Re: powerbook g3
On Tue, Jun 1, 1999, bigj <bigj@scw.ucsd.edu> wrote:
>what about battery life, hard disk spin down monitor dimming detection of
>inserted new batteries etc?
>There is much work to be done here. All those who are interested send me
>a note and I'll assemble a group together.
As far as battery life is concerned, the DOZE mode in the idle thread
should help, but we can probably improve it by turning off selected
components when unused (via the FCR's in the mac-io chips or via PMU
commands). Also, some control on the CPU speed could be interesting too.
Monitor diming is already implemented by the appropriate command in the
atyfb driver along with turning the backlight off. Hard disk spindown is
an IDE thing, and is not specific to the PowerBook, but we may have some
more control on the power of the IDE controller part of mac-io itself
(probably via the FCR). I know MacOS can turn off MESH and the associated
SCSI hardware, I don't know exactly how to power it up again however.
For battery status and detection, all this can be done from userland via
appropriates commands to /dev/pmu. Paul already implemented something for
previous PowerBook models, I found part of the commands for the newer
machines, but I never took the time to complete my
experiments.
Yes, go for the group, I have pieces of infos but no time to really hack
and experiments !
Benjamin.
--
Perso. e-mail: <mailto:bh40@calva.net>
Work e-mail: <mailto:benh@mipsys.com>
BenH. Web : <http://calvaweb.calvacom.fr/bh40/>
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