, which is owned by root, and so the new file must be written to /tmp and moved over, then X needs to be restart-ed. Even then, moving an open window into the 2nd screen won't always work, even though the screen is there and I can move the mouse into the window.
Aso, the GPU acceleration seems off when a 2nd screen is connected via VGA. I haven't tried the HDMI out yet.
[01/24/10] SOLVED: See my page on the wiki where I'm also tracking these issues and solutions.
2. Microphone not working
Issue: I installed Skype and it worked great w/ the video camera, however the microphone does not work, even though Skype detected it and claims that it is there.
3. Trackpad
Issues: Multiple issues
- trying to get multitouch to work - Fixed, logged and source.
- trying to turn it off when a mouse is present
- getting middle mouse button when emulating 3 buttons (the mouse button is a rocker, so clicking both is impossible)
EEE PC 1201N vs Macbook Air
I've been trying to use the 1201N as my daily machine, at least in place of my Macbook Air. There are several advantages the 1201N has over the Air, and several disadvantages
Pros
- 4GB of RAM
- Plenty of disk space
- Smaller size
Cons
- No wifi after sleep, or sometimes after disconnecting from network
- Short Battery life
- Can run Omnigraffle
- Funky trackpad
The biggest issue with the Air is the the measly 80GB hard drive, it just isn't enough space. Upgrading it in this 1st gen Air is not financially feasible, as the HD costs as much as the 1201N itself. Not having Omnigraffle is forcing me to go back to the Mac for that one app. So far OpenOffice has been great at editing the various file I'm forced to deal with at work.
EEE PC 1201N Motherboard Photos
Some photos I took when upgrading the HD on the EEE PC 1201N.
There is a spot for a 3G connector on the MB, but nothing is soldered onto the MB to accept a SIM chip.
1201N Motherboard top:
This is what you see after you remove the keyboard, unscrew the screws for the shield underneath the keyboard, unscrew the 4 screws at the bottom holding in the top of the case, and gently pry apart the top of the case all the way around the edge as it has little tiny legs on the top of the case that lock in with friction to the bottom of the case.
And a close up:
Flash 10.1 Beta2 plugin for Chrome Browser in Karmic
So if you have the 1201N you really should have the Flash 10.1 Beta2 plugin, which supports the ION chip in your Netbook and plays back flash video content near flawlessly and with minimal CPU overhead.
After you download the flash beta, you extract it and run a simple installer from a shell that wants to know the lib dir of your browser. It won't recognize Chrome's installation dir (in /opt/google) and so it' won't install directly to Chrome, but you can install for Firefox first and just copy the player over to Chrome.
Running the Flash Player installer, it will ask:
Please enter the installation path of the Mozilla, Netscape,
or Opera browser (i.e., /usr/lib/mozilla):
For the Karmic Firefox 3.5.x you would use:
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.7
and the installer will install the player into
/usr/lib/firefox-3.5.7/plugins/libflashplayer.so
Chrome
To get this to work in Google Chrome, you need to do a few manual steps.
First, copy the flashplayer from the FF installation into /opt/google/chrome/plugins (you may need to create the dir):
# mkdir /opt/google/chrome/plugins
# cp /usr/lib/firefox-3.5.7/plugins/libflashplayer.so /opt/google/chrome/plugins
Then you have to make sure the Nautilus Launcher launches Chrome while telling it to check for plugins:
[RIGHT-CLICK]Applications/Edit Menus
Select Internet/Chrome, click on the Properties button
add the text --enable-plugins between the chrome and the %U.
Now close eveything and then launch Chrome from the Applications/Internet/Chrome menu.
Here is Hulu:
And there you go, Flash with accelerated ION video in Chrome.
Source: HowtoForge
ION, Xinerama, Xwindows and Multiple Monitors on 1201N
The EEE 1201N has both a VGA as well as HDMI out. In X on Ubuntu Karmic I wanted to start with just using the VGA to connect to an extra panel I have. It's older and doesn't have HDMI. There were just two issues with this however.
1. The Nvidia Control Panel in Karmic couldn't parse the xorg.conf file that was built by the Karmic installation process (and was working fine as best I could tell).
