From: Bob Dunlop To: da@dcs.ed.ac.uk Subject: Vaio Z600NE battery level indication Date: Sat, 28 Jul 2001 09:04:57 +0100 Hi, >From you web page (http://zermelo.dcs.ed.ac.uk/~da/z600ne/) > Mentioning the battery usage, APM doesn't manage to find out the capacity of > the Sony battery. Does anyone know how to tell it to override the silly > numbers displayed? Depends how bleeding edge you want to be :-) This problem was solved for a couple of other VAIOs in the 2.4.7-ac2 kernel. Actually it may have been solved earlier, this is when I noticed it. It is definately not fixed in the the mainline 2.4.7 kernel. I sent the following patch to the kernel developers list this morning adding the PCG-Z600NE to the list of machines that have the battery reporting fault. --- linux/arch/i386/kernel/dmi_scan.c.orig Sat Jul 28 07:20:00 2001 +++ linux/arch/i386/kernel/dmi_scan.c Sat Jul 28 07:19:44 2001 @@ -347,6 +347,11 @@ MATCH(DMI_BIOS_VERSION, "R0203D0"), MATCH(DMI_BIOS_DATE, "05/12/00"), NO_MATCH } }, + { swab_apm_power_in_minutes, "Sony VAIO", { /* Handle problems with APM on Sony Vaio PCG-Z600NE */ + MATCH(DMI_BIOS_VENDOR, "Phoenix Technologies LTD"), + MATCH(DMI_BIOS_VERSION, "R0121Z1"), + MATCH(DMI_BIOS_DATE, "05/11/00"), NO_MATCH + } }, { NULL, } }; So grab the 2.4.7 kernel sources, add Alans -ac2 patches and then the patch above. Voila! you battery meter will show a much closer time. ps. The actual fault is that the BIOS reports the time byte swapped and in minutes without the minute flag being set. -- Bob Dunlop