ACPI 3.22.06

[Roderick Klein]

Hi there,
yesterday I installed the acpi 3.22 from Arcae Noae on my Thinkpad X61.(ECS 2.2 Beta)
First off all I would like to say thank you for the continued development of the drivers.
But I do have some questions as I have made some observations concerning Acpi that I do not understand.
Acpi works (I would say very well for the first time on this machine). I have appr. 4 hours power left when running on battery and no programs running.(WindowsXP and Linux showed up to 6 hours, but ok)
Fn-F4 starts suspend and after pushing the power button the system resumes with no apparent problems. Other function keys do not work, so I try to adjust the screen brightness when booting and before ECS is started.
The strange thing is: When booting on battery the time left (shown by the battery widget) is much longer than when booting the machine plugged in to external power supply.
If I boot the machine plugged in and then switch to battery (fully charged) mode the time shown is a max. of 2 hours 15 and the machine tends to get hot quite quickly.
Booting on battery and then plugging in works well.
Has anybody noticed the same on other machines?

Further on I have one questions concerning the Bios-Settings:

I remember having read that with the old acpi (which was for example distributed with ECS 2,1) it was recommended to deactivate the speed step technology in the bios settings. How about the new acpi?

Happy new year
Holger

With all the testing I did when i worked at  Mensys, I remember that turning off speedstep support was required on some systems.

Roderick Klein

[Holger Schuett]

If this works, I should be able to use my Lenovo Thinkpad T410 in eCS when giving presentations rather than switching to the Win partition.  It would make my life a lot easier, and could be nice marketing of eCS (I teach macro economics for 250 students at the university where I work).

In this regard (and before I test), I wonder if you use Snap 3.18 (or similar) or the Panorama (1.06 or earlier) video driver?  The Panorama driver is supposed to be more stable/perform better on SMP systems like my T410, and I am therefore skeptical towards going to Snap.  The reason for asking this question is that I somewhere have stumbled over a comment that due to the way the Panorama driver works, external screen activation is not possible without some major revisions in the Panorama driver.

Hi Eirik,
sorry for the excitement I caused. I have not yet verified that an external monitor works, as right now I have no access to an external monitor (not before next week, to be correct)
What I can confirm is that I can switch of the screen of the X61 when pressing FN+F7, or that the screen is switched off. So I presumed that an external monitor would work. I will test next week.
For the records: right now I am using Panorama as my video driver.(Panorama 1.07 from Arcae Noae)
What I will try to do next is to install Snap.

OS2APIC.PSD will probably support SMP in the T510. It will not support any power saving, and it the machine won't even power off, when you close OS/2 (unless it will also work with the old APM support, which is unlikely). You will need to push the power button. I don't know whether you will be able to use an external video, or not. Please, let us know.

Doug, concerning OS2Apic.psd. I can confirm that you have to press the power button after shut down to turn of the machine. (It does not work with the old Apm, or at least I get a trap when trying to use the old Apm).
Concerning power saving with OS2Apic.psd: I would say it is not completely correct to say that there is no power saving.
I have done some experimenting :
It seems that with OS2Apic the time left when running on battery in certain settings is not any shorter than when running with ACPI. Plus: I have used the cpuman.exe. This gives the possibility to automatically switch of the 2. CPU after a certain time.
Further on, as mentioned I can adjust the brightness of the display, or turn it of by using FN+F7
Or for example, if I run the machine with external power and then unplug, the brightness is reduced automatically. Running on battery the brightness can not be set as high as when plugged in.

Holger

[Roderick Klein]

Holger and other people I do want to warn you if suspend resume works with ACPI that by installing SNAP this MIGHT stop working (ACPI suspend/resume).

Roderick Klein

[Roderick Klein]

People asked if I could post my ACPID.CFG but I have NO file in my \MPTN\ETC directory.

Maybe that effects the deamon compared to the default settings it falls back to the ACPI demaon.

Roderick

[Holger Schuett]

With all the testing I did when i worked at  Mensys, I remember that turning off speedstep support was required on some systems.

