Replace SSD with Compact Flash card on Acer Aspire One ZG5

Earlier this year (2013) my SSD on AOA110 died. I had to choose what to do next - sell the netbook or fix it. As both things are fairly easy to be done and I love this netbook (in fact I'm currently writing this article on it), I chose to fix it, test it for some time and write on my blog about the results. So here we go.

What you'll need:

1. Aser Aspire One ZG5 with SSD. Model of the SSD doesn't matter. The only thing that matters is that it should be PATA SSD with ZIF connector.
2. CF/ZIF Convertor Circuit Board with ZIF Cables
3. A compact flash card of your choice.
4. Double-sided tape.
5. Knowledge of how to tear down your AOA. You can find a video here.
6. An hour or two, depending on your skills.

End result:

There are two tricky parts here:

1. The cable you need to use is NOT supplied with this adapter. It's called flipped cable. As far as I know, it's not supplied with any adapter. You have to make it yourself. There are two cables coming with this adapter, so you have 1 mistake margin. I've read a couple of ways to make this cable, but I had another idea. The end result is to flip the pins of the cable so from one of the sides they should face down and the other up. Unfortunately, I didn't took a picture of my cable because it's hard to fit the flipped cable inside the adapter and when I succeeded I didn't wanted to tear it down again. Here is how I did it, though - see that both ends of the cable are a bit thick? That's made because the cable there should make good contact with the board. Since we want to flip the cable there, it'll have double thickness in the end, so we should remove this thick peace of plastic. If you don't (as I did in my first try), you will probably brake some of the buses and you won't be able to plug the cable into the adapter. So remove it and flip the cable exactly where the pins end, so they should not be visible on one of the sides of the cable.
2. Compact flash card should be marked as fixed drive, not as removable drive, if you want to install Windows XP (for 7/8 I think it's not a problem, but I never tested it). For Linux it doesn't matter. If your CF card is marked as a removable drive, you won't be able to see it in the BIOS of your AOA - that should not worry you - it's still visible and bootable from the boot menu (F12). I bought 16GB 400X Transcend, as I read on the Internet that 90% of the Transcends are marked as fixed drives, but mine was not :( For Sandisks there is an utility for flipping this bit and making fixed disk from removable disk and vice versa. It's called ATCFWCHG and can be downloaded from here. For other brands I don't have any information.

After you make your flip cable and get your CF card, the rest is simple:

1. Tear down the netbook.
2. Make space for the adapter (you can look how I did it at the picture below).
3. Glue the adapter there with the double-sided tape.
4. Put the netbook back together and test it. Don't forget the ferrite ring on the cable (get the old one from the SSD).

Here is how I fit my adapter inside the AOA.

CF life expectations

I used my Transcend for 3 months (everyday use) and I can feel it slowing down as I did with the original SSD. That's really bad news for me. But the good news is that this is MLC flash card. Sandisk are offering SLC flash cards - they are pricey, but their life should be more than twice the length. Also the larger the capacity of your CF card is, the longer it's lifetime will be. So with 32GB SLC you should start feeling the slowdown not in 3 months, but in at least an year if not more. And that's if you use you netbook as I used mine - 2 to 6 hours each day (more in the weekends). It's up to you ;)

How to gain 100-350MB more free space upon Windows installation

When installing Windows Vista or 7 on a new hard drive, the OS creates a 100MB partition right at the beginning of the drive. If you are installing Windows 8, then the size of that partition is 350MB. I have Acer Aspire One ZG5 with 8GB SSD, which is very small and I have to make custom Windows installation, that use less space. Nevertheless, every MB counts! So if you are like me or you just hate that small partition that the OS creates, let me show you how to trick the setup not to create it. It's really simple - create partitions manually, not through the installer. Here's how:

