Z96JS NHC ACPI control available!

I have just made, and posted an ACPI control for Notebook Hardware Control for the Z96JS to http://nhc.justred.info/ This control works for brightness, WLAN, Bluetooth and EMAIL-LED control by using NHC. Unfortunately fan control isn't working yet but if anyone wants to help me, that would be great!

Just follow the directions in the readme.txt file, since the Z96JS is barebones you have to change some DMI information, but I have included a utility that you can use to do that as well.

NHC can now be used to adjust brightness automatically based on power state and battery charge state by changing LCD Panel Brightness properties in the graphics tab in NHC (once the ACPI control is enabled). I think NHC can now be used for everything that Power4 Gear does (and much more!).

Enjoy!

 

I read the README.

But what do we change the other tabs to besides manufacturer name?

 

Simply change Manufacturer Name: (in the 3 tabs) from whatever it says to ASUSTeK and everything should work. Take a look at the utility, what I'm talking about should make sense once your in the program.

 

This should work for the S96J too, right?

Nevermind. I can read, LOL

 

I dont know if NHC has anything to do with this, or whatever, but

Is there a way to get NHC to set the cpu speed at full blast for gaming instead of bouncing from 1ghz to 1.6ghz.

Any settings i use i cant get the cpu speed to set to 1.6ghz and stay there.

 

use the maximum performance setting and it should stay at the top multiplier, sometimes NHC lies about the clock speed but it is correct, if you are suspicious download cpuz to see whats actually going on.

 

Hey, got the acpi working. Thanks for posting about it and your effort.

cpuz is showing the same cpu speeds as nhc except cpuz isnt bouncing between 1ghz and 1.6ghz. Its staying on 1ghz. probably cuz it doesnt update fast enough. The cpu setting is on max performance.

Im guessing i would have to adjust the custom dynamic switching. Im not confident in playing with all that junk, so ill just live with it.

 

Which model selection @ link would work best for a Z71V with AsusTek M7V mainboard? I had always looked in NHC forums site, which is mainly in German !

If I had any idea how to accomplish mods on an ACPI program, yours or a closer model, for my Z71V or Fan Control, would love to .

Have you tried SpeedFan? Or looked at its code?

IMHO; NHC was always better than P4G (or RMclock), now even more so! ! But due to security threats in M$ Windows, I am shifting to oSUSE 10.3, just wish I understood CPUfreq to make it work like NHC in xp PRO or vista ULTIMATE!

LMB...CT Did you try Maximum Performance (=No drop aka bouncing!) vs Dynamic Switching?? Or try the single max speed setting on custom dynamic switching {CDS}? When testing CDS undervolting: Run the included short test, then a Full CPU Stability check, which cycles through 15 times!

 

@LMBfishingCT
yeah, i would try messing around with custom switching, thats strange, you really run no danger of crashing anything as long as you don't play with voltage control (otherwise you just end up having the computer lock up and restart)


@digital8doug
I would try doing the DMI update as described in the readme and using the ACPI control I posted, however you will need to go into the ASUSTeK.cs and ASUSTeK.xml and change all references from Z96JS to Z71V (or whatever your laptop is called in your BIOS setup screen information). The worst that probably can happen (since were not messing with fan control here) is it just won't work. If it doesn't you can always try other files on the website I linked to (for other ASUS laptops) changing to Z71V (like you had to for my file) I'm pretty sure you are bound to find one that works.

as far as speedfan goes it dosen't detect anything, i know intel has an ACPI dump program but i have a hard time finding the necessary information in the huge text dump to make a fan control

 

This sounds really cool, but I have a few questions first. Do I need to unistall Power4Gear before installing NHC? Will using this remove the ability to use the Fn keys to increase/decrease brightness, volume, etc.?

Thanks,

Zack

 

You can run both P4G and NHC together if you want, (don't really need to if you have the ACPI control for NHC though). All the function keys still work just fine too!
Enjoy,
John

 

Ok, i found a little problem with the acpi (unless its me). With acpi enabled and the mailbox led set to on, the email led stays on, even though i dont have any email programs openned.

Unless im missunderstanding what this options is actualy for.
I figured it was for enable/disable of the chkmail program.

