Inspiron 6400 1505e Can't get passive cooling while in AC power

[Nate Lawson]

Hajimu UMEMOTO wrote:
>>>>>> On Sat, 27 Jan 2007 15:21:19 +0000
>>>>>> "Abdullah Ibn Hamad Al-Marri" <almarrie at gmail.com> said:
> 
> almarrie> Thank you for your kind prompt to help, but it didn't do the trick.
> 
> almarrie> Jan 27 15:16:12 DELL root: /etc/rc.d/sysctl: WARNING: sysctl
> almarrie> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0
> almarrie>                        .user_override does not exist.
> 
> It should be hw.acpi.thermal.user_override=1.
> However, perhaps, it still doesn't work for you.  Your BIOS's thermal
> zone might not specify _TC1, _TC2 and _TSP correctly.  They are
> required for passive cooling.  Since, they are not visible through
> sysctl, you cannot change the values.
> If it is your case, please try the attached patch.  It adds
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TC1, hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TC2 and
> hw.acpi.thermal.tz0._TSP.
> Choosing the values is an issue.  For your reference, my laptop
> (Panasonic Let'snote CF-R4) has _TC1=0, _TC2=12, _TSP=40.

Umemoto-san, while that may work for him, I don't think it's something 
we want to support.  Specifying _TC1, _TC2, and _TSP requires a bit of 
specific knowledge of cooling functions.

Instead, what about allowing the user to specify an absolute temperature 
at which passive cooling will be activated?  On ASL that specified 
passive cooling, the user could only set this temp to be <= the values 
specified by ASL.  If they set user_override, it would allow them to set 
any value.  Normal active cooling would still run if passive cooling 
wasn't keeping the system cool enough.

I don't have a firm design idea, but I know that we want to avoid 
exposing more ASL keys directly (_T*) and provide a more intuitive 
interface.  I'd actually like to retire a lot of existing "direct 
access" ASL sysctls before 7.0 and replace them with more user-friendly 
versions.

-- 
Nate