1. Boot your installation.
2. When the setup wants you to choose partition to install Windows to, hit Shift + F10. This should bring command prompt to you.
3. Type diskpart and press Enter. Diskpart is an utility coming with Windows, so you really shouldn't do anything special to get it. In case you make your own installation, make sure you leave diskpart utility on the setup disk.
4. Type list disk and remember the number of the disk you want to partition. In my case it's 0, so replace 0 with your number from now on.
5. Type select disk 0.
6. Type clean (this will erase all the info on the drive, if any).
7. Now if you want the whole drive to be one partition (as in my case), type create partition primary. If you want to have more partitions, type create partition primary size=n where n is the size of the partition you want in MB. The rest of the partitions you can create again here, or later with the GUI.
8. Type select partition 1.
9. Type format fs=ntfs quick.
10. Probably not needed, but just to be sure type active.
11. Type exit, to exit Diskpart and then exit again, to exit cmd.
12. From the setup choose the partition you've just created and proceed with the install without loosing 100/350MB :)

EasyPeasy on Aser Aspire One

Yet another post of the series. This time I tried EasyPeasy on my AOA110. It works really good, with the exception of WiFi - no bundled driver inside the .iso image. Also brightness settings are not working - only fn key combinations can be used to control it. Nevertheless if you want to try it, you'll need:
1. EasyPeasy images.
2. UNetbootin.
3. At lease 1GB flash drive.
Now run UNetbootin and select EasyPeasy's image and write it to your flash drive. Boot the flash drive and have fun :)

ReactOS on Acer Aspire One (installation without CD)

As I mentioned earlier, I've tried ReactOS on my AOA110, but without any success. Here I'll show you how to install ReactOS without CD. First, there is not an easy way to make ReactOS run on those netbooks. At first I tried 0.3.14 using a flash drive with CDFS partition (some flash drives allow you to have a partition which the BIOS and OS sees as CD), but that failed. Then I tried chaining GRUB with Freeloader, but that failed too. In the end I was able to install ReactOS (56595) by first installing it in a virtual machine and then copying all files to the netbook's SSD and again using GRUB. After loading ReactOS it asked me for a lot of drivers, but I had them prepared and copied to the SSD  The bad new is only WiFi driver installed, but I didn't found any way to scan for WiFi networks. When tried to install video driver (GMA 950) using it's setup program, everything went fine, till next boot - blank screen after ReactOS boot screen. Also installing LAN (Realtek) driver through ReactOS' wizard ended in BSOD.

Drivers tested:
Video - only setup install possible, which crashes the system after reboot
Audio - wizard can't find the driver (XP version)
LAN - wizard finds the driver, but ends in BSOD (both 2000 and XP versions)
WiFi - wizard finds and installs successfully the driver
Web Cam - wizard can't find the driver (XP version)

There ware also some other drivers (ACPI, System device, USB something), but I don't know that they are and where to get drivers for them. ReactOS doesn't have them.

So, if you are still up to it, here is the full procedure to install ReactOS on your PC without using a CD:
1. Get all the drivers and extract them (ROS doesn't support ZIP files). You'll need XP drivers, but 2000/2003 might work as well.
2. You'll need to prepare USB flash drive with WinPE using WinBuilder or use Windows Vista/7/8 USB install drive. You may also use Linux, but if you know how to use it, you won't be reading this :D.
3. After creating the flash drive and ensuring it works, it's time to install ReactOS under virtual machine. I used VirtualBox for the purpose, as it's free.
4. Install VBox, create a virtual machine and a virtual hard drive (make sure it's VHD format), and install ROS. Shutdown the machine after you get to the desktop.
5. It's time to mount the VHD file. At this point it'll be good if you are running Windows 7 or better. If not, you'll need to mount it using VHDMount. Othewise use this procedure - type in CMD the following commands:

diskpart
select vdisk file=path_to_reactos_vhd
attach vdisk
assign

6. Now you should have a new drive in Windows Explorer. Go to your flash drive and create new folder with the name ROS. Copy in it all the contents of the VHD file (the new letter in Windows Explorer).
7. In ROS folder create a new folder called Drivers and copy all the extracted drivers.
8. Download GRUBinst, extract it and copy it to ROS folder.
9. From GRUB folder copy grldr file to ROS folder.
10. In ROS folder create a new file with name menu.lst and open in with Notepad. In in paste the following code and save it:


