Acer Aspire One won't boot - BIOS recovery
As part of some upconming training, I was trying to install Fedora 11 on a USB stick to run on my Acer Aspire One. All was going (reasonably) well until I rebooted it, at which point the power light came on, the USB stick access light came on and went off again and nothing happened. No bios screen, nothing. Worried that I was going to have to disassemble the AA1 and fix some dodgy connection, or worse, that it was completely dead, I figured a quick Google couln't hurt. Fortunately, I found a couple of really helpful articles describing my exact problem, and better still, a working solution. It's just taken me 10 mins to fix my AA1, so a big thank you to:
- Peve's blog: Acer Aspire One Won't Boot (BIOS corrupted)
- QRP & CW - Radio Shack: Acer Aspire One BIOS Recovery
- kioskea.net forums: Aspire one wont boot, even the bios dont show
Fortunately, the AA1 has an emergency bios recovery mode. The following instructions are unashamedly copied from Peve's blog and worked a treat on my AOA150:
- Format a USB memory key with the FAT mode.
- Download the latest version of the BIOS from Acer support website - make sure you get the right version for your model of AA1!
- Extract the files from the zip and put both the FLASHIT.EXE and the BIOS file in the root directory of the memory key.
- Rename the BIOS file to ZG5IA32.FD and then remove the disk.
- Turn the AA1 off, insert the battery and connect the AC adapter.
- Insert the USB Memory Key into one of the USB port of the Aspire One.
- Press Fn+Esc, keep it pressed and press the power button to turn the AA1 on.
- Release Fn+Esc after a few seconds, the power button will be blinking.
- Press the power button once. The AA1 will start the BIOS flash, do not interrupt for any reason. After some minutes the power button will stop blinking, and then the AA1 will reboot. Wait till the AA1 has completed all this operations.
- If everything has gone right, the BIOS is flashed and all settings are reset to default.
So, now my machine's booting up again, guess I'd better get back to trying to get Fedora up and running. Fingers crossed I don't have the same problem again!
PC Troubles
Last week I was round at Steve and Ally's place, and Steve had a couple of matched pair of Corsair TwinX 1024 MB sticks left over after upgrading his machine. Having been thinking about upgrading the RAM in my machine (photo editing consumes lots of RAM), I bought them off him to save him sticking them on eBay. Today I put them in the machine, and following his advice, manually configured the BIOS settings as by default they are detected as having a CAS latency of 3, even though they are sold as CAS 2. Alas, that was the last time the machine would even get as far a the POST.
Much cursing and swearing later, consulting Corsair's website, MSI's website, various forums, and the manual for my K8N Diamond motherboard, I remembered that there's a set of diagnostic LEDs that give you a clue what's going on during the boot sequence. The conclusion I came too was that the BIOS couldn't decompress to the RAM, and then I recalled you can probably reset the RAM with a jumper on the motherboard. Turns it it's a switch, which made life easier, and hey presto, the PC fires up and POSTs again.
Re-reading the info on the Corsair site, it turns out that the CAS latency should be set to 2.5 (and not 2) for AMD systems. This done, and hey presto it restarts fine. The info from Corsair is reproduced below (as there's no direct link available):
Why are the timings shown in the SPD set to CAS 3?In my travels, I also dicovered that 2-3-3-6 refers to CAS-tRCD-tRP-tRAS. It's still mostly greek to me (not much of a geek am I?) There's some (possibly questionable - see editors note) info on the CAS latency Wikipedia page.
All of our XMS-3200C2 will have their SPD set to JEDEC defined values for the specific memory IC used to make that part. This is done to ensure maximum compatibility with a wide variety of motherboards. The tested settings Cass 2-3-3-6 for Intel and Cass 2.5-3-3-6 for AMD need to be manually set in the BIOS.
On another note, my next door neighbours Paul and Margaret asked me to have a look at their PC as it stopped working. Turns out the hard drive had failed, and I've had much more success in replacing that an re-installing WinXP home. Unfortunately I had to talk to Microsoft (for activation) and managed not to fail the trick quesion "how many PCs is this software installed on?"
Anyway, I'm now off to see if my new, improved memory makes my photo editing software work any better.
Nisis / Aiptek V3.15 drivers
- Download page: http://www.aiptek.com/drivers.htm#hp12u
- Direct link to Aiptek v3.15 drivers: http://www.goaiptek.com/drivers/driverfiles/DriverTabletV3.15.zip
I shall have to give these a go and see if they fix my problems with the pen only working for a couple of minutes. I'll let you know how I get on...