To resolve this, I had to run (as root) the nvidia-xconfig app which wrote out a more complete and parseable conf file for me. I had to logout and back in to restart xwindows (and now I see the Nvidia splash-screen)
Next, since I was running the Nvidia Control Panel as my user it wasn't able to write out the new xorg.conf file that it wanted to write (which had my 2nd monitor enabled and postitioned where I wanted it). Simply writing this file to /tmp and then moving it over via the shell worked. I had to logout and back in. But now my 2nd monitor worked! And I enabled Xinerama on this monitor.
Xinerama is an nice extention to have, it makes the extra monitors act like you'd expect them to coming from XP or a Macintosh- that is, you can freely drag and drop apps across monitors, and the multiple desktops spann the multiple monitors.
About Xinerama & Twinview
The NVIDIA Linux Driver supports GLX when Xinerama is enabled on similar GPUs. The Xinerama extension takes multiple physical X screens (possibly spanning multiple GPUs), and binds them into one logical X screen. This allows windows to be dragged between GPUs and to span across multiple GPUs. The NVIDIA driver supports hardware accelerated OpenGL rendering across all NVIDIA GPUs when Xinerama is enabled.
There is more info about Xinerama and Twinview at Phoronix.
Karmic PAE Kernal and 4G Ram, Wifi on 1201N
I recently added more RAM (4G) and a new HD (320G, 7200rpm) to the 1201N. This required re-installation of Ubuntu 9.10 Karmic onto the 1201N. The installation went without a hitch- I had previously re-installed Window 7 Professional, and Ubuntu went in and found it. Ubuntu also correcly detected the 4G of RAM and install the PAE kernel, which allows the use of a 32bit kernel with the extra RAM.
The PAE kernel is working fine with the Nvidia ION drivers, suspend and hibernate.
I found more information about a wifi driver, and this post at the Asus forum has links to an actual Linux driver. Using this driver doen't require the NDISwrapper, but I have noticed that the wiki will not re-connect after suspend, which the NDISwrapped, Win2K driver did. However, I've been hibernating (due to the bad batter life on the 1201N) and the wifi works fine after a hibernate wake-up (which is decently fast, especially with BootBlaster for the BIOS).
The opening of the 1201N to replace the hard-drive is a bit more than just opening a panel in the bottom, but it's fairly easy, given you take your time in cracking all the little pressure-tabs which hold the top and bottom of the case together. The new HD and the extra ram are making Ubuntu much more responsive and snappy.
EEE 1201 – Configs to Set
Now that you have Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala) installed on your EEE PC 1201N, there are a bunch of little things you can do to make it a much more useable system. This post will keep track of these little things as I come across them.
- Setup Nvidia ION Drivers
- Enable Multi-touch on Synaptics trackpad
- Get Wifi Working
- Add Terminal into Nautilus right-click menu
- Desktop switching
- Stop Update Manger
- Tracking 1201N BIOS releases
EEE 1201N – Wifi working in Karmic Ubuntu
To get your wifi working on the 1201N in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic) is really pretty easy, once you have the right driver for windows and use the NDISWrapper packages for Ubuntu. I found the critical link here on LaunchPad. The wierd thing is that the wifi in the 1201N is a Realtek 8191, and is mis-reported by the lspci command, since the device is not even registered with the database lspci uses.
So the link on the Launchpad discussion is here. Down load this, it contains the driver for the wifi and the commands to execute as root to install the NDISwrapper packages from the repos. I ran it, added ndiswrapper to /etc/modules so that it loaded on reboot and after the reboot the wifi worked right away and connected to my local WPA2 AP. It also works after resume.
EEE 1201n Ubuntu Karmic – Good Results
So the EEEbuntu 3 install (based on Ubuntu 9.04, Jaunty) was too flakey, and while I had the ION working great, I still had no ethernet or wifi. EEEbuntu is working on release 4 (based on debian) but they haven't even released a beta yet. So, being bored I wiped the EEEbuntu and replaced it with a stock 32bit Ubuntu Desktop 9.10 (karmic)good installation.
