I've been messing with this ever since I put linux on my dell inspiron 1100, and though I get closser everytime, I've reached a point where I could use some help.
For the longest time I've been trying to get linux interface with my battery so I can tell how much power I've got left in it, a good thing on a laptop. I've patched the redhat kernel 2.4.20-22, and got acpid support for some functions, but no battery. Hearing that 2.4.22 has the best acpi suppord yet I decide to compile it and install. Many failed compiles later I finally got wise and used 'make oldconfig' and got the kernel working. Now most of acpid seems to be working right, but the battery still doesn't. I have battery support compiled as a module, and 'insmod battery' yields the following output.

Using /lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/acpi/battery.o
/lib/modules/2.4.22/kernel/drivers/acpi/battery.o: init_module: No such device
Hint: insmod errors can be caused by incorrect module parameters, including invalid IO or IRQ parameters.
You may find more information in syslog or the output from dmesg
'dmseg |fgrep battery' yields nothing. When I first loaded the module after the compile it loaded fine, but a modprobe yielded something about the battery being unsupported. I unloaded the module, and now can't load it again. Any suggestions would be more than welcome, at this point I'm really willing to try anything, 'cause I'm fresh out of ideas.

http://www.cpqlinux.com/acpi-howto.html#downloads - have you tried that hack - I had to on my lappy..but it's not a tosh.

The concept of this fix is to extract the DSTD from the BIOS, fix it, and recompile it. It's a bit dirty, but is the only way round for some buggy chips. It worked swimmingly for me.
Before going down that route, try and find out if yours is on the buggy list.

I have researched this a little for you, and as I thought, yours does have the bug in question.
See http://www.geocities.com/randomnumbe...tor2001/#ACPI.

However, the fix they suggest is even dirtier than the one I suggested in my first post. I tried it myself once, and got in a terrible mess.

Appreciate the help. I'll take a look at that as soon as I can and post the outcome.

Alright, I took a look and discovered that I was still running the old A3 BIOS. After more hassel than was truly necessary I updated my BIOS to the latest version (A23 as of this post) and everything worked fine. Thanks for the help! I finally have linux running on my laptop the way I always dreamed it would be.