Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

[John Ruttenberg]

I tried sending this to linux-laptop and got no response, so I thought I try a
larger audience:

I am using 2.4.18 and have a Dell I8100 with 2 batteries.  If combined charge
of the batteries is less than 50% (according to the bios), then /proc/apm
shows the battery power level X 2.  If the combined charge of the batteries is
greater than 50%, then /proc/apm shows:

    1.16 1.2 0x03 0x01 0xff 0x10 -1% -1 ?

I think this is because the bogus calculation it would make would result in a
percentage > 100.

I took a quick look at arch/i386/kernel/apm.c but it wasn't obvious what to
do.

Does anyone else have any experience with this?

Re: Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

[John Ruttenberg]

I thought I'd try to figure out that there were two batteries and divide by 2
or something like that.  Perhaps the bios of this notebook is just broken,
though.

Alan Cox:
> > of the batteries is less than 50% (according to the bios), then /proc/apm
> > shows the battery power level X 2.  If the combined charge of the batteries is
> > greater than 50%, then /proc/apm shows:
> > 
> >     1.16 1.2 0x03 0x01 0xff 0x10 -1% -1 ?
> > 
> > I think this is because the bogus calculation it would make would result in a
> > percentage > 100.
> > 
> > I took a quick look at arch/i386/kernel/apm.c but it wasn't obvious what to
> > do.
> 
> The data basically comes from the BIOS as is

Re: Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

[Alan Cox]

> of the batteries is less than 50% (according to the bios), then /proc/apm
> shows the battery power level X 2.  If the combined charge of the batteries is
> greater than 50%, then /proc/apm shows:
> 
>     1.16 1.2 0x03 0x01 0xff 0x10 -1% -1 ?
> 
> I think this is because the bogus calculation it would make would result in a
> percentage > 100.
> 
> I took a quick look at arch/i386/kernel/apm.c but it wasn't obvious what to
> do.

The data basically comes from the BIOS as is

Re: Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

[David G Hamblen]

I've got the same laptop with one battery, but I'm using ACPI. None of the
current user-space utilities parse this stuff particularly well (the
filenames in /proc/acpi have changed), but the data all look reasonable.

#cat /proc/acpi/battery/BAT1/*
alarm:                   3000 mWh
present:                 yes
design capacity:         57420 mWh
last full capacity:      57420 mWh
battery technology:      rechargeable
design voltage:          14800 mV
design capacity warning: 3000 mWh
design capacity low:     1000 mWh
capacity granularity 1:  200 mWh
capacity granularity 2:  200 mWh
model number:            LIP8084DLP
serial number:           40086
battery type:            LION
OEM info:                Sony Corp.
present:                 yes
capacity state:          ok
charging state:          charging
present rate:            unknown
remaining capacity:      56670 mWh
present voltage:         16746 mV

Dave

On Fri, 17 May 2002, John Ruttenberg wrote:

> I thought I'd try to figure out that there were two batteries and divide by 2
> or something like that.  Perhaps the bios of this notebook is just broken,
> though.
> 
> Alan Cox:
> > > of the batteries is less than 50% (according to the bios), then /proc/apm
> > > shows the battery power level X 2.  If the combined charge of the batteries is
> > > greater than 50%, then /proc/apm shows:
> > > 
> > >     1.16 1.2 0x03 0x01 0xff 0x10 -1% -1 ?
> > > 
> > > I think this is because the bogus calculation it would make would result in a
> > > percentage > 100.
> > > 
> > > I took a quick look at arch/i386/kernel/apm.c but it wasn't obvious what to
> > > do.
> > 
> > The data basically comes from the BIOS as is
> 
> 
> 
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Re: Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

[Alan Cox]

> I thought I'd try to figure out that there were two batteries and divide by 2
> or something like that.  Perhaps the bios of this notebook is just broken,
> though.

Might be. The APM spec is publically available if you want go digging into
what it says

Re: Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

[David Woodhouse]

dave@AFRInc.com said:
>  I've got the same laptop with one battery, but I'm using ACPI. None
> of the current user-space utilities parse this stuff particularly well
> (the filenames in /proc/acpi have changed), but the data all look
> reasonable. 

Those data also come straight from the BIOS. The ACPI code on those laptops 
is all just traps into the SMM BIOS. I'd guess it's running exactly the 
same code inside.

--
dwmw2

Re: Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

[Marc Lehmann]

On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 10:25:06AM -0400, John Ruttenberg <rutt@chezrutt.com> wrote:
> I am using 2.4.18 and have a Dell I8100 with 2 batteries.  If combined charge

I also have this notebook, and the APM bios is rather broken. You might try
downgrading your BIOS to A07 or so, that *could* help (it helped here).

ACPI doesn't work stably on that machine (not here, at least), and doesn't
seem to be desirable, as reading battery status freezes the machine for
0.2s ;)

-- 
      -----==-                                             |
      ----==-- _                                           |
      ---==---(_)__  __ ____  __       Marc Lehmann      +--
      --==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ /       pcg@goof.com      |e|
      -=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\       XX11-RIPE         --+
    The choice of a GNU generation                       |
                                                         |

Re: Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries

[John Ruttenberg]

Thanks.  That did the trick.  I was beginning to suspect the A8+ bios I was
using and beginning to suspect that a downgrade was in order.  But you gave me
the courage to try.


Marc Lehmann:
> On Fri, May 17, 2002 at 10:25:06AM -0400, John Ruttenberg <rutt@chezrutt.com> wrote:
> > I am using 2.4.18 and have a Dell I8100 with 2 batteries.  If combined charge
> 
> I also have this notebook, and the APM bios is rather broken. You might try
> downgrading your BIOS to A07 or so, that *could* help (it helped here).
> 
> ACPI doesn't work stably on that machine (not here, at least), and doesn't
> seem to be desirable, as reading battery status freezes the machine for
> 0.2s ;)
> 
> -- 
>       -----==-                                             |
>       ----==-- _                                           |
>       ---==---(_)__  __ ____  __       Marc Lehmann      +--
>       --==---/ / _ \/ // /\ \/ /       pcg@goof.com      |e|
>       -=====/_/_//_/\_,_/ /_/\_\       XX11-RIPE         --+
>     The choice of a GNU generation                       |
>                                                          |

Re: Dell Inspiron i8100 with 2 batteries [Solved!]

[John Ruttenberg]

Marc Lehmann suggested downgrading to Dell's A7 bios and it fixed this problem
(along with some minor stuff with the i8k fan/temperature control stuff.
(Fans no longer go through speed 2 to get to speed 1).  I am also hoping that
it will result in better clock accuracy (I read some posting about this), but
my experiments with this aren't complete.

David Woodhouse:
> 
> dave@AFRInc.com said:
> >  I've got the same laptop with one battery, but I'm using ACPI. None
> > of the current user-space utilities parse this stuff particularly well
> > (the filenames in /proc/acpi have changed), but the data all look
> > reasonable. 
> 
> Those data also come straight from the BIOS. The ACPI code on those laptops 
> is all just traps into the SMM BIOS. I'd guess it's running exactly the 
> same code inside.
> 
> --
> dwmw2