The blue tooth option i guess i should just leave off since i dont have bluetooth on this S96J?

As for the cpu settings. Max and dynmic switching act the same. I looked at and tryed to understand CDS further, and i seem to understand it all, but...
Thats not going to change the settings for max performance option.

What i would like is when i want to jump in and play a game, i can set max performance to throttle my cpu at its max speeds. As far as i can see right now, i dont see a way to do that.

It could also be that im looking for something that is not nessasary

 

Welp, the email led is working normal now after restarting nhc.

What does the email led in acpi do? I mean, does it replace the chkmail program?

 

Running the cpu at full throttle wastes *lots* of cpu cycles and voltage by keeping the speed at high when it isn't necessary. CDS allows NHC to dynamically adjust the multiplier up and down depending on the cpu load; you can also set it to just go between lowest and maximum, using either the preset values or custom ones you set for load, multiplier and delay. Max Performance kicks the cpu up to full speed and forces it to stay there, a la desktop CPUs. These are all explained (more or less) in the FAQ on the NHC site.

There is no way to have NHC detect when you start a game and then automatically change the performance option for you as the game loads. You have to either go into NHC manually before you start the game and set Max Perfomance under the AC or Battery pulldowns in the CPU Speed tab, or right-click on the flag in your taskbar (assuming you enable that option) and do it that way; that should kick it up to full speed. To keep your system temps down, however, I'd still suggest leaving it at dynamic switch rather than max performance - the speed at which the current cpu's detect the load and adjust their multipliers up is in the range of milliseconds, and this should give you essentially all the performance you get at the Max setting while giving the benefits of better battery life and thermal management.

 

Having some issues using the ISO to update the DMI settings. Have made 4 attempts at burning the ISO to a CD using Nero Express and Nero Burning ROM. Each time I have had my laptop boot from my optical drive only to get a message saying that I need to insert bootable media. The first time this happened I was confused, so after windows reloaded I looked at the disk in explorer it says there are zero mb free and zero mb used??? (Other bootable disks I have burned from images all show data on the disk) To make sure my burning software was not screwing up I burned some mp3's which showed up in my explorer and played fine and also burned another ISO file (Ubuntu installation) to a CD and booted from that with no problems. What am I doing wrong here? NHC seems like a neat program and I would like it to work with Johnwc723's modifications.

For Nero Burning ROM I did the following:
1) Open Nero
2) Under Recorder selected Burn Image
3) Pointed to the Z96J_NHC.iso image
4) Nero burned the image to a CD
5) Restarted and booted from optical drive
6) Received Error

For Nero Express I did the following
1) Open Nero
2) Select Image, Copy, Project
3) Pointed to location of Z96J_NHC.iso image
4) Nero burned the image to CD
5) Rebooted from optical drive
6) Received Error
Is there something I need to do to the ISO before burning it with Nero?

Thanks,
Zack

 

Thats strange, it isn't working for me now either, apparently it worked for LMBfishingCT though. I'll try burning and releasing another one soon ( i got a test to study for) and posting it on that website but in the mean time here is the file DMICFG.exe that you will need to run in DOS mode (it runs in windows but doesn't allow for modification of DMI information). The DMICFG.EXE (in bootable form) is also on Hiren's boot cd [google it].

Good luck getting it to work and again ill try to get it fixed in the near future

John

 

Guys just need your help , I just wanted to know if there's a big improvement in performance increase from 1101 bios on to 1201 bios, is it worth updating?

or does it downclock the GPU clock or add any other issues?

 

Haven't noticed anything different with it (I always just update for the hell of it though, even if it might not be the best idea, I like higher version numbers )

 

Thanks for the DMICFG file. The ACPI functions are all enabled, but I do have a few questions regarding their behavior.

Wireless control: The on/off switch only seems to turn the indicator light on/off. There is no change in my connectivity. I have an Intel3945ABG adapter and do not use the Intel ProSet softeware, if that would make any difference.

Email control: This does not appear to be working correctly. The light turns on when selecting "on" in NHC regardless if there is email or not, even after rebooting with on. Do I need to have the checkmail program installed for this function to work?

Bluetooth control: This appears to work great. Windows gives a little chime indicating the device is enabled/disable when the on/off NHC switch is toggled.

