Bad characters in Asus A8N-VM CSM

[Ernst W. Winter]

On Fri, 23 Dec 2005, Adriaan de Groot wrote:

> On Thursday 22 December 2005 11:55, Adriaan de Groot wrote:

> > I just picked up an Asus A8N-VM CSM motherboard. It's a nForce
430 + GForge > > 6150 integrated mini-ATX job, amd64, very 1337 and
new. That means trouble > > :) I knew that when buying it, and know
now that it really needs work to > > get it working at all.

Well I just used one myself and intalled it for a customer and it
works well now, the machine is still under test-run but performs
well.

> >
> > ACPI-0397: *** Error: NSSearchAndEnter: Bad character in ACPI Name:
> > 43035350 ACPI-0381: *** Error: Looking up [0x43035350] (NON-ASCII)
> > in namespace, AE_BAD_CHARACTER
> 
> [Following up on myself, for documentation purposes, and CCing
-amd64 to warn > off potential users there as well.]
> 
Hey don't give up!!!

> Well, an instructive but unproductive evening yields the following:
> 
> 1) Default BIOS (rev. 0403) and FBSD 5.1 amd64 boots, produces ACPI
warning > messages above and works normally (no NIC, no SATA tried).
> 
I siwtched off the ACPI and it booted to a certain stage and then
hung there as it couldn't didn't see my HD.

> 2) Newest BIOS (rev. 0506) and FBSD 5.1 amd64 boots and then page
faults in > kernel mode in vm_pageq_enqueue right after GEOM adds
ad0. ACPI warning is > still there.
> 
well, once I had the new BIOS on it I could boot it all the way and
it worked well

> 3) I didn't try 6-STABLE with the newest BIOS, since having busted
ACPI there > means you can't get _anything_ done.
> 
6.0-STABLE is the way to go, why would you want a older version? With
6 it went well and is still running as I cvsuped it up to the latest
and the recompiled it all.
> 
> 
> >From the booted 5.1 environment I got an ACPI dump and after
hacking utmisc.c > in contrib/dev/acpica to accept a broken character
0x03, I got a disassembly.  > The bad character is in 0x43035350,
which from the looks of the IASL should > have been PSSC (0x43535350)
but somehow isn't. It's in one of the processor > sections (the other
has a Name(PSSC, 0x0A) ).  > 

> Elsewhere in the IASL there's some undefined symbols ending in
_HFZF (sorry, I > don't have the machine under scrutiny on or
functional at this very moment), > which I suppose is semi-normal,
and then a totally weird-ass
> 
> 	Return( While(Local1) {
> 		...
> 	})
> 
> This chokes the compiler, of course. I suspect that it should read
> 
> 	Return(0x00)
> 	While (Local1) ...
> 
> or so, but this suggests yet more broken ACPI tables.
> 
You can switch it off in your /boot/loader.conf for the time being if
you don't need it straight away.

> Over in Linux land, http://www.nvnews.net/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=60596 

so what this is FreeBSD.

> shows that with some effort and the latest of the latest everything, it is 
> possible to get a functioning machine. If I can create a barely legal ASL 

well it works, you just have to put a bit of "ellbow grease" into it.

> file that compiles, I'll have to try out what's described in "11.16.5.3 
> Overriding the Default AML " of the handbook.
> 
> Until then (or someone more competent than myself deals with the
issues), I'd > suggest avoiding this board entirely.
> 
Well as I said, try 6.0-RELEASE as I can't see any reason for going
back to 5-* for whatever.

Ernst