How to turn on SpeedStep on the Dell Precision WorkStation 390...

[Michael E Brown]

On Tue, Nov 13, 2007 at 11:23:53AM -0800, Gary L. Greene, Jr. wrote:
> [greeneg at vii:~] $ sudo tokenCtl --activate --token 00ED
> 
> This table dump is when the SpeedStep setting is off. I ran a diff of
> the dump from when it is on against this and got the following lines:
> 
> [greeneg at vii:~] $ diff -ur cmos_speedstep_off cmos_speedstep_on
> --- cmos_speedstep_off  2007-11-09 14:29:01.377493000 -0800
> +++ cmos_speedstep_on   2007-11-09 14:33:37.164298000 -0800
> @@ -72,8 +72,8 @@
>  DMI type 0xd4  Handle 0xd401  Index Port 0x70  Data Port 0x71  Type
> 0x0104  Location 0x51 AND(3f) OR(c0)  BITFIELD: 0
>  DMI type 0xd4  Handle 0xd401  Index Port 0x70  Data Port 0x71  Type
> 0x0140  Location 0x54 AND(ef) OR(0)  BITFIELD: 0
>  DMI type 0xd4  Handle 0xd401  Index Port 0x70  Data Port 0x71  Type
> 0x0141  Location 0x54 AND(ef) OR(10)  BITFIELD: 1
> -DMI type 0xd4  Handle 0xd401  Index Port 0x70  Data Port 0x71  Type
> 0x0142  Location 0x54 AND(f7) OR(0)  BITFIELD: 1
> -DMI type 0xd4  Handle 0xd401  Index Port 0x70  Data Port 0x71  Type
> 0x0143  Location 0x54 AND(f7) OR(8)  BITFIELD: 0

Well, this is very interesting... 

> +DMI type 0xd4  Handle 0xd401  Index Port 0x70  Data Port 0x71  Type
> 0x0142  Location 0x54 AND(f7) OR(0)  BITFIELD: 0
> +DMI type 0xd4  Handle 0xd401  Index Port 0x70  Data Port 0x71  Type
> 0x0143  Location 0x54 AND(f7) OR(8)  BITFIELD: 1

the documentation for token type 0x142/0x143 says:

================================================================================
    Token ID: 0x0142
        Name: Smartcard Reader
     Setting: Off
        type: bool
       value: false
        Desc: Disable built-in smartcard reader on the following boot.
================================================================================
    Token ID: 0x0143
        Name: Smartcard Reader
     Setting: Enabled
        type: bool
       value: true
        Desc: Enable built-in smartcard reader on the following boot.
================================================================================

I suppose it is possible that the documentation or the BIOS is wrong on
this. It has been known to happen in the past. The above output was from
pysmbios on my Precision 390, and I know for a fact that there is no
smartcard reader connected...

BTW, your idea of taking dumps and diffing the output after changing it
in BIOS was brilliant. One could easily make a map of all the BIOS
options in just such a fashion. ;)

Can you run:

$ sudo tokenCtl --token 0x0142 --activate
--> this should turn off speedstep in BIOS. Reboot to check

$ sudo tokenCtl --token 0x0143 --activate
--> this should turn on speedstep in BIOS. Reboot to check

--
Michael