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PowerManagement (with ACPI Support) Software Release

keithpk

By keithpk,
in Other Peripheral Devices

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keithpk
keithpk
Posted
Posted

Hey Everyone,

 

So here is the final version of my PowerManagement.bundle with debug messages removed. For people who are interested in the discussion that occured during the development of this driver, please refer to: http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?sh...ic=2237&hl=2200

 

Overview:

This PowerManagement.bundle fixes many of the issues that people were having with displaying battery time remaining on laptop systems. As many of you already know, Apple is using many of the advanced features of Intels new Core Duo architecture. One of these is the power management features. Therefore, much of the code was not written to support power management on older (ACPI-based) systems. This new bundles basically, adds support for detecting and retriving information from batteries registered using ACPI.

 

Who Should Use It:

Really this should only affect people who are using laptop systems, as there really aren't any power management features on a desktop. If you are having problems getting time remaining calculations to display properly I recomend trying this new bundle. If you are not having any problems, you are welcome to try it out anyways, but I really see no reason to. In designing the new ACPI support I tried to leave the existing functionality as intact as possible, therefore, I am sort of curious about whether I succeded. Therefore, if someone would like to try installing this on a working systems, I would be interested in hearing how it worked. (However backup your old bundle just in case.)

 

Installation:

 

1. Download the PowerManagement.tar.gz file below to your favorite location

2. Un-archive the files. This will leave you with a PowerManagement.bundle

3. Navigate to: /System/Library/SystemConfiguration

4. (Optional) Backup your old PowerManagement.bundle

5. Copy (drag-n-drop) the new bundle into the SystemConfiguration folder

6. When the dialog box pops up, select authenticate and type your admin password

7. Reboot

8. (Optional) For those of you who helped with testing the debug release, please delete /var/log/PM.log

 

Additionally, for those of you who are interested, source code of the changes has been provided as well.

 

Thanks to everyone's help in the original thread for their comments/questions/suggestions, as well as their help testing.

PowerManagement.tar.gz

PowerManagementSource.tar.gz

blinksilver
blinksilver
Posted
Posted

Best news ever! THE MBP does not use dynamicpowerstep. I was sitting in front of an mbp at the bookstore of my school (UCSC for those who care) and i check for the little option inside > Preference> energy saver> options, that lets you pick from highest/automatic/reduced CPU speeds and it was not there. So I asked one of the reps to let me look at the console, he did. I checked for dynamicPowerStep and the MPB had the failed to load message. That means something else is controlling the CPU in the MBP.

keithpk
keithpk
Posted
  • Author
Posted
Best news ever! THE MBP does not use dynamicpowerstep. I was sitting in front of an mbp at the bookstore of my school (UCSC for those who care) and i check for the little option inside > Preference> energy saver> options, that lets you pick from highest/automatic/reduced CPU speeds and it was not there. So I asked one of the reps to let me look at the console, he did. I checked for dynamicPowerStep and the MPB had the failed to load message. That means something else is controlling the CPU in the MBP.

 

 

Very interesting blinksilver. To keep the discussion of these two different topics separate, lets start a new thread about DynamicPowerStep information: http://forum.osx86project.org/index.php?showtopic=14915

lilitz
lilitz
Posted
Posted

Hi all...

 

 

Thanks for the driver and thanks to all developers whose are making a great effort to help us.

 

 

One question.... My system doesn't detect the battery charge yet. The battery's Icon shows 0% of charge always... why? It's a centrino (with intel Chipset). It's possible that I have to do any change before install the driver?

 

Thanks otherwise!

Amet
Amet
Posted
Posted

well done keithpk,

Its working on my compaq evo 800c but only after I take the battery out and put it back in.Only then the battery indicator starts working and it works fine until I restart the system....

System profiler shows me that there is no battery instaled but your power bundle is calculating the remaining time just fine.....strange isnt it?

 

If you get the chance let me know what you think

thanks for all your hard work

 

 

System Power Settings:

 

AC Power:

System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10

Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10

Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10

Wake On LAN: Yes

Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes

Battery Power:

System Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10

Disk Sleep Timer (Minutes): 10

Display Sleep Timer (Minutes): 2

Display Sleep Uses Dim: Yes

Reduce Brightness: Yes

 

Battery Information:

 

Battery Installed: No

First low level warning: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 1713

Remaining Capacity (mAh): 1713

Amperage (mA): 0

Voltage (mV): 16464

 

AC Charger Information:

 

AC Charger (Watts): 0

Connected: No

Charging: No

 

Hardware Configuration:

 

UPS Installed: No

wishbone
wishbone
Posted
Posted

same as above on a HP nc6000, before I used a 10.4.3 and with your patch (old) it works great ,but as I installed a new 10.4.5 and try to patch with this new one and it can't find the battery.Still can show icon on the menu bar ,but just with a cross in it .

keithpk
keithpk
Posted
  • Author
Posted
Battery Installed: No

First low level warning: No

Full Charge Capacity (mAh): 1713

Remaining Capacity (mAh): 1713

Amperage (mA): 0

Voltage (mV): 16464

 

AC Charger Information:

 

AC Charger (Watts): 0

Connected: No

Charging: No

 

 

Good question , Amet. I didn't know what to make of this at first, either when I saw it in profiler. However, after a while I realized that although the kernel level has support for multipler batteries, very little of the GUI has ever been coded to asume that there will be more than one battery, because Apple no longer makes computers with dual batteries in them. Therefore, what is essentially happening here is that profiler is chosing the first battery it finds, which happens to be the one not present. I haven't quite figured out why it says "Not Installed" but at the same time reports teh "Full Charge Capacity" of the other battery. I know that there are multiple locations where it can pull this information from, so all I can figure is it is getting it from two different sources, one that says the battery isn't present and the other that gives it a full charge.

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