The good news is that Ubuntu allowed me to install the Nvidia 185.18 driver right after boot (it detected the ION automatically) and this version is working with suspending. The better news is that wired ethernet worked out of the box!
I've since then found some easy directions to get wifi working (using the win2k drivers and NDISwrapper- I'll post this up soon).
I'm much happier with Ubuntu Karmic, and I'll be following up soon with some more detailed posts about what I've done with the 1201N.
Updating Nvidia ION Drivers on EEE 1201n – Ubuntu
Using EEEbuntu (9.04) on the new EEE 1201N with Nvidia ION? You may have noticed that the built-in gfx driver is crushingly slow. But you can grab the latest Nvidia Linux drivers (which support the ION) without too much effort.
Below is exactly what I did to my system to get this working. Do this as root.
# wget http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos/ubuntu-repos.key && apt-key add ubuntu-repos.key && rm ubuntu-repos.key
# echo "deb http://www.avenard.org/files/ubuntu-repos jaunty release" | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/avenard.list
# apt-get update
# apt-get install linux-headers-2.6.28-11-generic
# apt-get install nvidia-glx-195 nvidia-195-libvdpau
# nvidia-xconfig
# apt-get install vim
# vi /etc/X11/xorg.conf
-- [Change Mouse to /dev/input/mice]
# /etc/init.d/gdm stop
# rmmod nvidia
# modprobe nvidia
# echo nvidia >>/etc/modules
# /etc/init.d/gdm start
Reference Pages:
http://ptspts.blogspot.com/2009/08/asrock-ion-330-nettop-with-jaunty.html
http://www.avenard.com/media/Ubuntu_Repository/Ubuntu_Repository.html
Update: I also updated the BIOS of the 1201N to the latest version; downloaded from Asus website - you can grab it right here- 0318
- unzip the new bios
- stick it on a USB stick
- rename it from 1201N-ASUS-0318.ROM to 1201N.ROM on the USB stick
- put the USB stick in the 1201, remove all other USB devices
To update the bios- power off and hold ALT+F2 as you power on. The 1201N has 'bootblaster' which makes it difficult to do this (it will often just go right into grub), if you can't get the BIOS update utility to come up I suggest you get into the BIOS itself (F2) and then choose to disable Bootblaster then try the ALT+F2. The flash utility will load and read the usb stick and update the BIOS automatically, then restart the netbook.
EEE 901 Ubuntu and Netbook Remix
I was fortunate enough to pick up an EEE 901 for a work project and have spent some time with this machine. I chose the Linux version with 20G, which comes broken down into 2 different 'drives' (they aren't really SSD drives, just chips that plug into the ePCI sockets, but they emulate real PATA drives). The first drive is 4G, the 2nd is 16G. The 16G is replaceable and some people can even remove it and replace it with 1.8 hard-drives (the type used in iPod and MacAir) if their 901 comes with a ZIF socket. Asus carved out the space to hold a 1.8 drive, so they must have been planning for something like this.
The Xandros distro that comes on it is really boring, so I replaced it with Ubuntu Hard Heron. There is a site with good information an a tweaked distro to adapt to the short screen and limited real-esate. People have hacked together a nice replacement kernel that gets back most of the functionality (multi-threading, networking (need to build drivers), soft-keys etc.).
AFter I had Ubuntu working I took the extra step and loaded on the Ubuntu Netbook Remix which is just a series of packages that change the UI. Canonical put this out to address the growing netbook market. The UI works much easier with the 901 (which has tiny, tiny keys and bad trackpad) and selecting and launching apps is easier. There is no reason for the traditional menu-bar UI used on traditional desktop computers.
As for the EEE 901 itself, it's a mixed love on my end. The size and raw speed are nice. The slow SSD disk is bad, the tiny keys are much too small to use for typing anything but URLs or simple commands, even then, you are prone to typos unless you have the hands of a 10 year old. The trackpad is sloppy and the pad's buttons require to much force. I'm using the device for work that won't require much input on the keypad, so I'm not so worried. I'm getting the MSI Wind soon and I'll compare that to the 901 when I've had it while.
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- iPad keyboard accessory won’t ship until mid-April March 12, 2010 Brad
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