title ReactOS
root (hd0,0)
kernel /freeldr.sys

11. Get back to the diskpart to detach VHD by typing the following commands:

detach vdisk
exit
exit

12. You are about to install ReactOS on your PC. Just to be sure, you should have a flash drive containing bootable Windows based OS, ROS folder on it containing all the files from ReactOS + GRUB and Drivers folders containing GRUBinst and extracted drivers respectively. If you have all that, you are ready. Plug the drive in your PC and boot from it.
13. Open CMD (if you are using Windows Setup flash drive, wait till you get to HDD format window and press Shift + F10 - this will bring you CMD) and type diskpart.
14. In diskpart you'll need to find the drive number on which you'll install ReactOS. Typically that's 0, so from now on I'll use hd0 as drive, but if yours is another number, replace 0 with the number you need. Also, you'll need to change it in menu.lst file you created earlier. To see the number type list disk.
15. Type the following commands and your ReactOS should be installed. Note in my case C: is the drive I'll be installing ReactOS to and D: is my flash drive letter. Switch the letters as you need (if you need). Also note this procedure will destroy all your data on your HDD/SSD, not just C drive! All partitions will be lost! If you mistake the hard drive number you risk cleaning another drive! USE AT YOU OWN RISK!

select disk 0
clean
create partition primary
select partition 1
format fs=fat32 quick
active
assign
exit
xcopy d:\ROS\*.* c: /e /x /b
d:
cd ROS
cd GRUB
grubinst.exe (hd0)

16. Your ReactOS should be now ready to boot, so reboot the machine.
17. First you should see GRUB manager with only one option - ReactOS. If you don't, then something is wrong with GRUB installation. If you do, press enter and you should see Freeloader's options (ReactOS, debug etc.). If you don't, then there is a problem with chaining GRUB to Freeloader - check your menu.lst to see if the correct HDD number is written.
18. If everything is ok, you should be getting a wizard asking for a specified driver. If you have this driver, try installing it. If not, let the OS try to install some (probably it'll fail). Also note you may get BSOD while installing a driver. ReactOS will ask you for many drivers, so have patience.
19. Browse arround ReactOS and be happy :)

Aspire One AOA110/AOA150 BIOS mod - a disaster and a solution

Here I'll tell you how to revert back to the latest official BIOS of Acer Aspire One if you have this kind of trouble with the modded one.

The story:

Ok, a couple of days ago I decided to search for a modded BIOS, for my AOA110, with more options available in the menus. I came across this. I was happy, very happy with this discovery and I rushed to flash it! Flashing (under Windows) went fine. The new BIOS had many new options available in it, just what I wanted! I spent maybe 10 minutes poking around the BIOS - checked every option's meaning. Then I changed a a couple of them, that I thought will give a boost, and rebooted. Windows started loading and suddenly upon welcome screen my Aspire One powered off! First thought - some of the options I changed are making the system unstable. So I decided to go to the BIOS and switch option by option back to it's original state, to see which one is the one to blame. Yeah, right! I entered the BIOS, found the first option I changed and when tried to change it back to it's original state, the netbook powered off again! In fact the fan was spinning at it's best! This means the CPU is working too hard and it's overheating, leading to power off, to prevent it from burning. Ok, I though I'll load BIOS defaults, as this could be done really fast. I did it :) But no result :( Then I noticed the last comment, from mad_max, in the thread I downloaded the modded BIOS - he had exactly the same problem as me! If only had read that earlier... not that would have stopped me from trying :D So, while searching the internet for a solution, the netbook apparently cooled off a bit, as when I run it, I had a bit more time to work before power off. Still not enough to flash it. Then I though - I'll cool it in the fridge! So I did that :) After 3 hours of cooling I run it and this time I was able to open My Computer before power off :D Ok, the time needed to do that is about 40-50 seconds (haven't really measured it), which may be enough to flash the BIOS, but I wouldn't try it yet. I wanted a bit more time, so I froze my AOA110! It worked and I was able to flash it back to it's latest official BIOS version :)

