In article <x77l4m6gmp.fsf@capsicum.wsrcc.com>,
Wolfgang Rupprecht  <wolfgang@wsrcc.com> wrote:
> 
> I'm trying to figure out why -current doesn't like the via
> environmental monitor on my asus a7v (athlon) motherboard.
> 
>     viapm0 at pci0 dev 4 function 4
>     viaenv0 at viapm0: disabled

Try using the lm driver.  My Asus K7M has one of those, and behaves the
same with viapm ("disabled").  I'm guessing Asus chose to add an lm chip
rather than use the monitoring built into the VIA chipset because the
via hardware seems to only support two fans, while the motherboard
supports 3 (2 for CPU fans for the dual-fan CPU heatsinks, 1 for a case
fan). 

> (The high-speed athlon tbirds seem to be on a quest to displace the
> alpha's as the most power-hungry cpu.  They run at 75 watts at
> full-bore, so keeping tabs on the cpu temperature would not be a bad
> thing to do.)

Actually, keeping an eye on the fan RPMs seems even more important to
me, in that if a fan is stating to go (I've heard 10% loss from initial
revs suggested as a "time to replace fan" metric), you get a chance to
do something about it before damage happens.  If you're not monitoring
the fan and it siezes, you by the time the CPU temp monitoring notices,
you don't have much time to do anything except maybe "halt -p", if
you're lucky :-)