pacpidump and iasl

A difference in dumping the DSDT table found between pacpidump and iasl. When compiling the pacpidump version produces an error whereas the dump from iasl compiles without error.

Original email below.

Sincerely,
Richard Black
http://www.cpqlinux.com/acpi-howto.html

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: ACPI Howto (possible errata)
Date: Wed, 3 Dec 2003 15:32:03 -0600 (CST)
From: Han Duong <handuong-d0mtIEKrxfl4piUD7e9S/[email protected]>
To: <[email protected]>

Hi,

I was reading the ACPI howto from

http://www.cpqlinux.com/acpi-howto.html#downloads

and noticed that the program "pacpidump" DOES NOT give the same output as using Intel's "iasl" program with the "-d" option. I own a Sony Vaio V505BX and was curious about whether my DSDT was broken (the /proc/acpi/fan directory exists, but is empty; everything else seems to work fine) To make a long story short, "pacpidump" outputs the following snippet of code for the DSDT table:

...

Method(CKOS) {

   If(CondRefOf(_OSI, Local0)) {
       If(\_OSI) {
           "Windows 2001"
           Store(0x4, Local4)
       }

}

...

which produces an error when compiling using "isal -tc" shown below:

dsdt.asl 2171: If(\_OSI) {
Error 1028 - ^ Too few arguments (\_OSI requires 1)

dsdt.asl 2172: "Windows 2001"
Error 1037 - ^ parse error, unexpected
PARSEOP_STRING_LITERAL

On the other hand, using "iasl -d dsdt.dat" produces the following corresponding code snippet:

...

   Method (CKOS, 0, NotSerialized)
   {
       If (CondRefOf (_OSI, Local0))
       {
           If (\_OSI ("Windows 2001"))
           {
               Store (0x04, Local4)
           }
       }

...

Since "iasl -tc" produces two errors (both referrincing the code block shown above when I use the output from "pacpidump" whereas no errors are produced using the output from "tiasl -d" I think one might conclude that "pacpidump" might not be as reliable for non-FreeBSD systems (I am compiling for Linux 2.4.23). Perhaps Intel's tools should be the preferred choice for DSDT disassembly?

Oh, in case you're wondering, pacpidump was obtained from

http://people.freebsd.org/~takawata/pacpidump.tar.gz

The version for Intel's iasl is 20030918 and is available from

http://developer.intel.com/technology/iapc/acpi/downloads.htm

Best wishes,
Han Duong

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