# SBS-Linux - ACPI for Acer Laptops - A dead project? :(

## phrozen77

Hi all,

as an User of an Acer Laptop (3000WLMi), im one of those that are "plagued" by a so called smart battery...

The main problem with them is, that they use a sort of custom acpi-implementation to get the state of the charging-state of the battery, which you guessed right, works more than ok on windows but not so on linux.

To fix this, somebody created drivers and kernel-patches which worked really good - up to 2.6.11, where the main developer of these drivers apparently has lost interest in developing them further.. the latest release is of end march 2005 so it seems like this isnt going anywhere anymore...

Though i have to add that the battery-state-patches also work for 2.6.12-r6 here, the so called "no-spinlock-patch", which prevents lag while the battery state is being polled, doesnt work anymore..  :Sad: 

so, my question is, does anyone know of any alternatives to sbs-linux or has anyone a "patched patch"?

https://sourceforge.net/projects/sbs-linux/

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## davidsb

I own an Acer Aspire 1690 and I'm starting to "discover" how ACPI in linux works for this laptop.

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## merlinBSD

I also have an ACER with a smart battery (4102WLMI) and you have to correct your DSDT in order to get your battery stats. It works very well and it isn't hard to do.

link

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## reynolds531

I have an Acer Travelmate 2300. I've gone nine months telling myself I didn't need battery status, but this thread inspired me to have a go at it. I'm happy to say it's working now.

Merlin's link was a good start, but didn't entirely solve the problem.

Beyond that, I had to apply the sbs-cm patch to my dsdt as described in this link:

http://www.tuxx-home.at/archives/cat_6/

phrozen77, I don't understand why you're concerned about patching the kernel. The only patching I had to do was to my dsdt file. Then just use "make menuconfig" to tell the kernel where the new dsdt is. (See method #3 in Howto Fix Common ACPI Problems -- the link that Merlin provided.)

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## reynolds531

One other point. There are two versions of the Intel compiler in portage (one from march and the other from may, if I remember correctly). Ultimately, I ended up using the older one. At first I used the newer one, but got 18 or 19 error and warning messages. A google search turned up a web page that said the compiler became more strict between those versions and the older one was good enough. The older one only returned 4 or 5 warnings.

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## mullkubel

Hi phrozen77,

I am suffering from the same plague ;), except that I have a Acer TM 4001LMi.

Whilst getting my Smart Battery working with 2.6.9, I have troubles with 2.6.12 or 2.6.13 because of the lacking spinlock-patch (i think). My battery status is visible when I correct my buggy DSDT, but there is abnormal keyboard-delay while typing (and this is annoying you can guess...)

So if you found a solution for this meanwhile, please tell me...

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## phrozen77

 *Quote:*   

> but there is abnormal keyboard-delay while typing (and this is annoying you can guess...)
> 
> 

 

oh, believe me, i can pretty much feel your pain -_-, (as im pestered with it, too)

well, all i can say for now is that the no-spinlock patches are available & working for 2.6.9 and 2.6.10 but not for the more recent kernels.

what we could do (i didnt try / look yet) is to manually go through the patches and try to apply them by hand, but thats a hassle i didnt put up with (yet).

also, i tried emailing the creator of sbs, but havent got a response in like 3 months now *sigh* (though i pretty much can imagine that his inbox could be flooded with more acer-nb-owners than just.. me  :Wink:  )

so, all in all, manually applying the nospinlockpatch is my only and best guess i can do right now  :Sad: 

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## phrozen77

Yes - finally somebody has heard my (and probably lots of other peoples) prayers!

its true - there has been another release of sbs-patches!

Get them here while theyre hot!  :Wink: 

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## reynolds531

Now begins the wait for patches to 2.6.15. (Despite what I wrote above about not having any problems, I did finally realize that I was getting dropped keystrokes.)

A Google search turned up this patch against one of the 2.6.15 release candidates. (See also  this discussion.) But when I tried applying the patch by hand to the official release, the compilation failed.

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## reynolds531

The file that gets patched -- ec.c -- is identical in both 2.6.14 and 2.6.15. The same patch should apply, with perhaps minimal changes to reflect a different timestamp, if any.

EDIT: The patch applied cleanly with no edits. It seems to be working fine with the 2.6.15 kernel.

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