[TriLUG] Linux laptop battery

[M. Mueller (bhu5nji)]

I tarred up my user dir-tree and ftp'd it to another machince and re-loaded 
Windows ME to see if that piece of cr-- would see the battery.  It did.  It 
also saw the AC going in and out. Bummer.  I'll just live without the battery 
with Linux.

I reloaded Mandrake 8.1.  ftp'd the user account dir-tree and untarred.  (I 
learned that the system likes a reboot after this, but everthing came up fine 
after that.)

I pulled the AC cord with Linux running and started my stop watch.

Some searching on "no system battery" on Google turned up several stories 
about laptops showing:

APM BIOS 1.2 (kernel driver 1.14)
AC on-line, no system battery

1. with AC un-plugged
2. running on battery (like I was then)

Here's the best one: 
http://www.uwsg.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0111.0/0356.html

It seems that my Compaq Presario 12XL500 might be running ACPI instead of APM 
in the BIOS.  Check out the guilty parties at this web site:

http://www.acpi.info/index.html

Support for ACPI in Linux is seminal:

http://www.columbia.edu/~ariel/acpi/acpi_howto.txt

I may have found my open-source calling - to be an ACPI guinea pig.

I just heard two very quiet beeps.  Could it be the remnants of APM telling 
me the battery is low?  Stop watch is at 50 minutes.  Hmmm.  I plugged in the 
power.  Still no usable information from apm -v. I am guessing that the 
battery is OK after all.  May the restoration techniques suggested earlier 
are responsible.

I checked that apmd was running, but it is probably ineffective since 
/proc/apm is not giving any useful information.

<RANT>Way to go Microsoft, Phoenix, Intel, Compaq, and Toshiba.  No reason to 
maintain backwards compatibility, eh?  Who do you really think is responsible 
for this kind of value management?</RANT>

Thanks all,
Mike M.


On Sunday 03 February 2002 10:46 am, you wrote:
> On Monday 04 February 2002 03:55 am, M. Mueller (bhu5nji) wrote:
> > Yup.  Changed from Windows ME to Mandrake 8.1.
> >
> > Here's another funny thing.  When I unplug the main power, apm -v still
> > reports being on AC power.
>
> Here's a long shot.  Does your battery have an on/off switch?  I once
> assembled a laptop from spare parts, and it wouldn't stay on for more than
> a few minutes without AC.  I finally decided to give up on researching APM
> and attempt to replace the battery.  I opened the case to check the part
> number for the battery, and I saw a little, red 1/0 switch on the battery
> itself.  I assume that it's used for long-term storage.  I switched the
> battery on, and it's still working well today.
>
> This problem is unlikely given your symptoms, but I thought that I'd
> mention it.
>
> ---Tom
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