[ltp] swapping ultra-bay (slim) batter and dvdrom drive - alarm

[Reed Gregory]

On Sun, 27 Jun 2004 22:56:48 -0700, Ram Bhamidipaty <ramb@sonic.net> wrote:
> 
> I have a T40 and normally keep and extra battery in the ultra
> bay slot. When I try to switch the battery for the DVD drive
> some kind of alarm starts going off and the only way I can
> shut the alarm off is to reboot my machine.
> 
> I looked in the BIOS setup section but I did not see
> anything that looked right - probably I missed something.
> 
> Do I need to run some kind of extra software or is there
> a BIOS setting that can control the alarm?

I got this working on my T23 but it is not fully functional.  There is
a script and program bundled with the hdparm source that works for
this situation.  It uses the idectl command to basically poll the
drive and unregister the IDE device when it is removed and re-register
it when it is inserted.  The problem is that the kernel does really
like the method and you end up with multiple entries in /proc/ide for
the whole bus. For example, multiple ide1 entries in that directory
for me.

There is also the issue that dma is disabled and non-functional once
the drive has been re-registered.  So for watching dvds or burning cds
this will noticably affect performance.  I also used ACPI and not APM
if that might make a difference.

To try out the script and program you need to download the source to
hdparm and look in the tar.gz file.  I think it is call ultrabayd.

Hope this helps.
Reed

-- 
Reed Gregory
reed.gregory@gmail.com