ASUS/Samsung Hotkey: I don't think this is related to the ACPI update that was done, but I keep getting an error when I try to reassign the buttons. Anyone know what I need to do to use this feature?


Thanks,
Zack

 

Thanks ClearSkies,

Yes, the ISO worked fine for me. I burnt it with alcohol. Can i help by pulling it from the cd and emailing or posting it for others?

I updated my bios just for the heck of it. Wasnt having any issue before and have not noticed any issue after.

I just checked my acpi wireless lan and its doing the same thing as Orius's.

Orius, my email led does the same thing. If you restart NHC it will work normal until you reboot. I just noticed when turning the notebook on, its on when its done booting but goes off when i open outlook, unless i get mail in the inbox.

 

Unfortunately I am unable to test the wireless functionality because I have an atheros based card (dosen't work with any of the "quick setting" features). The email thing just turns the light on (for those that like their email led on or something haha), it dosen't actually change the program, if you don't want the program to do its email blinking than you just gotta shut it down.

 

See now, i was just playing with NHC on my sons acer 5102 and when i set to dynamic switching it ran at 800mhz, and when i switch to max perormance it went to and stayed at 1.6ghz.

Granted its a totaly different system (AMD) and half the nhc options dont work on the system, but this is the way i was thinking its supposed to work.

 

Do you have the Core Duo patch applied for NHC? I know at one point I was having problems with that (not staying at max performance setting) but now if I select max performance I can confirm with other programs its sitting at 2.0GHz and not dynamically switching. Make sure to confirm with CPUz that it isnt actually staying at max performance, NHC sometimes lies.

 

That is exactly what Dynamic Switch and MaxPerf is designed to do - it's working perfectly on his Acer..... Dynamic switching keeps it at the lowest multiplier (800Mhz) unless cpu load gets high enough and then it ramps up the freq. Max Performance forces the chip to run at highest level (1.6Ghz) and stay there.

 

I have the core duo patch in, but uninstalled and reinstalled to be sure. Once installed, with NO core 2 duo patch, my clock would run 1.66 no matter what setting i used. There was no switching. I then put the patch in and im back to where i was before. Every cpu setting i chose seems to run with dynamic switching going from 1000 mhz to 1667mhz depending on cpu use.

My voltage changes a little. On dynamic switching it runs 0.9500v and goes to 1.1875v on max perfomance.

CPUz is reporting the same cpu speeds and voltage as nhc in both settings.

Maybe there is a system driver i missed or got messed up, something like the Multiple Processors HOTFIX Utility. Any recomendations?

 

You might be getting sick of me, but.... TO BAD

The latest: I shut down NHC and started up power4 gear.

I dont have any dynamic switching as you might know.

But i can set the game and high performance options to gain max cpu settings (100% .

I really prefer to use nhc for the many more options on top of the dynamic swithing, though.

This is annoying

 

OK, I'm confused.... Without the patch, NHC had problems scaling the cpu on the CDuo, which is why it was written. Once you put in the CDuo patch NHC is running perfectly fine and according to spec for Dynamic switch - are you wanting Dynamic to go away? To accomplish that, on the CPU speed tab there are two bigger windows on the upper left for AC and Battery, with dropdown menus that you can select the default mode to run in both power sources - are these still set at Dynamic? If setting them to MaxPeform doesn't kick your cpu up to 1.66, I'm at a loss - but you can still have both P4G and NHC installed on the same system and just run one or the other if you really need/want 1.66 all-the-time burner speed; just exit NHC and start P4G, then click on High/MaxPerform and there you go.

Your voltage variation is acting according to design - that's the multiplier fluctuating and needing higher power to run the increased cpu freq. Nothing to worry about there.

 

Yes, without the patch cpu runs full speed no matter what nhc settings i have on. With the patch, all the settings (max, dnamic switching, max battery and battery optimized) all run dynamic switching with the cpu running 1000mhz and jumping to 1.66ghz when loading up.

The only thing im getting of use out of nhc for battery saving is the downclocking of the gpu.

Its sad that it doesnt work properly for me. Power4 gear doesnt do any dynamic switching. Oh well, ill just live with nhc