On Thu, May 22, 2003 at 06:49:29PM +0200, Alan Barrett wrote:
> * USB works, modulo the problems I reported a few days ago
>   when a umass device sometimes fails to get a scsibus attached to it.

This might be an annoying "known problem", especially if it *doesn't*
happen shortly after a reboot but only happens when the machine
has been up for some time, or after several attach/detach events.

Assuming you have the problem I saw once, it seems it fails to
allocate a large enough contiguous memory range when the device
attaches, but does so silently without a useful message.

> * Non-ACPI kernel freezes up.
> 
>   If I run a kernel without ACPI support, then closing the lid of
>   the laptop causes a complete freeze.  There's no panic message or
>   anything; the system just freezes up completely.

Ouch. This is bad news for your other desires; see below.

Does the BIOS offer any other acpi/apm related options that might
alleviate the problem?

> * Can't use LCD and external monitor simultaneously.
> 
>   Pressing the "CRT/LCD" button (actually "Fn"+"F8") switches between
>   the internal LCD and the external VGA monitor.  I can't find a way of
>   having them both turned on simultaneously.

This is something Xfree86 will need to deal with.

> * Can't suspend/hibernate.
> 
>   When I press the "Suspend" button (actually "Fn"+"Esc"), the kernel
>   prints "acpibut1: sleep button pressed.".  When I release the button,
>   it reports the same message again.  I was expecting different messages
>   for the two events.  I would like to make the suspend button put the
>   system into some kind of suspend mode.
> 
>   The power button also generates an ACPI event, which causes the kernel
>   to print "acpibut0: power button pressed, shutting down!", and then
>   to sync the disk and turn off the power.  I might like to configure
>   powerd so that the power button does some kind of deep sleep or
>   hibernate stuff instead of shutting down.

NetBSD's ACPI support is still new, and doesn't yet extend to
sleep/hibernation stuff.  The only way to that with present code
is with help from the BIOS under the APM framework.  Newer laptops
might no longer have this capability, but it's worth checking.

> * I dont' know how to make the built-in Bluetooth work.

Bluetooth stuff is.. larval at this stage.  There may be some
low-level framework, but the protocol stack is complex and
many-layered.

> * I don't know how to make the IrDA port work.

Seems you've made progress on at least this point so far :)

--
Dan.