The procedure:

1. Put your netbook to your freezer and leave it there for 30-40 minutes. As zstand from Reddit suggested, "Place the laptop in a large, sealed ziplock bag before placing it in the freezer/fridge. The humidity might cause some damage".
2. Meanwhile download the latest official BIOS and prepare an USB flash drive using this tutorial.
3. When you get your netbook out of the freezer, act as fast as you can - plug the power and the USB drive and flash using the same procedure mentioned in the article for preparing the USB drive.
4. After flashing check if the BIOS is the official or not. If it's not, put the netbook back in the freezer and try again. Sometimes this procedure doesn't work from the first time. If the BIOS is the official, your flashing was successful. Shutdown the netbook and let it warm up naturally.

Update 2014:

Since the links in the forum are dead, I took the liberty to export the modded BIOS from my AOA and share it here. I used Insyde Flash Utility for InsydeH2O Flashit V1.2j IHISI V1.7.2 downloaded from the official website of Acer. I made all the 5 dumps the utility allows, but first (G) is what most people want. Still, I never know, so I attached all of them:
AOA_3309_mod_G.bin /G Save current BIOS to file (from IHISI).
AOA_3309_mod_1.bin /1 Save current BIOS to file (1Mbits from memory)
AOA_3309_mod_2.bin /2 Save current BIOS to file (2Mbits from memory)
AOA_3309_mod_4.bin /4 Save current BIOS to file (4Mbits from memory)
AOA_3309_mod_8.bin /8 Save current BIOS to file (8Mbits from memory)

USE THIS AT YOU OWN RISK!!! I'M NOT RESPONSIBLE IF YOU BRICK YOUR DEVICE!!!

Samsung P-SSD1800 Firmware update

Update 2013: My SSD died and I replaced it with CF card. For more info check out my blog post.

Last weekend I had to work all day on my Acer Aspire One AOA110. That's roughly 12 hours of painful waiting for the slow SSD to finish the simple tasks I was doing! At some point that day I started searching on the internet for a solution to this agony and found a firmware update to my Samsung P-SSD1800 8GB SSD. The update is for 8 and 16 GB variants, so AOA150 can flash it too. I did not rush into doing it because I knew I'd lose all of my info (not that you could store a lot on 8GB :D). It wasn't till today that I flashed it and I'm impressed by the results!

Here you can see the test before the update:

Here is the same test after the update:

As you can see, burst rate is doubled, access time is nearly twice faster and the drive now keeps much stable read speed! Write speeds are not tested, as that would have destroyed all my info, but I bet they are better, too. Note before the update the drive was called P-SSD1800, where after the update it's PATA SSD - that's normal. My original FW version was ver2.Y0C. The new one is ver2.M0J. So, if for some reason you already have this version, there is no need to flash it. Ok, let's get to the flashing part!

Things you'll need:
1. A flash drive.
2. HP USB Disk Storage Format Tool, Rufus or other utility that can make your flash drive DOS bootable.
3. AOA110SSDFWv1.rar, containing needed files to create DOS boot disk with HP USB tool, and the firmware itself.

Steps:
1. Backup things from your SSD and flash drive as both will be erased during this operation!
2. Insert the flash drive into one of your USB ports and run the utility from 2. above.
3. Format the drive with FAT32 file system and create a DOS startup disk using the files extracted from AOA110SSDFWv1.rar
4. After the disk is created, copy all the contents of AOA110SSDFWv1.rar to it, ignoring conflicts.
5. Reboot and boot from USB flash drive.
6. You'll have two choices now - (0) Erase SSD and (1) Flash SSD FW - choose (0) Erase SSD
7. This will trigger another dialog with options (0) Erase good Block only and (1) Force Erase All block - choose (0) Erase good Block only
8. After the erase you'll get "OK SSD is erased now time for Flash" and only one option to choose - (0) Flash SSD FW. Choose it :)
9. Another dialog (and the last of that type) shows with options (0) 8GB SSD and (1) 16GB SSD - choose the one right for your SSD. In my case this is 0, as I have 8GB version.
10. After that, the main window of the flasher program will be loaded. You need to press Enter once to start the process of updating. Some lines will start showing in the right side of the window and when all is done, you'll get big green PASS in the bottom left corner of your screen.
11. After that press X on your keyboard to exit the program.
12. Reboot PC and install your OS of choice.

