Date: Sun, 1 Dec 2002 16:42:15 +0000
From: barnacle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: [LIB] Problem charging

On Sunday 01 Dec 2002 3:56 pm, you wrote:
> Date: Sun, 01 Dec 2002 10:36:25 -0500
> From: Pres Waterman <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Subject: Re: [LIB] Problem charging


> Anyone know how smart the battery is, vs. the internal battery monitors in
> the computer?

It is my understanding that it's the batterypack itself that reports both a 
percentage and a time to live calculation (noted from 
http://www.semtech.com/pdf/insmart.pdf and 
http://www.sbs-forum.org/specs/sbdata10_a.pdf ) but it's complex - a quick 
glance through the spec at .../sbdata10_a.pdf suggests that the battery can 
report its discharge rate in mA/mAh or mW/mWh, but to report how long it's 
going to last, it has to be told how fast it's emptying - i.e. the bios (or 
w2k or linux) speaks to the battery to see what's going on, tells the battery 
how long it's been running, and the battery says, ah, 73%, that's forty 
minutes left.

Then a bit higher up the chain, the data from the battery is formatted into 
something useful - either, say, text in /proc/apm, or higher up as a hairy 
lightbulb popup or a time display in a button bar.

Neil



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