[linux-dvb] Re: About saving energie

[Peter Funk <pf@artcom-gmbh.de>]

Hi,

Bernd Hoose:
> I read the postings about this diskussion, now my thoughts about it.
> 
> My Motherboard boot fine when i set the Startuptime in the Bios.

I guess most modern ATX motherboards have this feature.  I recently
bought a Gigabyte GA-71XE4 just to build the VDR as described in
the c't 4/2001 article written by Klaus and Dusan.  It offers the
same functionality onboard.

> I heard about a Programm "Virus" that can write to the Bios.

You don't want to damage your BIOS.  The alarm time information is kept
within the small nonvolatile RAM of the motherboard.  It is easy to
look at the content of this using the command 'xxd /dev/nvram'.  If I
change the alarm time using the Bios-Setup I can observe that the last
two bytes of the 50 byte long nvram have changed after the boot.  
But I don't know whether all mainboards/Bios keep the alarm time there 
and how it is encoded.  Overwriting /dev/nvram looks risky.  I guess
the Bios does some checking (possibly CRC?) during boot?  I have to
learn about this area of PC technology.  Any hints where I should start?

> Couldnt someone write an small Programm that do the following,
> After executing from Commands.conf
> 1. Read the Timer.conf an find out what the next recording time and Date,
> 2. Write to the Bios startup Date and Time
[...]

This (step 2.) seems to be the difficult step.  
Everything else you mentioned is simple and straight forward programming.

> For myself i do it by hand and it works fine.

But you can't shutdown automatically after finishing a timer recording.
This would be a win.

Regards, Peter
-- 
Peter Funk, Oldenburger Str.86, D-27777 Ganderkesee, Germany, Fax:+49 4222950260
office: +49 421 20419-0 (ArtCom GmbH, Grazer Str.8, D-28359 Bremen)



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