laptop not recognising when on battery and when on mains
 

Hello everyone.
I have a toshiba satellite m40 185 laptop since approx 2k5-2k6.

It's running slackware 13.1 with a custom kernel 2.6.35.4

I have disabled the acpi altogether since I would get countless crashes otherwise.
However, without acpi from the kernel I am left with APM and now the laptop does not recognize when it is running on battery and when on mains. And the battery meter on the desktop does not deplete slowly slowly, as one would expect.
Is there something that can be done?
any pointers or guides would be most welcome!
thank you in advance for your help!