SPARCHER.TechBlog: July 2012

2012-07-30

Acer Aspire 3810T (AS3810T): laptop LCD panel (screen) replacement compatibility list

Some of the Acer Aspire Timeline 3810T (AS3810T) laptops have specific LCD panels which often have backlight broken after some operation time (it's caused by a "flex strip"-type powerline bending breakup -- look at that blogpost for more info and pictures).

If your laptop is already out of warranty, you can buy a new LCD screen and replace it yourself.

Acer 3810T laptop commonly uses a 13.3" LCD screen [1366 * 768 WXGA; 18-bit RGB (3 * 6 bits) -> 262144 (2¹⁸) colors] with LED backlight and 40-pin connector.
Pay attention to the specific brackets it has, as some display variations will not fit.
To prevent future problems, try to get a display with no such overbent "flex strips"; in this list, I've marked supposed "fragile flex" displays with a [bent flex] label.
Anyway, better don't buy a display without checking the actual part numbers and product photos (and also datasheets, preferably).

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Info last updated: 2016-05-10.

Screens confirmed to fit by someone.

AU Optronics (AUO):
B133XW01 V2 [bent flex]

LG Display (ex-LG.Philips LCD):
LP133WH2-TLA3
LP133WH2-TLA4

Samsung:
LTN133AT18

And those displays are believed to work, but need some confirmation.

AU Optronics (AUO):
B133XW01 V3 [bent flex]
B133XW01 V7 [bent flex]
B133XW03 V2
B133XW03 V3

LG Display (ex-LG.Philips LCD):
LP133WH2-TLB3
LP133WH2-TLL1
LP133WH2-TLM1

Toshiba:
LT133EE09300

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List data last updated: 2013-08-21.

2012-07-29

HOWTO: GRUB 2 rescue mode

Sometimes (e. g., after some disk re-partitioning) your GRUB 2 installation may get corrupted, so after the power-on you get only a "grub rescue> _" command prompt.
In such cases you'll need to know which disk partitions Linux & GRUB are installed on. In our example, it's 'sda7' (the 7th partition of the 1st HDD).

Type the following commands into the GRUB rescue prompt:

set root=(hd0,7)
set prefix=/boot/grub
insmod linux
linux /vmlinuz root=/dev/sda7 ro
initrd /initrd.img
boot

Notes:

instead of '(hd0,7)', '(hd0,msdos7)' can be used for root;
an alternative prefix is '(hd0,7)/boot/grub';
an alternative insmod command argument path is '(hd0,7)/boot/grub/linux.mod'.

After successfully booting your GNU/Linux system, you should repair your GRUB 2 installation (execute these command as root, use su, or even better, sudo):

# grub-install /dev/sda
# update-grub2

Note: some people like to execute not update-grub2, but update-grub or even grub-mkconfig.

On the next reboot, it should work fine.

Some more useful GRUB2 reading:

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Last updated: 2013-08-31

And now for Debian "testing" / LXDE

After all the Ubuntu / Unity / GNOME 3 challenges, I've switched to Debian "testing" (pre-"Wheezy") distribution with LXDE, and it even seems to be usable :)

http://wiki.debian.org/LXDE