dockapps/wmpower/README.compal

Compal laptop support for wmpower
---------------------------------

Francisco Rodrigo Escobedo Robles <frer@pepix.net>
20031002


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0 - Objectives, requirements, legal and contact.
1 - What is a Compal laptop?
2 - How can I know if I have one?
3 - What specifics has beed added to wmpower?
4 - Known bugs.

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0 - Objectives, requirements, legal and contact.
------------------------------------------------

This patch to wmpower enhances its operation by supplying temperature, fan
and remaining battery time information, as well as charging time information
and LCD brightness control for Compal laptops. Nowadays they come in all
kind of brands.

It uses and requires the omnibook kernel module, available at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/omke/

All the code in this patch is under the GNU General Public License, version 2.

For any suggestions, appraisals and critics, contact me at frer@pepix.net.


1 - What is a Compal laptop?
----------------------------

Is a laptop made or designed by the Compal ODM (Original Design
Manufacturer). Compal (http://www.compal.com/) is a company in Taiwan that
makes laptops (as well as PDAs, mobile phones and TFT monitors), and offers
them to another makers for rebranding. This is a more usual process than one
can possibly imagine. So there it goes for "brand fidelity"...

In fact, a real proof of the whole Universe being a practical joke, Acer used
to be ODM for other well-known brands. Nowadays, the demand for Acer is so
high, that they themselves have turned to ODMs like Compal and Quanta. My
Acer Aspire 1403XC is made by Compal (that they sell it as model CR10, and the
board is labelled as BR20). It's the same as the FlexNote CR10, the Beep
Chrome and very similar to some models of the Toshiba Satellite 1900 and 2430
series, and of course, the HP Omnibook XE3 GF.

Compal models are rebranded by Acer, Toshiba, HP, Dell and some others. And
here is where the excellent omnibook kernel module comes into scene. The
people at http://sourceforge.net/projects/omke/ have come with a wonderful
module that interfaces with several special features of the HP Omnibook XE3
GF and related models. As a matter of fact, and due to their Compal origin,
several contributed code has made it possible for similar architectures to be
properly interfaced and available in /proc/omnibook

(side note: since the 1970s, rebranding ODM producs has been a common process,
and I took first contact with it while comparing the schematic diagrams for
CB transceivers in the early 1980s: I could classify any given model in one
of 4 or 5 makers, namely Cybernet (now merged into Kyocera and working on
WiFi networks), Uniden (still on the radio market), Maxon (still on radio
and now on mobile phone markets) and 1 or 2 unidentified makers. I was fond of
Cybernet SSB designs, despite of them being generally messier than the Uniden
ones. Nowadays, Uniden still produces for the President brand and others a
chassis that is some 25 years old in its foundations, with little incremental
changes over time. If you didn't want to know this, you'd better had not taken
the red pill :)


2 - How can I know if I have one?
---------------------------------

You can look for it in http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_oem.html and
https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm (FCC ID
search, for models sold in the U.S.A.; most of them carry it the FCC ID even
if sold elsewhere).

Other than that, you can try to install the omnibook module: if it fails,
then your laptop is not supported by it, be it a Compal ODM model or not. If
you suspect it's a Compal made one, contact the people at
http://sourceforge.net/projects/omke/ or better yet, contribute some code :)


3 - What specifics has beed added to wmpower?
---------------------------------------------

wmpower relies on ACPI or APM to get the power management information.
Additionally, Toshiba and Dell are supported for their specifics. Now
Compal/Acer/HP/whatever are :)

The patch makes available the following information from the /proc/omnibook:

 - fan activity
 - CPU temperature
 - remaining battery time (computed from the current charge over the time)
 - remaining charge time (the same as before)
 - the maker and model of the laptop (on stderr)

Additionally, it offers the following controls:

 - LCD brightness (through the mouse wheel)

The fan activity and CPU temperature are shown from the information directly
available from /proc/omnibook/fan and /proc/omnibook/temperature,
respectively. The battery status information is read from
/proc/omnibook/battery, as it's more reliable than /proc/acpi/battery/...
for this kind of machines (compare 4000 mAh from ACPI and 5900 mAh from the
omnibook module as the full battery capacity).

From the remaining capacity and the time between polls, the current draw
rate is calculated, and hence the remaining time. Similarly, the remaining
time to get a full charge is calculated from the same data set. I couldn't
resist to get a bit more of functionality :)

Enjoy!


4 - Known bugs.
---------------

 - currently, it draws a little more CPU time than would be ideal
 - assumes ACPI support is present to calculate the remaining time