NISIS G3 Tablet Driver Update
Anyway, the forum gives another source for the drivers:
http://list.driverguide.com/list/company1629/index.html
It appears to be free, and appears to have the v3.10 drivers. However, you have to either register or be advertised at to get them.
Better yet, the Aiptek support site now appears to have v3.10 drivers, plus MacOS 9 and 10 drivers available for download. I've not checked them out in detail, but they look pretty similar to the copy I have. There is also a post on the same thread, dated a couple of days ago, claiming a new set of drivers - v3.15 - also on the Aiptek site. However, I've not been able to find them (but it is 3.30 in the morning, so I might try again over the weekend at a more sociable hour).
If none of this works for you, do leave me a comment here and I'll send you the details of another location (which I don't want to make public for various reasons) which doesn't require registration or advertising.
Graphics Tablet - Nisis Easypen G3 USB
OK, strictly this isn't a review, more of a support guide for the Nisis Easypen G3 USB graphics tablet as I had some major problems getting Photoshop to recognise the pressure-sensitive stylus.
Scan had them on special offer (again), and I finally decided to get one. They were reviewed in one of the digital camera magazines recently and faired pretty well, so for about £10 (OK, more like £18 with P&P!) I thought I'd give it a go and see if it helped with photo editing.
It arrived, I installed the drivers, and it appeared to work. The systray icon fires up a configuration control, letting you set the working area of the tablet, the speed of the mouse (it comes with a mouse and a pen) and the sensitivity of the pen. All well and good. However, upon firing up Photoshop CS2 and trying to configure the brush dynamics to use the pen pressure to control size/opacity/flow of the brush, I discover Photoshop doesn't recognise the tablet!
Anyway, to cut a long story short, get yourself the latest drivers. Unfortunately, Nisis's website (http://www.nisis.com/) was non-existant (perhaps that's why Scan are selling the tablets cheap...). Fortunately, the Internet Archive has copies of them from their archived copy of the G3 drivers page (or try to download direct). Note that the drivers packaged as version 3.10 do enable the pen pressure control to work with Photoshop - other (earlier) versions I've tried don't.
For reference, the Nisis products appear to be re-badged Aiptek tablets, so their drivers should work. However, they only appear to have version 3.08 drivers, which didn't enable pen pressure control in Photoshop for me.
Finally, I ought to plug Adobe Forums. There's a few threads on there about Nisis, Aiptek and other branded tablets (which seem to be the same models), and the problems associated with them. Expect lots of comments about "you should have bought Wacom". It's clear that Wacom tablets are the most reliable, but they are several times the price, so I guess the Nisis G3 was worth a couple of late nights tracking down the right drivers to get it all working.
Now all I need to do is actually try using the tablet for photo editing!
Update (11 September 2007):
As has been pointed out in the comments, the Internet Archive link no longer works. Please check my more recent post for links to the Aiptek V3.15 drivers.
Update (18 October 2007):
Surprisingly, there still seems to be some demand for the v3.10 drivers. Due to a lack of time, and giving up caring whether it's going to cause me problems making it public, here's the link to the drivers.
Download and use them at your own risk. I got hold of these from the Internet Archive's archive of the Nisis website. I believe them to be free from viruses (virii?) and other nasty things, but please feel free to check them yourself first. Also see the note above that more recent v3.15 drivers are available from Aiptek.
Finally, I haven't actually used mine in a long time. Between various issues with drivers (lack of pen pressure sensitivity in older drivers, newer drivers crashing after a couple of minutes) and general poor feel, I can't be bothered. Once upon a time a graphic designer told me to buy Wacom or I'd regret it. He was right, and I think my G3 is going in the bin/on freecycle/on eBay. Whether I'll get a Wacom or not to replace it, I don't know. To everyone else still persisting with the G3, good luck!
Thanks,
Kev
Update (21 January 2008):
Seeing as there are still lots of people asking about the drivers for the Nisis Easypen tablets, I'll re-post the links here, even though they I've already posted them on the article linked in a previous update (above). These are for the Aiptek HyperPen tablets, which appear to be identical to the Nisis ones apart from the branding (at least, the Nisis Easypen G3 and Aiptek HyperPen 8000U look physically identical). So, as stated previously, the latest drivers are version 3.15 for Windows XP and Vista (or 3.08 for Windows 98, ME and 2000):
- Download page: http://www.aiptek.com/drivers.htm#hp8u
- Direct link to Aiptek v3.15 drivers for Windows XP and Vista: http://www.goaiptek.com/drivers/driverfiles/DriverTabletV3.15.zip
- Direct link to Aiptek v3.08 drivers for Windows XP and Vista: http://www.goaiptek.com/drivers/driverfiles/USBTabletV3.08.zip
Once again, good luck!