Here is a video (thanks Simon Holland) of the final stage of the flashing procedure

Hope you can get better results than mine ;)

Update: I got this firmware update working on 16GB model. It failed 2 times, but eventually on the 3rd time it flashed successfully. Here are the results:

Before

After

Sorry about the warning balloon - I noticed it too late to test again. As you can see here we don't have such a boost, but in my opinion the SSD is feeling better with the new firmware ;)

Other posts related to Acer Aspire One:
Replace SSD with Compact Flash card on Acer Aspire One ZG5
Aspire One AOA110/AOA150 BIOS mod - a disaster and a solution
Save precious pixels by using thin scrollbars
ReactOS on Acer Aspire One (installation without CD)
Chromium OS on Acer Aspire One
MenuetOS/KolibriOS on Acer Aspire One
EasyPeasy on Aser Aspire One
Darkness Beyond Limits

Darkness Beyond Limits

A couple of months ago I was keeping my monitor's brightness setting to the maximum and it was normal for me, even in the evening with the lights off. But things have changed a bit with those tablets around - now I'm used to much less brightness than my monitor's setting allows. I like Android with it's apps (like RootDim) that can control backlit and go beyond the limits. So I wanted an app for Windows that can do the same, as my minimum brightness was too bright for night reading - that's how Darkness Beyond Limits was born. Unfortunately, Windows cannot control monitor's brightness like Android can. The only thing you can do is simulate lower brightness, but this won't actually be backlit going darker :( Nevertheless, the result is satisfying - you get much dimmer screen :) There are two possible ways to achieve that and this app (written in Delphi XE, so if you want to make changes (yes, I provide the source code too) you'll need to install it) supports both of them. XE outputs quite big file, but it assures it's Windows 7 compatible, so I preferred it instead of Delphi 7. Darkness Beyond Limits is really easy to use - it has no options and no hotkeys to mess with your other hotkeys, just a tray icon. The main goal here is to be dead simple. The app will remember your last brightness setting and will apply it on startup. So, if you want to start it with Windows, just put a shortcut inside your Startup folder. I've tested Darkness Beyond Limits on 1 PC, 1 netbook and 1 laptop with Windows 8 DP, Windows 7 and Windows XP respectively. It works quite well. Also I've made some power consumption measurements (see bellow). So, how does those methods work? I'll give you an explanation with pros and cons - you decide which method to use:

Method 1 (Power):
This method uses a transparent black canvas over (almost) all of your applications, making them look darker.
Pros:
- You can get almost black screen
- Power consumption can go down a bit, depending on your screen
- Always works
Cons:
- May produce 100% usage of a core under XP and below
- Taskbar stays ontop when clicked once. This can be used as a pro when setting set too low, but otherwise it's pretty irritating. There is a workaround, but it's for Windows Vista and below - un-check "Keep taskbar on top of other windows" option in your taskbar properties.
Method 2 (Gamma):
This method uses Windows' gamma settings to simulate darker screen.
Pros:
- No 100% usage under XP as Power method
- No Taskbar ontop as Power method
Cons:
- Doesn't always work (depends on the drivers)
- Can't go as dark as Power
- No potential power consumption savings
- Improper shutdown of the app will result in brightness level not returning to normal until system reboot or by running again DBL

Switching methods:

The default method is Power. If you want Gamma, after you've run DBL at least 1 time, open DarknessBeyondLimits.ini (should be next to the exe file you ran) and correct Gamma=0 to be Gamma=1. Save. Now when you start DBL it'll use Gamma method. System Tray icon will correspond to the method used.

