Whats the latest Bios??

Hi All

Am trying to locate the latest bios but am unsure as to what it is.. Have found ref to 3308 and now 3440 or something... Would be useful to know what it actaully is..


regards
Andrew

 

3308 is the newest as of Dec. 2, 2008.

 

Thank you for your reply and for confirming that one I flashed with is the newest..


again thank you

 

but it's not official....

 

... and it's not much use.

Acer seem to think that my LCD panel will be afflicted by flicker on low backlight settings and therefore have given me 9 subtle variations of full brightness. I suspect that this is a ploy to sell more 6-cell battery upgrades! :lol:

My LCD doesn't flicker on low backlight settings at all and therefore I'm sticking with v3114 for now.

 

... and it's not much use either.

Acer seem to think that my LCD panel will be afflicted by flicker on low backlight settings and therefore have given me 10 subtle variations of full brightness. I suspect that this is just an evil ploy to sell more 6-cell battery upgrades! :lol:

My LCD doesn't flicker on low backlight settings at all and therefore I'm sticking with v3114 for now.

 

3308 works perfect for me... no flickering at low backlight settings..... so may be a faulty screen cable..... Just a thought...

regards
Andrew

 

I don't get flicker at any brightness level with any BIOS version.

Acer discovered that some of the LCD panels they had shipped exhibited flicker at the lower (4?) brightness settings. They "fixed" this in an earlier BIOS revision by making the four lowest backlight settings brighter. As a result, many people complained that even on the lowest setting the backlight was far too bright in a darkened room (and sucked the life out of the battery).

In BIOS v3306 Acer attempted another fix by trying to determine if the panel is one of those that is afflicted by flicker at low backlight settings. If they think your panel is afflicted then you get the 10 "higher" brightness variations otherwise you get the original low - high range.

The actual brightness %ages for both schemes are detailed in the BIOS release notes:

Code:

AU Flicker Panel                46%  47%  48%  49%  50%  63%  72%  81%  90%  100%
OTHER Panel and AU new Panel    21%  25%  31%  35%  39%  51%  63%  75%  87%  100%

Anyway, the point is that Acer got it wrong in the latest BIOS versions when it comes to determining if my LCD is afflicted by flicker - it isn't - and as a result I still don't get the proper range of backlight settings.

 

How can you read back this values?

Is it possible, that AA1ctl can set this values ?

My AA1 is always coming up with the brightest setting.

 

The values were listed in the BIOS changes-log.

 

Sorry, what I mean is - how to know weather the new bios uses the values for a flickering or non flickering screen?

Again: does someone know a tool setting this values, lets say at startup of windows?

 

I cannot answer the first question.

With regard to the second question, the 10 different backlight brightness values are pre-defined in the BIOS code. All that can be done at runtime is to select one of the predefined levels.

The backlight brightness level (1 - 10) can be selected programmatically by setting the appropriate register value in the ACPI EC. it would be nice if either A1 Fan Control or A1Ctl could accomodate configuration and selection of a preferred backlight level at startup in a future update of the software.

 

Is it worth screwing with, I have 3305, why bother?

 

I received my AAO from Amazon a little over a week ago and it came with 3305. Absolutely no problems of any kind so far.

 

Yeah, I've had my AA1 150 for 10 days now and it also came with 3305. I haven't noticed any problems what so ever. Not sure what advantage there is to upgrading. I would like to be able to turn the back light down further though.

 

latest bios is now 3309! vista users will really fall in love with this bios!

 

But you have noticed a problem - you have noticed that the backlight is too bright even on its lowest setting. Try downgrading to v3114, this should cure your backlight issue.

 

The backlight turned down a little further might save on battery time and be a bit easier on the eyes (a Greasemonkey script might also help) but, I'm going to resist the temptation to mess with everything until I finally screw the machine up. This is one sweet machine as it is. If the newer 3309 (official from Acer?) fixes the screen brightness (which is not an issue for me personally), maybe, but I wouldn't want to go backwards.

Also, re-flashing the BIOS is a bit delicate and may give one quite a headache if things go wrong. Of course, for people that have done it successfully, it will seem like a piece of cake, but some of us here haven't been so lucky.

 

It would be great if a program could be used to get at the lower brightness levels. Unfortunately, I scanned the ACPI spec and it looks like a program running at the OS level can only change the brightness to one of the levels returned by a query to the BIOS. So, unless the BIOS can be twigged to return the brightness table with the lower range of settings, we're stuck.

C'mon, Acer! Please give us an advanced BIOS setting to choose our brightness table.

 

In theory, the brightness tables could be modified in the BIOS image file and then used to reflash the machine. This is dependent on being able to recalculate a valid checksum for the new BIOS image.