Athlon

[Roger Oberholtzer]

On Tue, 13 Jan 2004 20:44:11 -0500
Jerry McBride <mcbrides9 at comcast.net> wrote:

> On Tuesday 13 January 2004 09:37 am, Roger Oberholtzer wrote:
> > Anyone using Athlon Mobility CPUs in laptops running SUSE 9?
> 
> Not SUSE, but Gentoo. I'm using the LAPTOP-MODE patch in kernel 2.6.1
> compiled with cpufreq support. Works GREAT. Target laptop is a compaq
> 700us... I'm able to throttle the cpu speed from 500mhz to 1.2gig on the
> fly with the laptop-mode patch allowing the harddrive to sleep for longer
> periods. I can run this particular flopper in low-E-mode for nearly 5
> hours before the battery poops out....  Thats about twice what I had
> before the changes. 
> 
> Pretty darn good!

Better than my luck. I have an Acer 1350. The original install of SUSE9
installed a kernel (2.4.21-99-athlon) for the AMD. The install worked fine.
However, when using the computer, it would freeze at some point. Usually
within 5 minutes of booting. Often less. So, I reinstalled with ACPI off.
That made the freezing stop. However, I think the machine is not running at
its best. There is no battery info, as the power stuff was disabled. And,
the Acer does not seem to beep or warn when the power starts to get low, as
my old Dell did. So, I must run on power all the time as I have no
indication when power will end. I upgraded the kernel to one SUSE released
to correct unspecified ACPI problems (2.4.21-144-athlon). I tried enabling
ACPI on the kernel command line, but it was worse than the previous kernel.
It would not even boot.

Aside from the lack of power info, it also freezes when I log out or shut
down. Every time. No message seen. The X graphic stuff is gone. Usually only
the mouse cursor on a black background remains. Nothing to do but cycle the
power.

Below is the powernow info I get at boot. The CPU starts in the slowest
speed. And stays that way. I am running cpufreqd, but I do not see that it
is doing anything. That daemon in a new one for me, so I may just be doing
something dumb.

 powernow: AMD K7 CPU detected.
 powernow: PowerNOW! Technology present. Can scale: frequency and voltage.
 powernow: Found PSB header at c00f06f0
 powernow: Table version: 0x12
 powernow: Flags: 0x0 (Mobile voltage regulator)
 powernow: Settling Time: 100 microseconds.
 powernow: Has 8 PST tables. (Only dumping ones relevant to this CPU).
 powernow: PST:2 (@c00f072e)
 powernow:  cpuid: 0x7a0 fsb: 133        maxFID: 0x18    startvid: 0x7
 powernow:    FID: 0xf (10.5x [1396MHz]) VID: 0xe (1.300V)
 powernow:    FID: 0x0 (11.0x [1463MHz]) VID: 0xd (1.350V)
 powernow:    FID: 0x1 (11.5x [1529MHz]) VID: 0xc (1.400V)
 powernow:    FID: 0x2 (12.0x [1596MHz]) VID: 0xb (1.450V)
 powernow:    FID: 0x3 (12.5x [1662MHz]) VID: 0xa (1.500V)
 powernow:    FID: 0x14 (13.0x [1729MHz])        VID: 0x9 (1.550V)
 powernow:    FID: 0x15 (13.5x [1795MHz])        VID: 0x8 (1.600V)
 powernow:    FID: 0x18 (15.0x [1995MHz])        VID: 0x7 (1.650V)

I may try a 2.6 kernel. SUSE provide an early one. I do not know if it has
any laptop patch. I will have to check that.

I would run Gentoo on the laptop, but it is a work machine, and we have
decided to use SUSE9 in production. (Except I did get my Gentoo diskless
stuff in there somewhere!)

-- 
+????????????????????????????+???????????????????????????????+
? Roger Oberholtzer          ?   E-mail: roger at opq.se        ?
? OPQ Systems AB             ?      WWW: http://www.opq.se/  ?
? Erik Dahlbergsgatan 41-43  ?    Phone: Int + 46 8   314223 ?
? 115 34 Stockholm           ?   Mobile: Int + 46 733 621657 ?
? Sweden                     ?      Fax: Int + 46 8   302602 ?
+????????????????????????????+???????????????????????????????+