smartdimmer does not work with Nvidia Geforce Go 6400 but could in dapper

[Markus Kienast]

In Dapper smartdimmer does not work with Go 6400 eventhough nvclock actually can set the display brightness e.g. via "nvclock -S 30".

Vaio VGN-S560P. Using spicctrl does not seem to work either. In breezy using the hotkeys showed info about changing display brightness but nothing happened. In dapper I don't see any OSD.

[Andy Potter (andy-potter-mail)]

It doesn't work with my laptop (Vaio S5M/S with GeForce Go 6400) either.

running smartdimmer -d from the command line gives:

init_nvclock() failed!

Downloading and compiling smartdimmer from source works fine (with what appears to be the same version). And if I copy the resulting executable to /usr/bin, the sony keys work fine. No on screen display, but the keys do their job.

[Markus Kienast (elias1884)]

According to the debian changelog the debian maintainer made sure it only works on 6200Go cards. That is the source of the problem. And that's why it works with the same version of the original sources.

http://packages.ubuntulinux.org/changelogs/pool/universe/s/smartdimmer/smartdimmer_0.1-1/changelog
* Contains patch to ensure it only runs on 6200Go cards

I would like to know if this is really necessary. I sent a mail to the debian maintainer.

[Markus Kienast (elias1884)]

On Wednesday 19 April 2006 14:46, you wrote:
> On Wed, Apr 19, 2006 at 02:43:18PM -0400, Markus Kienast wrote:
> > Why is this measure necessary? I have a Go 6400 on my Vaio and
> > using "nvclock -S ##" directly does work with version 0.8b-1 (ubuntu
> > dapper, but that should not matter since it would most likely be the same
> > in sid). So I see no reason for this restriction. Please enlighten me or
> > maybe even patch the patch to work with Go 6400.
>
> Because the documentation appeared to claim that it would only work on a
> 6200, but the application made no effort to ensure that. If it also
> works on 6400s, I'll look into fixing that. Could you file a bug on
> launchpad.net?
>
> Thanks,

It appears to me that the author wanted to state his software only works with
Go 6200 meaning with non of the previous versions. He possibly could not know
if it would work with Go 6400 because there was no such model in the time the
software was written.

Therefore I suggest to change your patch in a way so anything greater than Go
6200 will work and anything below wont. Moreover there might not be any
restrictions in his software because the restrictions are in the nvclock
software it makes use of anyway! I assume smartdimmer is using this software
rather than implementing it's functionality in its code, am I right?

As far as I can tell from nvclock documentation it is aware of the cards
version and capabilities so it will do the checks you implemented in
smartdimmer with your patch anyway.

Since dapper release is not far anymore and smartdimmer working for cards
other then Go 6200 would give a great powersave function to a great deal of
people I urge you to do the necessary changes in time. Since nvclock seems to
check the card version you could perhaps even take off the patch completely.

Regards,
Markus

[Matthew Garrett (mjg59)]

On Mon, Apr 24, 2006 at 09:24:56AM -0400, Markus Kienast wrote:
> It appears to me that the author wanted to state his software only works with
> Go 6200 meaning with non of the previous versions. He possibly could not know
> if it would work with Go 6400 because there was no such model in the time the
> software was written.

No, there's no guarantee at all that later cards will have the register
in the same place. And writing into random registers has the potential
to damage the card.

> Therefore I suggest to change your patch in a way so anything greater than Go
> 6200 will work and anything below wont. Moreover there might not be any
> restrictions in his software because the restrictions are in the nvclock
> software it makes use of anyway! I assume smartdimmer is using this software
> rather than implementing it's functionality in its code, am I right?

No, smartdimmer has its own copy of code for writing to the card.

> As far as I can tell from nvclock documentation it is aware of the cards
> version and capabilities so it will do the checks you implemented in
> smartdimmer with your patch anyway.

Other than my check, no, there's nothing in there to do this.

> Since dapper release is not far anymore and smartdimmer working for cards
> other then Go 6200 would give a great powersave function to a great deal of
> people I urge you to do the necessary changes in time. Since nvclock seems to
> check the card version you could perhaps even take off the patch completely.

No. I'll only add cards that are known to work.

--
Matthew Garrett | <email address hidden>

[Markus Kienast (elias1884)]

Isn't this bug resolved by now? At least Fn-keys are working in the final dapper version.

[Markus Kienast (elias1884)]

this seems to have been resolved long time ago. the one thing that is still not working however is automatic dimming of the lcd by the gnome-power-manager. I can dim by using the Fn keys but g-p-m is not able to do this. seems to try using another backend (acpi?).

[Christian González (droetker)]

I have a 7400 Go in my Laptop, and I KNOW IT WORKED with it - so perhaps open a user-collectet "known-to-work"-list of cards...
It would be fine to have a working key- and power-manager-based dimming.

[Christian González (droetker)]

ooops - i forgot - i am using feisty! and nvclock 0.8beta2

[Markus Kienast (elias1884)]

please close this bug. it has been fixed upstream.

[Daniel T Chen (crimsun)]

Per submitter request.