Pimp my Revo!

I’ve added some extra RAM and a new larger hard drive to my Acer Aspire Revo so here are the final specs: –

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU
• 2GB DDR2 RAM
• 500GB hard disk
• Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics
• HDMI, D-SUB out
• eSATA
• 6 x USB
• 4-in-1 card reader
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 802.11bg WLAN
• Size: 30mm x 180mm x 180mm

The Windows Experience comes out at a weedy 2.2 due to the Atom CPU but the rest of the ratings look pretty decent for such a low-powered PC (it got up to a maximum of around 34 watts during the tests – normally it hovers at around 23 watts when idling).

Next up – install Linux!

Swapping Hard Drive in Acer Revo

The Acer Aspire Revo has a lot of potential for a home media player but the 160gb hard drive won’t be large enough for everybody.

I spotted a special offer on a Iomega Prestige 500gb Portable Hard Drive which contains (in my case) a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 drive, model ST9500325AS .

I already had a working installation of Windows 7 RC, so here’s how I swapped the hard drives: -

1. Download the Clonezilla ISO file (I used clonezilla-live-1.2.2-14.iso) and install it to USB stick via Unetbootin.
2. Boot Revo with Clonezilla USB stick attached & USB Hard Drive attached.
3. Select “device-device disk/partition to disk/partition” and choose the 160gb internal hard drive (/dev/sda) as the source and the 500gb USB hard drive (/dev/sdb) as the target.
4. Confirm (it asks a few times!) and then wait for cloning to be complete. This will take a long time, as it copies all partitions (on my original hard drive I had 4 partitions – Windows 7 NTFS, Linux ext3, Data NTFS and Linux swap).
5. Open the Iomega USB drive (two screws at the back) and take out the Seagate 500gb hard drive.
6. Open the Revo & Swap the hard drives (see forum post here).
7. Swap the drives and re-assemble the Revo and portable hard drive.
8. Boot up the Revo with the new hard drive in it – it should boot straight up.
9. Extend the partitions to make use of the full 500gb space (this can be done in Windows 7 by going to “Computer” then “Manage”. Go to “Storage” then “Disk Management” and then right-click the drive before selecting “Extend Volume”).
10. Put 160gb hard drive into Iomega case & re-partition hard drive.

Now I have a Revo with lots of storage space, and a spare 160gb portable hard drive for backups etc.

XBMC With VDPAU and iPlayer

There’s an interesting article on the How to do something differently… blog about getting VDPAU working with iPlayer under Linux with the SVN build of XBMC. I’ll be sure to look into it some more when I install Ubuntu onto my Revo.

Opening the Acer Aspire Revo

There’s a useful page on opening the Acer Aspire Revo here. Will come in useful for when I add an extra 1GB RAM to the existing 1GB, or maybe swapping the hard drive for a larger one.

Installing Windows 7 on Acer Aspire Revo

Here are some instructions for installing Windows 7 RC onto the Acer Aspire Revo.

1. Backup Drivers

Using “Revobuild”, take a backup of the drivers on the recovery partition – they are copied to a USB stick. Might come in useful later!

2. Partitioning

Here is how I partitioned the 160GB hard drive (Using “GParted Live” on a USB stick) : -

• Partition 1: Windows 7 – NTFS (20gb)
• Partition 2: Ubuntu – ext3 9.04 (10gb)
• Partition 3: Data – NTFS (FAT32 has 4gb File size limit, linux partitions aren’t easy to access from Windows) ( ~127gb)
• Partition 4: Linux Swap (3gb – swap partition’s size should be at least as large as physical RAM for hibernation)

3. Install Windows 7 OS

Here are some instructions on how to install Windows 7 via a USB flash drive instead of an optical drive (thumb drive has to be at least 4GB).

4. Install Drivers

The most recent Nforce drivers (GPU/SMU/Sata/Ethernet) can be found here. This includes the graphics card driver (GeForce v185.85)

I’ve not tried HDMI yet, but you may also have to install “nVidia HDAudio HDMI Audio” which was saved from the Recovery Partition earlier.

5. Install Latest Graphics Driver

The nVidia GeForce/ION Driver Release 186.18 for Windows 7 was released on 18-Jun-09 so install it from here.

6. Configure Auto-Logon

As this is going to be used as a media centre, I want to skip the initial logon screen.

Press Windows R to bring up the “Run” dialog. Type “control userpasswords2″ and press enter – the “User Accounts” screen will be shown.

Select the user account in the main table and uncheck “Users must enter a user name and password to use this computer”. Press “Apply” button – the “Automatically Log On” window will be displayed. Enter the password and confirm it to add the password to the system so that it does not need to be entered during logon.

That’s it!

Power Consumption of Acer Aspire Revo

My Acer Aspire Revo R3600 arrived yesterday. Here are the specifications: -

• 1.6GHz Intel Atom 230 CPU
• 1GB DDR2 RAM
• 160GB hard disk
• Nvidia GeForce 9400M graphics
• HDMI, D-SUB out
• eSATA
• 6 x USB
• 4-in-1 card reader
• Gigabit Ethernet
• 802.11bg WLAN
• Linux
• Size: 30mm x 180mm x 180mm

I’ve installed Windows 7 (more details in another post) and done a quick test of the power consumption. As I’ve read in reviews (but didn’t quite believe!) the power draw hovers between 19 and 20 watts (this is idle – just displaying the Windows desktop after everything has finished loading).

I intend to stick another stick of 1GB RAM inside it, so maybe this will increase the power consumption slightly, buts its still pretty good!