Roderick Klein

Roderick, yes this is what I remember too. I believe I saw this mentioned in a german forum too.
And i found this document:http://de.ecomstation.ru/projects/acpitools/BIOSTIPS.TXT
(Yes, I now it is old and concerns the older Acpi versions, but this is why I am asking concerning the new ACPI)
Yesterday I tested the x61 with new acpi, disabling the powermanagemnt in the bios and the problem concerning the temperature was gone!!!!! booting plugged  to external power supply

Holger and other people I do want to warn you if suspend resume works with ACPI that by installing SNAP this MIGHT stop working (ACPI suspend/resume).

Roderick Klein

Thank you for the warning, I am well aware of this.

People asked if I could post my ACPID.CFG but I have NO file in my \MPTN\ETC directory.

Maybe that effects the deamon compared to the default settings it falls back to the ACPI demaon.

Roderick

Yes, I happened to observe this too, by chance, (On one occasion I forgot to save my acpiD.cfg)

[Doug Bissett]

It seems that with OS2Apic the time left when running on battery in certain settings is not any shorter than when running with ACPI. Plus: I have used the cpuman.exe. This gives the possibility to automatically switch of the 2. CPU after a certain time.

You may be lucky enough to have a machine where the BIOS continues to control power saving, after boot. Some don't.

People asked if I could post my ACPID.CFG but I have NO file in my \MPTN\ETC directory.

Modern ACPI will use the defaults, which are rarely ideal, but they usually work. To fine tune ACPI, you need the config file.

Holger and other people I do want to warn you if suspend resume works with ACPI that by installing SNAP this MIGHT stop working (ACPI suspend/resume).

That may be true, if SNAP doesn't have the proper support (I am not sure, one way or the other). SNAP does work with APM in my ancient IBM ThinkPad A22e. It has worked, for years. I have yet to see S/R work in a modern machine. Somehow, modern machines don't seem to be quite as smart as the old ones were.

This statement is true of any driver, including Panorama, not just SNAP. There are a number of things that can affect suspend/resume. The function is not yet complete, in ACPI, and some drivers (possibly including SNAP) just don't have the proper support. Some machines have broken BIOS support too, which are some of the reasons why ACPI has not been finished.

The bottom line is that S/R may, or more likely, may not, work for you.

[Holger Schuett]

Hi Eirik,
sorry for the excitement I caused. I have not yet verified that an external monitor works, as right now I have no access to an external monitor (not before next week, to be correct)
What I can confirm is that I can switch of the screen of the X61 when pressing FN+F7, or that the screen is switched off. So I presumed that an external monitor would work. I will test next week.
For the records: right now I am using Panorama as my video driver.(Panorama 1.07 from Arcae Noae)
What I will try to do next is to install Snap.

Hi Eirik,
sorry for the delay.
I have done more testing on this, working with the old os2apic.psd

1. I installed snap although my video device is not supported. I could install any way without hardware accelaration. The system booted, but quite slow. And, for example, the wlan did not work anymore after installing snap.I do not know why, and I did not want to dig any further, so I reinstalled the panorama driver.

I then tested with a connected external monitor and this worked fine using the FN+F7 Keys!!!!
This was no PC-Monitor but rather a television with RGB-input, but it worked out of the box
The first impression is that the 'picture' is ok, maybe a little stretched. Until now I have not tried to change any further settings

Have you done any testing yourself

Holger

[eirik]

Holger,

unfortunately mega busy at work through January with a lot of teaching = no time until in February.  Before I decide what to do, I am going to reread the reports on snap and the ACPI-updates.  And according to rumors, eCS 2.2 is just around the corner with many other improvements that hopefully will make my life (and others lives) as eCS users better.  In addition to ACPI advances, I am also going to look at the RDP-possibilities, that are supposed to be much better under 2.2.  Another feature, that if as good as the advance notices suggest, will improve my communication with the administrative systems at the university where I work (for the moment I need to boot the Win-partition to access the Windows remote server where travels, accounting etc. resides.

Eirik