HP Pavilion DV6 overheats under FreeBSD

[Mathias Picker]

This might be a platform problem (I think AMD  calls it vision platform), and not HP related. I have an Acer 5553g with similar hardware and problems. Maybe we can compare details once I'm home again, sunday probably.

/ Mathias

On Fr., 11. Mär. 2011 15:07:52 CET, Thor Ablestar <thor at irk.ru> wrote:

> Hello!
> 
> Notebook HP Pavilion DV6-3109er (Mobile Phenom II x4, double Mobility 
> Radeon) keeps processor temperature about 60 degC under FreeBSD 
> 8.2-RELEASE GENERIC kernel, and under custom kernel with device 
> acpi_video and acpi_hp. The battery life is probably 80 minutes, system 
> fan works at low RPM.
> 
> The same notebook is only slightly warm under stock Windows 7 Home 
> Basic. The battery life there is probably 3 hours. The fan is stopped 
> and works only sometimes.
> 
> The strange thing appeared: while FreeBSD pciconf reports 2 video cards, 
> windows reports only one video card (AMD M880G with ATI Mobility Radeon 
> HD 4250, Vendor=1002, device=9712). And Windows does NOT report passive 
> equipment, for instance, Ethernet with no cable attached; so Windows 
> makes the second video passive and powers it down but FreeBSD does not. 
> BTW this second card is still not known to X and to pciconf.
> 
> The following was tried, with no or marginal result:
> 1. Read and followed the Fighting for the power 
> http://lists.freebsd.org/pipermail/freebsd-current/2009-May/006436.html
> 2. powerd -v -M 2000 -m 200 (computer becomes non-responsive under 200
> MHz) 3. Modification of stock FreeBSD vga driver to recognize one VGA
> only.   The second card does not appear in dmesg, but temperature is the
> same   while   hw.pci.do_power_nodriver=3 is in place.
> 4. Flashing the freshest available BIOS.
> 5. Googling everything imaginable about powering down the PCI device - 
> nothing found.
> 
> The .asl file contains something video-related but it's like Martian 
> language for me.
> 
> When I rebuild the kernel, the cooling fan properly accelerates and the 
> temperature is kept within 75 degC, so the problem is not critical, but 
> it's difficult to use the book with battery power.
> 
> Function buttons: FnF2 (dimmer) and FnF3 (brighter) works OK except 
> under modified driver (part 3 above). Under modified driver - no
> operation. FnF4 (screen switch) - produces text input "Jp" on first
> press, "p" on   next presses
> FnF12 (Radio) works OK. FnF1 produces "J" and then F1.
> Other functions - no operation.
> 
> 
> I believe that the ACPI contains some HP proprietary methods to power 
> down the second card but acpi_hp driver has no idea about it.
> 
> How to reproduce: Take HP Pavilion DV6-3109ER notebook (may be any HP 
> Pavilion with Mobile Phenom II and double ATI Mobility Radeon). Install 
> FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE. Make a kernel with acpi_video and acpi_hp devices, 
> install and reboot. Watch the temperature with pciconf hw.acpi
> 
> Data files are (If my Apache is OK) 
> http://plasmodius.dyndns.org/pavilion - if not, make me know.
> 
> Thanks in advance.
>                     Thor
> 
> thor at irk.ru
> 

<Anhang>   pavilion.dmesg
<Anhang>   pavilion.pciconf
<Anhang>   pavilion.hwacpi