Acer Aspire AS5672 laptop - acpi problems

[Cy Schubert]

Let's try this one again. I should learn to hit "reply all" in Exmh.
-- 
Cheers,
Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at komquats.com>
Web:  http://www.komquats.com and http://www.bcbodybuilder.com
FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy at FreeBSD.org>   Web:  http://www.FreeBSD.org
BC Government:  <Cy.Schubert at gov.bc.ca>

    "Lift long enough and I believe arrogance is replaced by
    humility and fear by courage and selfishness by generosity
    and rudeness by compassion and caring."
        -- Dave Draper



In message <20060716141100.ee18d21a.torfinn.ingolfsen at broadpark.no>, 
Torfinn Ingolfsen writes:
> Hello again,
> It seems that this laptop (Ascer Aspire AS5672WLMi) has acpi problems.
> I have made an acpi dump, and tried to compile the resulting asl code
> (with 13 errors). Everything is documented in this blog entry:
> http://home.no.net/tingo/log2/pivot/entry.php?id=32
> 
> together with dmesg output, output from 'sysctl hw.acpi' etc.
> If anyone could take a look at it and try to explain how to fix things,
> I would be grateful.

I was about to say that, actually I just fired off a note started last 
night during a change window that I failed to hit send on. to say that. I 
have an Aspire 3623NWXMi. I just posted a patch to PR 98171 that addresses 
ACER Aspire ACPI problems. The embedded controller in the ACER Aspire 
models responsds rather slowly. My patch adds tunables (not to be confused 
with sysctl variables) that can be set at boot time to tune the FreeBSD 
ACPI implementation to work better with your computer. The patch pretty 
much fixed my problems. By pretty much, the temperature sensors fail to 
respond only occasionally instead of the battery and temperature sensors 
being totally hosed.

Secondly, I believe that Acer uses Microsoft's ASL compiler which produces 
buggy AML. You can find fixed ASL code at acpi.sourceforge.net. The Intel 
ASL compiler, used by FreeBSD is less forgiving of buggy code, not to 
mention the  ASL was probably buggy from the get-go. You may need to fix it 
or even replace it with a DSDT from acpi.sourceforge.net. I think the first 
place to start is to apply the patch from PR 98171. Play with the nobs in 
loader.conf a bit and if it solves  your problem, great, otherwise you may 
need to replace your DSDT by loading a custom DSDT at boot time. Check 
/boot/defaults/loader.conf for the syntax.

Hope this helps. It helped me.


-- 
Cheers,
Cy Schubert <Cy.Schubert at komquats.com>
Web:  http://www.komquats.com and http://www.bcbodybuilder.com
FreeBSD UNIX:  <cy at FreeBSD.org>   Web:  http://www.FreeBSD.org
BC Government:  <Cy.Schubert at gov.bc.ca>

    "Lift long enough and I believe arrogance is replaced by
    humility and fear by courage and selfishness by generosity
    and rudeness by compassion and caring."
        -- Dave Draper