On the tip of a plastic spring

First, let me say BAHHHH!!!!

Now, my Amilo's touchpad left button has stopped working - it even sounds physically broken... Anyway, the technicians at store of which I bought this laptop from said:"This was caused by improper use so warranty is the null and void".

Unhappy, I've decided to take it to my own hands. In order to check it out I had to almost strip the laptop entirely. I mean, the only 2 thing that were left complete were the motherboard to the bottom panel and the screen which was just seperated as is from the rest of the machine.

I was amazed to find out that I had 3 broken plastic springs which are suppose to place both of the buttons in place: 2 broken on the left button an 1 on the right button. More then that, I found out that a plastic spring was completely missing as if it was never there. Some further investigation showed me that it was truly never there and the lack of it was the reason that it broke in the first place! It was designed to take the pressure but in order to lower the manufacturing costs this stabilizer spring has just been left out + reassuring the purchase of a newer model when the old has supposedly become cripple.

BAHHHHH!!!!! When I'll have some free time (probably in 4 months from now), I'll install some real springs below the buttons - that should be suffice to make it last for at least 2 more years.

acpi acer hotkey pooler for my amilo

Recently I've started a fork of the acer_acpi kernel module to also pool the 3 hotkeys.
On another note, the patch I've made for acerhk was finally entered the mainstream.

I've moved on to acer_acpi since it supports 64bit distros as well.

I'm up to my ears in homeworks and projects (last year to end my undergraduate degree - yeppieee) so it will probably go gold by May 08.

Work notes:
1) listen for _Q10 (wireless key) event - after it is done, also add the browser and fancy fan buttons.
2) rig the wireless button to run the wireless activation/deactivation method in acer_acpi
3) ask for merge and go mainstream.

some of (1) has already been done.

This will also make the lives of Amilo LI1718 owners much easier...

UPDATE 8/12/07: current work is posted on http://fscamiloa16xx.googlecode.com/svn/trunk/acer_acpi_hkey/
The AML Method PHSR change the values of INF (button id) ,BCMD (0x8B = button pressed) and SMIC (0x00/0xff). When loading this module with debug=4 and press one of the 3 buttons, you'll see (in dmesg) that it sensed the key press. Bad news, SMIC is not updated to 0 as expected and therefore it will act as if the button is being pressed over and over again. Some mutexes are MIA and should be added. acpi-devel list seems to be inactive - so I'll keep searching for a way to acquire an AML mutex...