How much can be done with acpi?
 

What I have working
*Brightness up & down, & suspend.

Wish list:
1. I have a battery event recognized by acpi, and running a script, and would love to be able to charge this $@%£! thing, It starts charging when turned on: "Battery 3%; charged in 34 hours 10 minutes." But it stops charging when off, suspended, or hibernating. I suspect a hardware issue.

2. I have a video switchmode event recognised as an acpi event. At startup, it selects internal/external monitors or occasionally both. When the radeon module is loaded, both outputs go on, if there's a monitor attached. X dogmatically only drives what's there at boot. It would be nice to be able to trigger the external monitor without dropping out of X to do it.

Any ideas where to research that sort of stuff?

Did some Goggling for you Mate-

It appears; based on the complaints I found online that you are not the only member with this issue.
I bet it's frustrating and I hope that one or some of these articles I found helps.

You mentioned that you suspect a hardware issue. Depending on the age of your computer that could make one suspicious of hardware issue's too. If you have time you could run Memtest to see what it produces within the readout of the output.

If not; I've tried to help with a sincere heart;)

http://doc.opensuse.org/documentatio...a.pmanage.html
http://forums.bodhilinux.com/index.p...n-battery-low/
http://www.linuxtopia.org/online_boo...ower_mgmt.html
http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...e-from-suspend
https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sugexp...w=1366&bih=666

Thanks very much Ztcoracat, I just came across dismal failures and complaints.

I'll examine each of those links as soon as I can. As for the hardware issue, I am suspicious of hardware. This box is from 2008, and it sprung this charging problem suddenly, which makes one suspect charging hardware. Otherwise, it's fine.

I got the Slackware-14.0 "default" event out of /etc/acpi/events, and was thrown back on my own scripts again. There is a suspend button (Never knew that) which works, and there's a battery button which pokes xfce's power manager and it wakes up and says "Battery charging." The time goes down from 24 hours to 2 hours, but the difference to charging is squat.

Business_Kidd:


You are very Welcome!;)

I certainly hope you find the remedy/fix- ;)
I wonder if the battery needs replaced and if that's even possible and or applicable at this point?

It's not the battery - the old one did degenerate into a PP3, so I replaced it with a long life one from ebay and that works.
I'm now at 5% - and it says "Charged in 18 hours 46 minutes." If I press the acpi "battery" button, It will say "Charged in 2 hours" but that's a lie as it stops charging.

Hmm-
Not sure why it just stops charging. It seems a little bizarre; especially since you replaced the battery-

I wish you the best and a resolution to this;)

I finally got to those links. There's 2 feeds to the main system. The 19V power supply, and the 10.8V battery.
mains ----- box
______|---- battery
OR
Battery ----- system.
The voltage difference between psu and battery makes me think there's a transistor setup in there. It used to be very good, then it stopped charging while powered off in any way. When the mains supply is connected and the box is on, the battery rises in charge quite slowly, but it rises. At the same time as the battery charging went funny, the behaviour of the charging led changed also. I think my psu ------battery circuit is AWOL.
I get a status of "Unknown" in /sys/class/power_supply/C1ED/status at times. I think acpi _should_know_ what's going on.

My read of it now is that
According to those links, ACPI isn't really up for my wishlist, or if it is, nobody knows how it's done.
1. According to my analysis, the acpi "Battery Button" sets charging on - which turns it off in my case because the hardware is congenitally knackered.
2. As far as the video switchmode stuff goes, that's grabbed by the bios, the X server, the Kernel KMS modules and who knows what else, and acpi developers wisely stayed clear.

I'll go googling in the linux-laptop and acpi-devel lists - there's history there.

Interestingly since the recent BIOS update, I do have function on the videomode stuff. The test of booting & starting X with no external monitor, connecting one when X is running and pressing the videomode button(s) does bring up a picture - not the left/right stuff, but a direct copy. What it does with screen size seems to be linked to how X is set up. So the acpi guys were right to leave this alone.

After reading this:

First released in December 1996, ACPI defines platform-independent interfaces for hardware discovery, configuration, power management and monitoring. The specification is central to Operating System-directed configuration and Power Management (OSPM), a system implementing ACPI, which removes device management responsibilities from legacy firmware interfaces.

I sat back in my chair and remembered that you said ACPI isn't on your wishlist and that the
acpi guys were right to leave this alone.

(If) I understand it sounds like the power supply your (19 volt) could be slipping or in other words is done for-

Now what? Buy a new computer or a new power supply for it?
Just curious what you may consider-

I don’t have enough knowledge on ACPI, but I think the best thing you can do to resolve your problem is to check the guidebook with the mechanics on charging battery. Actually, this should not be a problem as assumed by many. The problem may not be due to the battery, but due to other systems of your gadget.

Guys, don't worry about me and the Electronics.
I was repairing factory machinery & Industrial Electronics for 17 years, I've meters, an oscilloscope, soldering & desoldering irons, Lab Power Supply, even a BGA Rework station, and I know how to use them. ATM I'm between 2nd & 3rd year of an Electronic Engineering Degree. I can slap a meter on the PSU, or even a load and a meter. The supply shows 19.89V.

I'm not bothered opening up such an old laptop over a power supply thing, because I've done that sort of thing too often, and know the pain involved. I also grew to hate repairing things a lot. The loathing is wearing off now, and I fix what I have to, but it's still not my idea of fun.

As for the HP Guidebook - It's mainly "How to shine," :-/. They do show you how to get the keyboard off, which is neat, because it lets you in at the motherboard. Only a dozen screws and 2 clips.