amd powernow with kernel 2.6.8.1
 

i have an emachines m5310 that im trying to get slackware to run on so i can ditch windows, heres what ive done so far...

1) installed slack with bare minimum, no games; kde; gnome; no extra apps; no emacs; no docs; etc.

2) upgraded to the 2.6.8.1 kernel, i made a very bare kernel with ONLY what is needed to boot the laptop.

3) the first thing i want to get to work in the kernel is power management, i installed apci, with cpu-scalling and the powernow-k7 module. when i boot up i can see that it does in fact detect the different power modes for my laptop.

my question is, how do i actually use powernow. ive managed to change the cpu speed but i dont think its changing the voltage. theres not much documentation that i could find that helped me. from what i understand cpufreq is depreciated and is no longer use. so please can someone help me.

one of the only things that i found semi usefull is this program i found, http://gandalf.ics.uci.edu/~haldar/lamp/ but im a little reluctant to use it if i can control the speed through the kernel instead of a 3rd party app.

ok, i managed to figure out how to change the speed of the cpu. but i cant tell if its bringing the voltage down also. does anyone know anything about finding out if the voltage is scaled down also?

update:

i figured everything out on my own, im using LAMP to automatically echo the speeds to the cpufreq interface in /sys. and it is in fact lowering the voltage as well because cause the laptop will stay on for about 3 hours (about same time it would run with windows installed) and the cpu fan will shutdown because of running in lower temps.

the source code to LAMP is pretty simple, im going to try to modify it to encompass all of my cpu's available speeds versus just the min and max speeds.