RefOf() bug?

["Ville Syrjälä" <syrjala-ORSVBvAovxo@public.gmane.org>]

My HP OmniBook 6000 has some problems with the battery. The first time the 
battery gets detected (it doesn't matter if I boot with battery 
disconnected or connected) things don't work. Then if I disconnect and 
reconnect the battery things start to work. But the next 
disconnect/reconnect cycle fails again, the next after that succeeds and 
so on.

I've traced the problem to usage of RefOf() operator. Here's a snippet of 
the DSDT:

While (LGreater (Local1, 0x08))
{
  If (LNot (And (UBIF, VTOB (Local1))))
  {
    GBFE (Local2, Local1, RefOf (Local3))
    If (Local3)
    {
      If (LNot (\_SB.PCI0.ISA0.EC0.SMRD (0x0B, 0x16, Local3, RefOf (Local4))))

                                                             ^^^^^^^^^^^^^
      {
        Store (\_SB.PCI0.ISA0.EC0.BCNT, Local5)
        Store (Zero, Local3)
        Store (Zero, ERRC)
        While (LGreater (Local5, Local3))
        {
          GBFE (Local4, Local3, RefOf (Local6))

I've highlighted the offending RefOf(). On the first run of the outer 
while loop SMRD() creates a buffer of size 4 and stores it into Arg3. For 
some reason that size never changes even though SMRD() creates buffers 
with size 5 and 6 on the following runs and when the buffer is supposed 
to be size 6 the following GBFE() tries to access beyond the size 4 limit 
and I get the error:
dsopcode-0526 [528] ds_init_buffer_field  : Field [TIDX] size 40 exceeds Buffer [NULL] size 32 (

The data in the Local4 buffer changes as SMRD copies new stuff to the new 
buffer so it looks like the Store() to Arg3 only copies the buffer 
contents up to the original buffer's size.

Why the battery works on every second reconnect is because the first 
SMRD() call creates a buffer with size 6 on those occasions. I have yet to 
find out why. But that should not matter since it looks like RefOf() is to 
blame here.

I've only glanced at the ACPI spec so I'm not entirely sure my diagnosis 
is correct...

-- 
Ville Syrjälä
syrjala-ORSVBvAovxo@public.gmane.org
http://www.sci.fi/~syrjala/


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