[ale] weird bios problem

[Dow Hurst]

I've found on a couple of systems that acpi=off or noapic (Note they 
affect different things) can help get a system to boot or run properly.  
I got on the ACPI project listserv and after reading for a couple of 
months came to the conclusion that most hardware vendors put out broken 
DSDTs for the ACPI enabled BIOS.  I may be saying this wrong since I 
don't know too much about this.  But, I've had a system that wouldn't 
boot X using the nvidia driver and would configure eth0 but not send or 
receive packets until the system was booted with acpi=off.  Just look in 
dmesg at the very beginning and if you see a section early in the kernel 
boot messages that start with ACPI, LAPIC, or IOAPIC then note if your 
kernel is trying to warn about stuff that isn't recognized or is 
broken.  Here is a link to start out with:

http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2003/Sep/0685.html
http://lists.insecure.org/lists/linux-kernel/2003/Sep/0675.html

So thought this might help as I have come to expect problems with ACPI 
to continue for awhile.  At least til vendors supply developers with 
some documentation.
Dow


Geoffrey wrote:

> Frank Z. wrote:
>
>>> I've got an older ibm box that I'm trying to resurrect (p200).  It 
>>
>>
>> has a
>>
>>> nic on the mb which is recognized and properly configured, but never 
>>> works.  I just figured it was bad.  Anyway, I've tried dropping in 
>>
>>
>> both
>>
>>> a wireless pci card as well as a pci nic, no go.
>>>
>>> I was digging through the bios and found a setting under 'PCI 
>>
>>
>> control'
>>
>>> that is grayed out but says 'Network adapters   [Disabled]'.  Now my 
>>> assumption is that would apply to the nic on the mb, but I can not 
>>
>>
>> get
>>
>>> this thing to toggle on.  There is a dip switch on the mb that 
>>
>>
>> disables
>>
>>> ethernet, but I've toggled it both ways, no difference.
>>>
>>> So, I'm now wondering if this is why the on board nic is not 
>>> functioning?  I figured if the bios says it's disabled, then the OS 
>>> would never see it.
>>>
>>> Anyone had similar experiences?  The box probably isn't worth $25 
>>> but I'd just like to get past this.  (anal kind a thing isn't it???)
>>>
>>
>>
>> Is the BIOS maintained by a battery? If so, could the battery be old? 
>> Can you clear the BIOS and reset? If the feature is available, can 
>> you change to boot NIC first and see what happens?
>
>
> Actually got around this problem by resetting the bios to default 
> values.  Nic still doesn't function.  Dow mentioned something about 
> problems with acpi, so I'm looking into that right now.
>
>
>

-- 
__________________________________________________________
Dow Hurst                  Office: 770-499-3428            *
Systems Support Specialist    Fax: 770-423-6744            *
1000 Chastain Rd. Bldg. 12                                 *
Chemistry Department SC428  Email:   dhurst at kennesaw.edu   *
Kennesaw State University         Dow.Hurst at mindspring.com *
Kennesaw, GA 30144                                         *
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