Two minute pause at acpi.ko message on old HP laptop with 7.0-RC1

[Ian Smith]

On Tue, 8 Jan 2008, Julian H. Stacey wrote:
 > Ian Smith wrote:
 > > On Mon, 7 Jan 2008, Xn Nooby wrote:
 > >  > I have an old zv5445us HP Pavillion laptop, essentially the zv5000
 > >  > model, which pauses at the /boot/kernel/acpi.ko message during boot.

 [..]

 > I don't know if this is the same pause I'm seeing on a
 > 	Dell Latitude XPi P133ST
 > 	http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/laptops/dell_latitude_xpi_p133st/
 > After these 2 lines 
 > 	Preloaded elf kernel
 > 	Calibrating clock(s) ... 
 > then 3+ minutes pause.
 > Then screen rolls fast, hard to read, but after booting, dmesg here:
 > 	http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/laptops/dell_latitude_xpi_p133st/dmesg/7.0-PRERELEASE
 > Extract:
 > 	Calibrating clock(s) ... failed, using default i8254 clock of 1193182 Hz
 > 	CLK_USE_I8254_CALIBRATION not specified - using default frequency
 > 	Timecounter "i8254" frequency 1193182 Hz quality 0
 > 	Calibrating TSC clock ... TSC clock: 133637718 Hz
 > 	CPU: Pentium/P54C (133.64-MHz 586-class CPU)

Perhaps also relevant from later in your dmesg:

 Timecounter "TSC" frequency 133637582 Hz quality 800
 Timecounters tick every 1.000 msec

So it presumably wound up using TSC clock anyway, despite the apparent
struggle with clock calibration.  My Compaq 1500c discounts the TSC
because APM is enabled, so uses i8254.  According to loader.conf you
don't have APM hint.apm.0.disabled, but have you tried apm_load="YES" as
I don't think it's in 7 (or even 6.x?) GENERIC kernels any more.

 kern.timecounter.hardware: i8254
 kern.timecounter.choice: TSC(-1000) i8254(0) dummy(-1000000)
 kern.clockrate: { hz = 200, tick = 5000, profhz = 1024, stathz = 128 }

I figured, on a few wet-finger-in-the-wind trials a year or so ago,
that 1000Hz slicing was too busy for my 300MHz machine; I recall it
adding about 10% to idle load.  It works fine at 200Hz.  1000Hz is of
course fine for modern machines that run 10-20 times faster than your
133MHz, so I'd suggest trying maybe kern.hz="100" in loader.conf?

Looks like ESS sound is 'almost' detected - I had fun getting this going
way back when.  If it's at all similar to mine you may need some/all of: 

# sound_load="YES"      # now in kernel
# snd_sbc_load="YES"    # in kernel
# snd_ess_load="YES"    # this fixed it .. bridge driver for ESS, kernel 1/8/6

 > My loader.conf stuff:
 > 	http://www.berklix.com/~jhs/hardware/laptops/dell_latitude_xpi_p133st/loader.conf
 > If anyone has ideas ? I'd try, I'm running 7-Stable

Dunno if any of that might help ..

cheers, Ian