ACPI won't stop failing

HC

So i went to install 2.1 on an older box that i had laying around because my current pf box gave out. the box that i want to use is an HP Pavilion a1210n with 2gb ddr2300, AMD Athlon 64 Processor 3500+, SATA 250GB 2.5HDD, onboard video, 1 onboard NIC, 1 NIC from old box(its still good)

But when i went to install the system i keep getting errors on screen before it even had the option to press C(continue) or I(install) from the disk. these were the errors

ACPI Error : Method parse/execution failed [\CSMS] (Node 0xffffff0024a3b40), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP (201010013/psparse-633)
ACPI Error : Method parse/execution failed [\RBYI] (Node 0xffffff0024a3b40), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP (201010013/psparse-633)
ACPI Error : Method parse/execution failed [\RIMP] (Node 0xffffff0024a3b40), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP (201010013/psparse-633)
ACPI Error : Method parse/execution failed [\_TZ_.THRM._TMP] (Node 0xffffff0024a3b40), AE_AML_INFINITE_LOOP (201010013/psparse-633)

they without fail popup every 10-20 seconds, and its the same 4 lines over and over.

I've seen some linux/unix systems were there are some errors but they have no effect on the systems usability. i was able to muster through the install and got it going.

When i first logged into the dash board it didn't look right, after staring at it for a minute i saw that the temperature bar read -273.3*C and had exceeded all other graph bars. so i wen to System>Advanced>Miscellaneous and i canned the thermal sensors to AmdTemp from None/ACPI. this fished the dashboard issue but it didn't fix the errors on screen.

Upon further investigation i saw that the ACPI in my processes was running a lot. More than I have ever seen on a pf box. This is about 12 hours of the box running.

last pid: 35112;  load averages:  3.37,  2.52,  2.09  up 0+14:21:38    12:41:26
107 processes: 2 running, 88 sleeping, 17 waiting

Mem: 65M Active, 22M Inact, 64M Wired, 80K Cache, 22M Buf, 1752M Free
Swap: 4096M Total, 4096M Free

  PID USERNAME PRI NICE   SIZE    RES STATE    TIME   WCPU COMMAND
   11 root     171 ki31     0K    16K RUN    719:21 83.50% [idle]
   16 root     -16    -     0K    16K tzpoll 133:00 20.17% [acpi_thermal]
72105 root      76    0   140M 38716K piperd   0:10  0.49% /usr/local/bin/php{php}
   12 root     -32    -     0K   272K WAIT     2:38  0.10% [intr{swi4: clock}]
  261 root      76   20  6908K  1376K kqread   0:42  0.00% /usr/local/sbin/check_reload_status
    0 root     -16    0     0K   144K sched    0:40  0.00% [kernel{swapper}]
14315 root      44    0  5780K  1464K select   0:07  0.00% /usr/local/sbin/apinger -c /var/etc/apinger.co
   12 root     -68    -     0K   272K WAIT     0:04  0.00% [intr{irq16: dc0}]
    3 root      -8    -     0K    16K -        0:02  0.00% [g_up]
    0 root     -68    0     0K   144K -        0:01  0.00% [kernel{fw0_taskq}]
   24 root      20    -     0K    16K syncer   0:01  0.00% [syncer]
66742 root      44    0 15264K  7164K select   0:01  0.00% /usr/local/bin/ntpd -g -c /var/etc/ntpd.conf -
   12 root     -64    -     0K   272K WAIT     0:01  0.00% [intr{irq22: atapci0}]
    4 root      -8    -     0K    16K -        0:01  0.00% [g_down]
37327 root      44    0  6956K  1604K select   0:01  0.00% /usr/sbin/syslogd -s -c -c -l /var/dhcpd/var/r
   14 root     -16    -     0K    16K -        0:01  0.00% [yarrow]
   70 root      -8    -     0K    16K mdwait   0:00  0.00% [md0]
   15 root     -40    -     0K   192K -        0:00  0.00% [usb{usbus2}]

So this is where i need some help. I don't know where to go from here.

stephenw10

You probably have bad or incomplete acpi tables in the bios. Motherboard manufacturers are well known for writing acpi tables that only work with Windows.

There might be a bios update availble with better tables.

First thing I would try is to disable ACPI in the bios. If that ends up removing too much functionality you could potentially write your DSDT table and load it at boot. It's not an easy tack though! ;)

Steve

HC

Thanks steve,

Unfortunately theres not much functionality available in my bios currently i will go check and see if theres an update though.

One thing i have tried is at good i selected the option to disable ACPI but it just has a kernel panic and fails.

if i wanted to play with writing my own DSDT tables where would i start or what could i read to learn more about them?

stephenw10

I never found a good single source or information when I was editing the tables for my box attempting to get Speedstep working.
Most of the good info I found was in the Hackintosh community. Many boxes have to have the code modyfied to run OSX natively.
For example: http://www.projectosx.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=461
There are many sites with many good threads and guides. I never really understood it fully though. ::)

Steve

HC

okay, thankyou. ill do some research on it. if i find anything ill update this post.