Dell unrecognized adapter issue

[lafcina]

Hi,
whenever using my (third party) universal car adapter for my Dell M4300 laptop I run on Dell unrecognized adapter issue (there is exact warning during laptop startup about it), so CPUs work all the time at 800MHz, which is annoying. The reason for this is because Dell added ID chip in adapter so you have to by it from them :-[.
I try to found some software solution in order to use this adapter on full CPU speed with Lubuntu / Ubuntu 11.10, 64bit.


I tried solution with grub (as suggested here), adding GRUB_CMDLINE_LINUX=”processor.ignore_ppc=1″ to /etc/default/grub, then update-grub but it didn't solve the problem.

Then I try with cpufreq-set:

sudo apt-get install -y cpufrequtils

modprobe cpufreq_ondemand
modprobe cpufreq_userspace

cat /sys/devices/system/cpu/cpu0/cpufreq/scaling_available_governors
conservative ondemand userspace powersave performance

cpufreq-set -c 0 -g performance
cpufreq-set -c 1 -g performance

and this worked, CPU'a was at 2.40GHz speed. A little issue was it was now fixed at maximum frequency all the time.
You can monitor this by command:

cpufreq-info

or in the loop:

while :; do cat /proc/cpuinfo | egrep 'GHz|MHz'; sleep 1; done

This is my result of cpufreq-info (for one CPU only):


cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009
Report errors and bugs to cpufreq@vger.kernel.org, please.
analyzing CPU 0:
driver: acpi-cpufreq
CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1
CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0
maximum transition latency: 10.0 us.
hardware limits: 800 MHz - 2.40 GHz
available frequency steps: 2.40 GHz, 2.40 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 800 MHz
available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance
current policy: frequency should be within 1.20 GHz and 2.40 GHz.
The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use
within this range.
current CPU frequency is 2.40 GHz (asserted by call to hardware).
cpufreq stats: 2.40 GHz:4.02%, 2.40 GHz:0.30%, 2.00 GHz:0.23%, 1.60 GHz:0.12%, 1.20 GHz:20.06%, 800 MHz:75.27% ( 2228 )
analyzing CPU 1:
...



If I set it to ondemand governor:

cpufreq-set -c 0 -g ondemand
cpufreq-set -c 1 -g ondemand

it sticks to 800MNz no matter CPU load !

So I try different governors with or without CPU frequency limits, hoping it will not stick to minimum again, and only working solution for me was this:

cpufreq-set -c 0 -g conservative
cpufreq-set -c 1 -g conservative


Unfortunately, this workaround will not solve other problem: dell notebook will refuse to charge the battery when using non-dell adapter , if someone have workaround for this, please share it !


I hope this will help you to resolve your issue

Good lack !

[lafcina]

... and there is hardware soldering solution described here, during which you extract ID chip from original Dell adapter and built it directly in laptop so it cheats BIOS to work whit any third-party adapter. I like more software solutions