10 Dec 2007 00:34
Workpad Z50 install doc / hpcbatterytable.h
Khoa Tran <piper_the <at> hotmail.com>
2007-12-09 23:34:13 GMT
2007-12-09 23:34:13 GMT
Hello Everyone,
With a bit of urging from list-member Dereck, I've finally gotten around to writing a more comprehensive install document for the Workpad Z50. Be patient though, this might take a while :P
A general question/comment/etc.:
Power management is one of the areas most lacking, I'm sure you'll agree. The apm implementation and battery meter are far too crude, and the system force-suspends when I use the AA battery pack (I'm assuming this is because NiMH batteries are 1.2V nominal and not 1.5V), assuming that a freshly-charged set of batteries is at "critical" voltage. I'm sure the performance with the Li-Ion pack is also iffy. I get around this by carefully commenting out relevant sections of vrpiu.c to disable the force-suspend when the system thinks that the battery level is critical, but this is Wrong. Besides, one can't expect to bring a multimeter with him all of the time and pop open the battery cover to examine the voltage of the top AA battery (for those of you who care and are crazy enough to do the same as I do, I've found that 1.250 V under load is a good time to change batteries, since at that point, you're at 1.25x8 = 10V, and the original Li-Ion battery pack is rated at 11.1 V).
Now, with a bit of digging, I found hpcbatterytable.h, which seems to contain values for battery status levels at 100%, 80%, 50%, 20%, and critical, amongst other things. The problem is, these don't seem to be voltages. For instance, 100% has a value of 945, 80% is 915, 20% is 855, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have
much experience with APM/power management, etc., so the best I'll be able to do at this point is to lower the values in the table, and hopefully by trial-and-error, find values that'll work. This of course means lots of kernel recompiling, which I can get down to ~2h with distcc, but it's still a good amount of time. Does anyone have any ideas?
cheers!
~k
HO HO HO, if you've been nice this year, email Santa! Visit asksanta.ca to learn more!
With a bit of urging from list-member Dereck, I've finally gotten around to writing a more comprehensive install document for the Workpad Z50. Be patient though, this might take a while :P
A general question/comment/etc.:
Power management is one of the areas most lacking, I'm sure you'll agree. The apm implementation and battery meter are far too crude, and the system force-suspends when I use the AA battery pack (I'm assuming this is because NiMH batteries are 1.2V nominal and not 1.5V), assuming that a freshly-charged set of batteries is at "critical" voltage. I'm sure the performance with the Li-Ion pack is also iffy. I get around this by carefully commenting out relevant sections of vrpiu.c to disable the force-suspend when the system thinks that the battery level is critical, but this is Wrong. Besides, one can't expect to bring a multimeter with him all of the time and pop open the battery cover to examine the voltage of the top AA battery (for those of you who care and are crazy enough to do the same as I do, I've found that 1.250 V under load is a good time to change batteries, since at that point, you're at 1.25x8 = 10V, and the original Li-Ion battery pack is rated at 11.1 V).
Now, with a bit of digging, I found hpcbatterytable.h, which seems to contain values for battery status levels at 100%, 80%, 50%, 20%, and critical, amongst other things. The problem is, these don't seem to be voltages. For instance, 100% has a value of 945, 80% is 915, 20% is 855, etc. Unfortunately, I don't have
much experience with APM/power management, etc., so the best I'll be able to do at this point is to lower the values in the table, and hopefully by trial-and-error, find values that'll work. This of course means lots of kernel recompiling, which I can get down to ~2h with distcc, but it's still a good amount of time. Does anyone have any ideas?
cheers!
~k
HO HO HO, if you've been nice this year, email Santa! Visit asksanta.ca to learn more!
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