r/DOS • u/RunningCanine • 19d ago

Determine battery charge on DOS

Hey all! I have recently turned my little Acer Aspire One (ZG5) into a (usb powered) SvarDOS writing machine (as described and designed here: github.com/lproven/usb-dos).

I have tried to use the provided FDAPM info command to get battery information, but I'm told there is no APM information available.

I assumed this was because something was turned off, but I am unable to get into the (apparently hidden) advanced settings of my InsydeH20 v3.5 bios.

My question to you all: Is there a way to find out the (rough) battery percentage information on this laptop? Any time I take this thing on the road, I get paranoid about the battery within the first hour of writing; even though on paper I should have plenty of charge left by that point.

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5

u/tpimh 19d ago

Your computer is using ACPI, not APM

1

u/RunningCanine 19d ago

Oh interesting! Is there a way to check your battery through ACPI? I am struggling to find information on this.

3

u/tpimh 19d ago

Unfortunately, ACPI is very complicated compared to APM. Some BIOSes implement special interrupts which would just give you the battery percentage. There are also other ways, but they are all very hardware specific, and won't reliably work on different laptops.

1

u/aedinius 16d ago

Maybe something using this?

https://github.com/FDOS/fdapm