Clevo Mail LED for Linux

The goal of this project is to create a Linux 2.6.x driver for the Clevo notebook model D4J, product D410J through the mail LED can be operated.

You can find the drivers for 'other' operating systems at the manufacturer home page: Clevo D4x0J model drivers

The following stesps are planed:

  1. User space test application directly accessing the hardware ports for test purposes.
  2. A kernel space driver for the input and/or leds subsystem.

See the current state at the Clevo Mail LED project page.

Technical details about the Mail LED on Clevo D410J

In the Clevo D410J the ports 0x60 and 0x64 can be used to adjust the state of the mail LED. These ports belog to the i8042 controller. A detailed description can be found in Keyboard scancodes - The AT keyboard controller.

Description
Address
Access mode
Command register
0x64
write
Status register
0x64
read
Data register
0x60
read/write

To change the state of the mail LED on Clevo D410J the following steps has to be done:

  1. Read the status register (0x64) and check the input status bit (bit 1). Repeat this step while this bit is 1, which means that the input buffer is full.
  2. Write one byte to the Command register (0x64). The value what to write is listed in the following table:
Description
Value
Blink the mail LED (with frequency about 0.5Hz)
0x83
Turn off the mail LED
0x84
Blink the mail LED fast (with frequency about 1Hz)
0x8A

Related links

hpbiff: mail led on HP (Vectra/Kayak) keyboards
hpbiff writes to the data register (0x60) the following values:

Description
Value
Turn mail LED on
0xEB
Turn mail LED off
0xEC

asus-mailcheck: MAIL LED on Asus laptops, uses the kernel ACPI support

Mozilla Extension: Mozilla New Mail Icon (Biff)


Last update: Sat 10 Mar 2007 12:45:25 AM CET
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