Haiku ACPI Could use your assistance
I’m currently working on ACPI drivers and bus_manager support for Haiku and BeOS R5. I think the bus_manager is in fairly good shape, but I could sure use some help in obtaining information on a wide variety of hardware profiles, and a list of people willing to test certain things. Could this be you?
I don’t know, but I have a way of finding out. The acpi survey drivers.
If you’re running BeOS R5 (net_server or BONE) or exp/dano, feel free to give this a shot. I don’t know if it will work under Zeta, or if it will conflict with something already there. I’ve heard (somewhere) that Zeta has acpi support already…
If you’re interrested in possibly testing some ACPI drivers in the future, take a few minutes to download the survey drivers, read the README, and send back a device report. If you’ve got the type of hardware I’m looking for then you might hear from me in the future. If you have any problems with the drivers (say, crashing machines, etc.) let me know too!
For the uninitiated, ACPI is the Advanced Configuration & Power Interface specification. Most modern systems (many PIIs, most PIIIs, and pretty much anything newer than that) support ACPI to some extent. It gives us the ability to use internal temperature sensors, adjust fan speeds, disk sleep times, monitor power sources (battery, A/C, drain, time remaining), cpu throtteling (SpeedStep), and is essential for setting up HyperThreading on P4 cpus. On laptops it’s used to set screen brightness, dim timers, etc. Wouldn’t it just be great if Haiku supported all that? Well, thanks to the help and groundwork laid by Nathan Whitehorn, I’m working on it.
February 24th, 2006 at 8:58 am
Heh, maybe I should install BeOS on something.
February 24th, 2006 at 10:24 am
That would be a prerequisite…
February 24th, 2006 at 3:31 pm
“Well, thanks to the help and groundwork laid by Nathan Whitehorn, I’m working on it.”
No Bryan, thanks to you and you’re own will! : ) Thanks a lot man. You know what? I’m actually glad you don’t have a social life and all that crap you’re always bitching about, it’s not nice but by focusing on other things like Haiku you get some of that what you miss back. However it can’t replace it : ) Good luck!
February 24th, 2006 at 3:44 pm
Actually I do have a social life. I hope to be expanding it shortly too.
We’ll see how that all works out.
February 24th, 2006 at 3:46 pm
No, seriously — NathanW did all the initial work on ACPI for Haiku. Anything that’s there that’s mine right now is the namespace dumper, which I rewrote. I was helping nathanw with this last april, but sold my laptop… I’ve now got a collection of R5 boxes at home to test things with. I’ve got more ACPI boxes than I know what to do with right now, which is a really good problem to have, if you ask me.
February 24th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Speaking of The-Laptop-Formerly-Known-As-Milo-That-Is-Now-Known-As-Midnight-Blue, how correctly do you think the current Haiku ACPI driver will work on it?
February 24th, 2006 at 9:01 pm
Replied offsite already. But, JT - that laptop (IBM Thinkpad a21m) is -know- for it’s buggy ACPI firmware. It’s the model. IBM really screwed up there.
I’m -very- interrested in how it works with that laptop, as that laptop’s buggy (or picky implementation) was what initially got a lot of the ‘bug’ or quirks out of the acpi stack last year. I hounded poor NathanW quite a bit. :-D
February 25th, 2006 at 3:54 pm
Expanding? What a kid? : )
February 26th, 2006 at 11:48 pm
Nooooooo ….
No not a kid! Oh man that’d be a nightmare for me.
One step at a time man, one step at a time.
March 3rd, 2006 at 8:25 am
Meh .. ; )) I have one : )) … I took a few steps at a time ; )