RefOf() bug?

My HP OmniBook 6000 has some problems with the battery. The first time the battery gets detected (it doesn't matter if I boot with battery disconnected or connected) things don't work. Then if I disconnect and reconnect the battery things start to work. But the next disconnect/reconnect cycle fails again, the next after that succeeds and so on.

I've traced the problem to usage of RefOf() operator. Here's a snippet of the DSDT:

While (LGreater (Local1, 0x08))
{
If (LNot (And (UBIF, VTOB (Local1))))

  {
    GBFE (Local2, Local1, RefOf (Local3))
    If (Local3)
    {
      If (LNot (\_SB.PCI0.ISA0.EC0.SMRD (0x0B, 0x16, Local3, RefOf (Local4))))

                                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      {
        Store (\_SB.PCI0.ISA0.EC0.BCNT, Local5)
        Store (Zero, Local3)
        Store (Zero, ERRC)
        While (LGreater (Local5, Local3))
        {
          GBFE (Local4, Local3, RefOf (Local6))

I've highlighted the offending RefOf(). On the first run of the outer
while loop SMRD() creates a buffer of size 4 and stores it into Arg3. For
some reason that size never changes even though SMRD() creates buffers
with size 5 and 6 on the following runs and when the buffer is supposed
to be size 6 the following GBFE() tries to access beyond the size 4 limit
and I get the error:
dsopcode-0526 [528] ds_init_buffer_field : Field [TIDX] size 40 exceeds Buffer [NULL] size 32 (

The data in the Local4 buffer changes as SMRD copies new stuff to the new buffer so it looks like the Store() to Arg3 only copies the buffer contents up to the original buffer's size.

Why the battery works on every second reconnect is because the first SMRD() call creates a buffer with size 6 on those occasions. I have yet to find out why. But that should not matter since it looks like RefOf() is to blame here.

I've only glanced at the ACPI spec so I'm not entirely sure my diagnosis is correct...

Ville Syrjälä
[email protected]
http://www.sci.fi/~syrjala/


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