Thanks to the effort of Thomas Renninger and Zhang Rui, we found a
solution to the problem described above:

1) Change Bios Setting "AMD K8 Cool&Quite control": to "AUTO" (the default 
setting was "disabled")
2) download and extract kernel 2.6.30.2 or 2.6.31-rc3 or later 
3) Apply this patch http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13573#c37
   Compile and install the kernel 
4) edit /boot/grub/menu.lst and add "thermal.psv=65" at every line starting 
with "kernel /boot/vmlinux ..." like this one: 
        kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.31-rc3-some-string-here ro quiet splash 
thermal.psv=65
5) reboot with new kernel

6a) Run as root these: 
    echo 1 > /proc/acpi/thermal_zone/THRM/cooling_mode 
    echo 10 >/proc/acpi/thermal_zone/*/polling_frequency
This is needed after every startup 

6b) In order to do this automatically at every boot, use the attached script 
/etc/init.d/cputhrottling 
and run as root
    chmod 0755 etc/init.d/cputhrottling
    update-rc.d cputhrottling start 50 S .

These steps solved the described problem. An alternative solution might become 
viable in future with coreboot:  
http://www.coreboot.org/pipermail/coreboot/2009-June/050040.html


What is the message ? 

A main reason for the problem was the bios: 
1) According to this http://bugzilla.kernel.org/show_bug.cgi?id=13573#c52
the _PSL in the Bios refers to a non-existing device. 

2) The bios does not report a trip point change

3) The default bios setting for "AMD K8 Cool&Quiet control" was "disable" 
instead of "AUTO". This broke the ACPI conformance of the Bios. 
The problem became visible by this log message:
[    4.114549] [Firmware Bug]: powernow-k8: Your BIOS does not provide ACPI
_PSS objects in a way that Linux understands. Please report this to the Linux
ACPI maintainers and complain to your BIOS vendor."
Although I contacted the vendor (where I bought the machine), no solution was 
found. The problem is that neither the vendor, nor the mainboard manufacturer, 
nor the manual of mainboard (with a detailed description of the Bios) 
pointed this out. I'm wondering how one could know about this ? I found out 
only after spending hours to investigate the various bios settings. 

This case seemed to resemble the issues discussed here [1][2][3][4]. 
In the present case, it was not an AMI bios but a Phoenix AWARD bios. The 
vendor, 
and the mainboard manufacturer were not able to provide any helpful support. It 
seems they and the users are 
taken hostage by the bios provider. There is really a need to open up the bios. 

[1] http://ubuntu-virginia.ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=869249
[2] http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=871311
[3] https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=456352
[4] https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/linux/+bug/251338


** Bug watch added: Red Hat Bugzilla #456352
   https://bugzilla.redhat.com/show_bug.cgi?id=456352

** Attachment added: "script to enable cputhrottling"
   http://launchpadlibrarian.net/29414403/cputhrottling

-- 
ACPI: Unable to turn cooling device 'on' (Quadcore-AMD64, Ubuntu64)
https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/314001
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