Acer Predator Helios 300

This article or section does not follow the
Laptop page guidelines
.
Reason:
Missing IDs in the hardware table + a function key table. (Discuss in
Talk:Acer Predator Helios 300
)
Hardware
PCI/USB ID
Working?
Touchpad
Yes
Keyboard
Yes
GPU
Partially
Webcam
Partially
Ethernet
Yes
Bluetooth
Yes
SD-card reader
Yes
Audio
Yes
Wireless
Partially
TPM
Untested
Installation
RAID mode is enabled by default. AHCI mode
must
be used, otherwise the disks will be invisible. Secure boot and fast startup must be disabled as well for Arch to boot if Windows is present on the system.
Changing the storage mode from RAID into AHCI may be challenging as the BIOS does not list the options to do so by default. Going into the main tab in the BIOS menu, and pressing (
Ctrl+S
) should bring up the relevant options.
Accessibility
The appearance of the BIOS is simple and not too colorful.
Note
Blind users should request the help of a sighted person to change BIOS settings
This device has a diagnostic LED which may visualize beep codes in some cases. See the "Diagnostic LED" section in
the service manual
for more details.
The service manual also contains shortcuts which are needed to trigger certain features, such as the boot menu and settings (
F12
).
Firmware
fwupd
does not support this device.
Secure Boot
The BIOS does not accept
.auth
files.
Note
This device does not have a BIOS speaker and uses the built-in speakers instead. Beeps can be louder than expected.
Bluetooth
Bluetooth works out of the box.
Note
Connecting to the same paired device will fail on dual-boot setups. To allow a device to connect to either installation without re-pairing, follow
Bluetooth#Dual boot pairing
.
After suspending, Bluetooth may stop working.
Restart
bluetooth.service
to fix it.
Power buttons
This article or section is a candidate for merging with
Help:Laptop page guidelines#Capturing function keys
.
Notes:
This section and the next one duplicate the explanation of how to capture keys. They seem to have been copied and pasted blindly from
Dell Latitude 3500#Power buttons
since it is cited as a reference in
Help:Laptop page guidelines
. (Discuss in
Talk:Acer Predator Helios 300
)
This device has two detected power buttons and one sleep button.
$ loginctl seat-status
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/10251229:00/input/input5
│ input:input5 "Acer Wireless Radio Control"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXPWRBN:00/input/input3
│ input:input3 "Power Button"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A08:00/LNXVIDEO:00/input/input10
│ input:input10 "Video Bus"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0A08:00/device:19/PNP0C0D:00/input/input0
│ input:input0 "Lid Switch"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0C:00/input/input2
│ input:input2 "Power Button"
├─/sys/devices/LNXSYSTM:00/LNXSYBUS:00/PNP0C0E:00/input/input1
│ input:input1 "Sleep Button"
├─/sys/devices/pci0000:00/0000:00:01.0/0000:01:00.0/drm/card1
[...]
In this case,
LNXPWRBN:00
(
/dev/input/event3
) is the "real", physical power button. You can verify this by inhibiting the handling of the power button
# systemd-inhibit --what=handle-power-key sleep 1h
and recording the events:
# stdbuf -o0 evemu-record /dev/input/event3 > event3
Pressing the power button should log an event.
The other detected power button seems to be a virtual, firmware-handled button. This power button will be triggered when your device runs out of battery.
The firmware will send many power button presses, so your machine will most likely only take a few seconds to power off because systemd kills the process/unit it is waiting for when the power button is pressed.
Holding the physical shutdown button for more than three seconds will force the system to shutdown.
See
logind.conf(5)
for more information on handling specific keys.
Sleep button
There is also a sleep button/suspend key. It is a virtual, firmware-handled key and will be triggered when using an unmarked keybind, which would suspend your device.
Use this to inhibit the handling of the suspend key.
# systemd-inhibit --what=handle-suspend-key sleep 1h
Kernel
Appending
net.ifnames=0
to the
kernel parameters
is recommended if you are planning to use the installation for penetration-testing as the wireless adapter names will be quite long by default.
Wireless
The integrated wireless chip works fine under normal conditions, monitor mode is supported out of the box, although injection is not.
GPU
Rendering of the windows can be handled by the integrated Intel-graphics, and it is recommended to not install Nvidia drivers if unnecessary as functions such as; booting up, connecting a second monitor, battery life and overall system-stability will greatly suffer.
See also
Predator PH315-55s
Predator PH317-56