126 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
126 lines
5.1 KiB
Plaintext
Compal laptop support for wmpower
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---------------------------------
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Francisco Rodrigo Escobedo Robles <frer@pepix.net>
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20031002
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0 - Objectives, requirements, legal and contact.
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1 - What is a Compal laptop?
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2 - How can I know if I have one?
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3 - What specifics has beed added to wmpower?
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4 - Known bugs.
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-----
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0 - Objectives, requirements, legal and contact.
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------------------------------------------------
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This patch to wmpower enhances its operation by supplying temperature, fan
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and remaining battery time information, as well as charging time information
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and LCD brightness control for Compal laptops. Nowadays they come in all
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kind of brands.
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It uses and requires the omnibook kernel module, available at
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http://sourceforge.net/projects/omke/
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All the code in this patch is under the GNU General Public License, version 2.
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For any suggestions, appraisals and critics, contact me at frer@pepix.net.
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1 - What is a Compal laptop?
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----------------------------
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Is a laptop made or designed by the Compal ODM (Original Design
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Manufacturer). Compal (http://www.compal.com/) is a company in Taiwan that
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makes laptops (as well as PDAs, mobile phones and TFT monitors), and offers
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them to another makers for rebranding. This is a more usual process than one
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can possibly imagine. So there it goes for "brand fidelity"...
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In fact, a real proof of the whole Universe being a practical joke, Acer used
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to be ODM for other well-known brands. Nowadays, the demand for Acer is so
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high, that they themselves have turned to ODMs like Compal and Quanta. My
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Acer Aspire 1403XC is made by Compal (that they sell it as model CR10, and the
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board is labelled as BR20). It's the same as the FlexNote CR10, the Beep
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Chrome and very similar to some models of the Toshiba Satellite 1900 and 2430
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series, and of course, the HP Omnibook XE3 GF.
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Compal models are rebranded by Acer, Toshiba, HP, Dell and some others. And
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here is where the excellent omnibook kernel module comes into scene. The
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people at http://sourceforge.net/projects/omke/ have come with a wonderful
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module that interfaces with several special features of the HP Omnibook XE3
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GF and related models. As a matter of fact, and due to their Compal origin,
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several contributed code has made it possible for similar architectures to be
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properly interfaced and available in /proc/omnibook
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(side note: since the 1970s, rebranding ODM producs has been a common process,
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and I took first contact with it while comparing the schematic diagrams for
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CB transceivers in the early 1980s: I could classify any given model in one
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of 4 or 5 makers, namely Cybernet (now merged into Kyocera and working on
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WiFi networks), Uniden (still on the radio market), Maxon (still on radio
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and now on mobile phone markets) and 1 or 2 unidentified makers. I was fond of
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Cybernet SSB designs, despite of them being generally messier than the Uniden
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ones. Nowadays, Uniden still produces for the President brand and others a
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chassis that is some 25 years old in its foundations, with little incremental
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changes over time. If you didn't want to know this, you'd better had not taken
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the red pill :)
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2 - How can I know if I have one?
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---------------------------------
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You can look for it in http://tuxmobil.org/laptop_oem.html and
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https://gullfoss2.fcc.gov/prod/oet/cf/eas/reports/GenericSearch.cfm (FCC ID
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search, for models sold in the U.S.A.; most of them carry it the FCC ID even
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if sold elsewhere).
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Other than that, you can try to install the omnibook module: if it fails,
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then your laptop is not supported by it, be it a Compal ODM model or not. If
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you suspect it's a Compal made one, contact the people at
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http://sourceforge.net/projects/omke/ or better yet, contribute some code :)
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3 - What specifics has beed added to wmpower?
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---------------------------------------------
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wmpower relies on ACPI or APM to get the power management information.
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Additionally, Toshiba and Dell are supported for their specifics. Now
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Compal/Acer/HP/whatever are :)
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The patch makes available the following information from the /proc/omnibook:
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- fan activity
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- CPU temperature
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- remaining battery time (computed from the current charge over the time)
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- remaining charge time (the same as before)
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- the maker and model of the laptop (on stderr)
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Additionally, it offers the following controls:
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- LCD brightness (through the mouse wheel)
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The fan activity and CPU temperature are shown from the information directly
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available from /proc/omnibook/fan and /proc/omnibook/temperature,
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respectively. The battery status information is read from
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/proc/omnibook/battery, as it's more reliable than /proc/acpi/battery/...
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for this kind of machines (compare 4000 mAh from ACPI and 5900 mAh from the
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omnibook module as the full battery capacity).
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From the remaining capacity and the time between polls, the current draw
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rate is calculated, and hence the remaining time. Similarly, the remaining
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time to get a full charge is calculated from the same data set. I couldn't
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resist to get a bit more of functionality :)
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Enjoy!
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4 - Known bugs.
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---------------
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- currently, it draws a little more CPU time than would be ideal
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- assumes ACPI support is present to calculate the remaining time
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