Systems:

PC: monitor Fujitsu Siemens P20-2 on Windows 8 Developers Preview
Netbook: Acer Aspire One AOA110 on Windows 7
Notebook: Asus X51L on Windows XP

Power Consumption (only on Power method):

PC w/o DBL: 31.3W
PC w DBL: 29.6W
Netbook w/o DBL: 13.6W
Netbook w DBL: 13.6W
Notebook w/o DBL: 19.2W
Notebook w DBL: 37.5W

Note: All systems have their backlit set to minimum. Increased power consumption on Notebook is because of Windows XP using one core on 100% for DBL.

Conclusion:

As you can see from the graphics above, you can get less power usage, no change in it, or get a lot more of it. It really depends on your monitor. Some monitors use less energy when displaying black colors, so the darker the image is, the less power it consumes. If your monitor is not one of those, Power method will not increase power usage, unless you are using Windows XP, so if you are with XP I strongly recommend Gamma method for you. If you are energy saving maniac like me, use Power method (probably you won't be using XP, as it's draining more juice than 7, not to mention 8). If you prefer stability, use Gamma method.

Download:

Binary
Source code

MenuetOS/KolibriOS on Acer Aspire One

This is my next conquest in the series "OS for the Acer Aspire One". I've managed to boot MenuetOS and KolibriOS (it's based on MenuetOS) on my AOA110 by using a flash drive. Some may ask why? Because I can :) KolibriOS is a bit easier to make as it has bootable CD image already build on their site, where MenuetOS has only a floppy image and we have to make a CD image out of it. But the hardest (and dangerous) thing to prepare is your flash drive! You have to divide it into 2 partitions - one with CDFS file system (the FS on all compact disks) and one normal (FAT or NTFS). Not every flash drive supports that, and the way to be done depends on the controller in it. I really should make another post about how to do that, because it's really big question, but for now search Google how to do it on your flash drive and then follow the instructions below. Of course if you have an U3 flash drive, then you don't need to search anything, just use Universal Customizer to insert the CD image into your CDFS partition. After you get the things going with your flash drive, everything else is pretty easy - put the CD image into your CDFS partition on your flash drive, reboot and boot from it :) This way you should be able to boot other OSes (like Windows XP), but I haven't tried it yet. Now let me show you the steps to boot MenuetOS, as it's a bit harder:

1. Download Menuet32.
2. Use UltraISO or other imaging software to put .img file into your CD's boot sector like that:
2.1. Click on Bootable -> Load boot file...
2.2. Choose .img file
3. Save .iso image.
4. Open the program corresponding to your flash drive and burn your .iso image to your CDFS file system.
5. Reboot your netbook and boot from you newly added USB-CD

KolibriOS steps are just two - 4 and 5 from the above ;) Hope you like the experiment :)

Chromium OS on Acer Aspire One

Recently ReactOS 0.3.14 was released with USB support and I decided to try it. Unfortunately I got blank screen on my AOA110 right after the beginning (after loading a couple of drivers) of the installation :( So I decided to search for other operating systems and try them on this Aspire One AOA110. Then I remembered trying Chomium OS on my PC a while ago (failed miserably) and decided to give it a shot. It worked with a little exceptions:
Mouse sensitivity setting is not working
Brightness setting is not working. Fn key combination is working good though.
To get Chromium OS running on your machine you'll need:
1. 4 GB flash drive
2. Latest Hexxeh build
3. Image Writer
4. A little time
Steps are really simple:
1. Insert flash drive
2. Run Image Writer
3. Select img file
4. Select USB flash drive you inserted
5. Click Write
6. Wait to finish
7. Reboot and try your Chromium OS build :)

Save precious pixels by using thin scrollbars

Hi all. Recently I bought second hand Acer Aspire One AOA110 ZG5 and found 1024x600 pretty inconvenient for browsing. Then I found Thin Scroll Bar extension for Google Chrome. I know it's not much, just a couple of pixels, but still it's good. So if you are a Chrome user, give it a shot. Hope you like it.

PS: It also makes tiny scrollbars to all dropdowns.