Unfortunately, this Acer Aspire One does not seem to match any of those listed on Linux on Laptops. Instead of a 120G HDD, it has two "hard drives", both of them flash. One builtin, the other an SD Card in a standard CD slot.

I have now tried three different LiveCDs: Mint and SystemRescueCD fail to even recognize the controller, Knoppix recognizes it, but still comes up with "Error -84" as shown by the following dmesg output:

Code:
[   22.631155] sdhci: Secure Digital Host Controller Interface driver
[   22.631163] sdhci: Copyright(c) Pierre Ossman
[   22.641019] sdhci-pci 0000:04:00.0: SDHCI controller found [197b:2382] (rev 0)
[   22.641059] sdhci-pci 0000:04:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
[   22.641160] sdhci-pci 0000:04:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   22.641232] Registered led device: mmc0
[   22.641306] mmc0: SDHCI controller on PCI [0000:04:00.0] using ADMA
[   22.641327] sdhci-pci 0000:04:00.2: SDHCI controller found [197b:2381] (rev 0)
[   22.641356] sdhci-pci 0000:04:00.2: PCI INT A -> GSI 19 (level, low) -> IRQ 19
[   22.641369] sdhci-pci 0000:04:00.2: Refusing to bind to secondary interface.
[   22.641383] sdhci-pci 0000:04:00.2: PCI INT A disabled
[   22.688393] ath5k_pci 0000:03:00.0: PCI INT A -> GSI 18 (level, low) -> IRQ 18
[   22.688417] ath5k_pci 0000:03:00.0: setting latency timer to 64
[   22.688540] ath5k_pci 0000:03:00.0: registered as 'phy0'
[   22.740335] phy0: Selected rate control algorithm 'pid'
[   22.861886] ath5k phy0: Atheros AR2425 chip found (MAC: 0xe2, PHY: 0x70)
[   22.944664] mmc0: error -84 whilst initialising SD card
And just in case it is useful, since So many people ask for the whole thing, here is all the output from 'lspci'
lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Memory Controller Hub (rev 03)
00:02.0 VGA compatible controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GME Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:02.1 Display controller: Intel Corporation Mobile 945GM/GMS/GME, 943/940GML Express Integrated Graphics Controller (rev 03)
00:1b.0 Audio device: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) High Definition Audio Controller (rev 02)
00:1c.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 1 (rev 02)
00:1c.1 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 2 (rev 02)
00:1c.2 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 3 (rev 02)
00:1c.3 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) PCI Express Port 4 (rev 02)
00:1d.0 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #1 (rev 02)
00:1d.1 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #2 (rev 02)
00:1d.2 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #3 (rev 02)
00:1d.3 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB UHCI Controller #4 (rev 02)
00:1d.7 USB Controller: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) USB2 EHCI Controller (rev 02)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: Intel Corporation 82801 Mobile PCI Bridge (rev e2)
00:1f.0 ISA bridge: Intel Corporation 82801GBM (ICH7-M) LPC Interface Bridge (rev 02)
00:1f.2 IDE interface: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7 Family) SATA IDE Controller (rev 02)
00:1f.3 SMBus: Intel Corporation 82801G (ICH7 Family) SMBus Controller (rev 02)
02:00.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL8101E/RTL8102E PCI Express Fast Ethernet controller (rev 02)
03:00.0 Ethernet controller: Atheros Communications Inc. AR242x 802.11abg Wireless PCI Express Adapter (rev 01)
04:00.0 System peripheral: JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2382
04:00.2 SD Host controller: JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2381
04:00.3 System peripheral: JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2383
04:00.4 System peripheral: JMicron Technologies, Inc. Device 2384
knoppix@Microknoppix:~$

The question, obviously, is why is this error happening, and what can I do about it to get it to work? The same SD card works fine in my other laptop, and used to work find on this one under WinXP when I still had that running here.

Unfortunately, I already blew WinXP away, so I cannot double check now.

Finally, yes, I admit it was a mistake to blow XP away before I knew the drive worked, but somehow I overlooked that while playing with the LiveCD; nor is it a big loss, since I can (and have) already copied all my data off the SD card.

TIA!