topic Re: BIOS/ACPI problems with Evo N800w in Operating System - Linux

BIOS/ACPI problems with Evo N800w

Kjartan Maraas — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 18:54:44 GMT

I'm having some problems with ACPI under linux with my evo.

- Suspend doesn't work, it just resumes a couple of hundred millisecs later (this is the same if I use apm actually)

- The fan is always on

- Screen is dimmed when go *off* battery instead of the other way around (acts the same under WinXP)

- no battery is registered when booting and thus the linux acpi implementation thinks there's no battery (only an AC adapter)

Anyone else had more success with this laptop and Linux?

Re: BIOS/ACPI problems with Evo N800w

Steven E. Protter — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 18:59:33 GMT

Which Linux and version?

The newer you get, the better the support.

Laptop support is still way, way behind the general desktop support.

If you are using an older distribution, try a newer one.

SEP

Re: BIOS/ACPI problems with Evo N800w

Bruce Copeland — Thu, 04 Sep 2003 22:07:18 GMT

I don't have direct experience with the Evo N800w, but I am pretty familiar with the entire HP ze4000/5000 series and their Compaq counterparts. Most linux distributions still do not provide ACPI support 'out of the box'. You usually need to build/rebuild your kernel with the appropriate ACPI patch, suspend patch, and sometimes one or more additional patches. Even then, it is usually necessary to do a fair bit of configuration. That said, I have two different ze4000 series notebooks with pretty much fully functional ACPI, software suspend, etc. So it is generally possible to make most things work.

ACPI relies heavily on the bios. If things aren't working correctly in either Linux or Windows, then I would suspect the bios. Have you looked on the HP support site to see if there is a bios upgrade? My experience is that the description of new bios offerings doesn't always list everything that has been changed. If you have an AMD Athlon processor in your notebook, the fan IS always going to run. However, I noticed that the last bios upgrade on a ze4325 (with Athlon processor) dropped the average notebook temperature by about 10 degrees centigrade.

Good luck!

Bruce

Re: BIOS/ACPI problems with Evo N800w

Thomas Vollmer — Fri, 05 Sep 2003 05:44:36 GMT

Well I'm useing the N800w with ACPI. It works quite well, but I didn't try suspend so far.

You need at least:

- Kernel 2.4.22
- Activated ACPI ;-)
- cpufreq support. I use P4 clockmod
- An updateded DSDT from acpi.sf.net
- Additional I use the DSDT in initrd patch

Maybe You should also update to BIOS version F.11.

So the fan's are running fine, I get battery data, temperature etc.

Thomas

Re: BIOS/ACPI problems with Evo N800w

Kjartan Maraas — Fri, 05 Sep 2003 07:22:57 GMT

Just to clarify, I'm using the latest Red Hat beta with most packages updated to the rawhide version. The kernel has the latest ACPI patch and has ACPI enabled by default. I'll try the updated DSDT from acpi.sf.net and see if that makes a difference. Thanks.

Re: BIOS/ACPI problems with Evo N800w

Kjartan Maraas — Fri, 05 Sep 2003 07:29:01 GMT

Thomas, I tried downloading the DSDT from acpi.sf.net, but the file couldn't be found there :-(

Any chance you could post it here? It should be under the attachment limit, no?