Re: APM BIOS set to go in FreeBSD

On Sun, Aug 30, 2020 at 12:36 AM Kurt Jaeger <pi_at_freebsd.org> wrote:

> Hi!
>
> > APM BIOS support will likely be removed from FreeBSD for FreeBSD 13. This
> > was once quite important for LAPTOP users. However, it is now no longer
> > relevant. It stopped being supported around the time that ACPI started to
> > be released for laptops. This was around the Pentium 200MHz laptop
> > generation, give or take. ACPI was released in 1996 to replace APM, and
> had
> > largely done so by 2000. As such, this is 20-year obsolete technology.
>
> I think I still use it to this day for all my laptops to check
> the battery status and put the laptop to sleep.
> The commands I use are apm and zzz, and they still work.
>

Those commands don't invoke the APM BIOS. instead, they call into ACPI
under the covers. Only really really old laptops from the 1990s still have
that interface...


> What would be replacement commands ?
>

I'd planned on keeping these commands alive. This is just the Advanced
Power Management BIOS I plan on killing. These commands just call the old
APM ioctls, which ACPI implements. I had no plans on killing those.... Just
the APM BIOS support in the kernel because it does weird things that I'd
like to retire.


> > To that end, I'm looking for actual users of this APM that have used the
> > technology successfully in FreeBSD 12.0 or newer.
>
> I can experiment and even can provide you remote access to laptops of that
> kind.
>

You have Pentium 200 or slower machines with APM BIOS still in service? :)

I can test the apm/zzz commands on my laptops... I often type those w/o
thinking due to old muscle memory.

Warner