AML and other troubles

[Michael McCormack]

Greetings all.

I'm running into huge trouble trying to get my laptop up and running 
with FreeBSD. It is a Compaq armada e500. I know this model works under 
BSD; The FLCL says so :) However, mine seems to be somewhat broken.

I get these errors at boot:

ACPI-1287: *** Error: Method execution failed [\\_SB_.C005.C00B] (Node 
0xc136b920), AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT
ACPI-1287: *** Error: Method execution failed [\\_SB_.C005.C00F] (Node 
0xc136b900), AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT
ACPI-1287: *** Error: Method execution failed [\\_SB_.C005._CRS] (Node 
0xc136b8e0), AE_AML_BUFFER_LIMIT
ACPI-0226: *** Error: Return object type is incorrect [\\_SB_.C005._CRS] 
(Node 0xc136b8e0), AE_TYPE
can't fetch resources for \\_SB_.C005 - AE_TYPE

I dumped out my DSDT and had a look thru it. \_SB_.C005 seems to be a 
device with _HID "PNP0A03" (or as compaq prefers, "*PNP0A03" -- more on 
that later). AFAIK, PNP0A03 is a PCI root bridge. I'm thinking not being 
able to fetch resources for a root bridge is a Bad Thing. This also ties 
into the problems I'm having with the video card.. startx just hangs. 
xf86cfg hangs. xf86config runs, but the generated config file causes 
startx to hang no matter what I choose (even generic VGA). There's never 
any errors in the logfile, it just stops after (surprise!) the PCI probe 
stuff.

The system is dual boot, freeBSD and win'98, since some of the settings 
and stuff can only be accessed from windows software. I have similar 
problems under 'doze.. The default memory address setting of the AGP 
bridge conflicts with just about everything on the system; With the 
default setting I can't get better than 640x480x8bit colour. However, If 
I manually override the memory address setting of the AGP bridge, i get 
1024x768x24bit, happiness, puppies, etc.

I consider myself a reasonably non-crap programmer, and I've already 
started debugging my DSDT AML; So far I've removed the "*" in front of 
all the device names, and inserted a couple "return(0)" statements so it 
compiles without errors (only warnings..) but I have no clue where to 
start when it comes to fixing the above errors. I'd be more than happy 
to do the hard work myself and post the diffs somewhere if somebody 
could just tell me what to look for :)

I can post dmesg output, aml, logfiles or anything else people want if 
it will help. And yes, I've tried several different BIOS revisions. All 
give the same errors. I'm attempting to debug the most recent one.

Thanks.
-Michael.