The official APM/2 home page

The APM/2 home page

Welcome to the home of APM/2, a utility that allows you to:

verbose the APM OS/2 configuration
perform APM standby, suspend and power off (req. Warp 4) requests
configure the automatic APM power on timer (req. APM level 1.2+)
schedule APM standby, suspend and power off
easily create a NLS version of APM/2

Does it work? Theoretically yes, but YMMV (your mileage will vary)! Unfortunately if it works for your PC depends on your PC's APM BIOS, the OS/2 APM subsystem and your PC's hardware - in about that sequence. What the problems are is mentioned in the Known Problems section, what the solutions are, well that may depend on your experiments and luck ;-). By the way, you may also take a look onto the hints and tips page.

I'm very interested for any feedback, so I would be pleased if you can stop by at the online APM/2 survey and send me your comments. Of course e-mail is welcome too.

The OS/2 APM.SYS device driver has been update to APM Specification 1.2, you can download it from the OS/2 Device Driver Pak online in the OS/2 Components, Base Device Driver update section. Alternatively the APM support introduced with Warp 4 FixPack 6 gets you to APM.SYS level 1.2 too. I didn't test in detail, but I haven't found one of my problems was fixed.

Description of APM/2

APM/2 is a commandline utility, that allows you to query OS/2's APM support and request OS/2's APM to put your PC into APM standby, suspend or power off (however this must be supported by your hardware and BIOS).

APM/2 is provided in 2 NLS versions:

APM.EXE with APMUs.msg (English version)
APM.EXE with APMGr.msg (German version)

and by volunteers also available:

APM.EXE with APMRu.msg (Russian version, many thanks to Andres Phillippov!)

You can easily create your own (SBCS single byte character set) national language version, just use APMUs.txt as a template, translate the messages there without altering the row and column layout, indentions, characters per line, ... and compile it with the MKMSGF compiler from the Toolkit (or send me the file and I'll try to compile it).
If someone volunteers to create a national language version, I'm prepared to add it to my site and the package (surely you will be credited too ;-).

When invoking APM.EXE without commandline arguments, the help is displayed (if possible in your national language, otherwise defaults to English):

APM/2 V1.40 - Advanced Power Management spec. 1.1/1.2 interface for OS/2 Copyright (C) by Roman Stangl, 1997, 1998 (rstangl@vnet.ibm.com) http://geocities.datacellar.net/SiliconValley/Pines/7885/ APM/2 allows you to put your workstation into APM standby, suspend or power off mode. This program is Freeware (and can be freely distributed, as long as the archive is kept complete), however you must not port it to any of the inferior Windows platforms! APM0002I: Insufficient commandline options specified. Syntax: APM /? Where: /? ... display help Getting more details with the /? commandline option: APM/2 V1.40 - Advanced Power Management spec. 1.1/1.2 interface for OS/2 Copyright (C) by Roman Stangl, 1997, 1998 (rstangl@vnet.ibm.com) http://geocities.datacellar.net/SiliconValley/Pines/7885/ APM0003I: Commandline options: Syntax: APM Request [Device] [Schedule] [Language] [Version] Where: Request ... /Verbose to display APM configuration data ... /Ready to restore pre-APM request state ... /Standby to invoke APM standby ... /Suspend to invoke APM suspend ... /Poweroff to invoke APM power off ... /Poweroff- to invoke DosShutdown(1) and APM power off ... /Poweroff+ to invoke DosShutdown(0) and APM power off ... /Poweron to schedule to power on PC via APM Device ... /Device BIOS|All|Display|Disk|Parallel|Serial to apply Request on a device (default is All) Schedule ... /Schedule [yyyy:mm:dd:]hh:mm to schedule request at the specified date/time Language ... /Language xx (to load NLS messages from APMxx.msg) Version ... /Force to ignore OS/2 version detected Note: DosShutdown(0) ... Performs full system shutdown and locks filesystem DosShutdown(1) ... Performs buffer and cache flushing to make system quiescent by stopping thread execution

Using APM/2

APM/2 is a commandline interface program to OS/2's APM device driver APM.SYS, which should have been installed in your CONFIG.SYS when having selected Power Management in Selective Install. This device driver is the low level interface to APM BIOS, which is part of the BIOS of modern hardware.

OS/2's APM.SYS currently only supports APM BIOS specification 1.2 (and APM/2 therefore also supports 1.2), but you need to upgrade to level 1.2 (Warp 4 was shipped with level 1.1, Fixpack 6+ will upgrade to level 1.2). Usually PCs implement specification 1.1 in APM BIOS, most recent PCs already support specifications 1.2 or even 2.1 too.

A prerequisite for APM.SYS to function is that APM BIOS is enabled in your BIOS. APM/2 will then allow you to query APM configuration or to put your PC into APM standby, suspend or power off.

Prerequisites

APM power off support and therefore APM/2 requires Warp 4, because only Warp 4 has the required support in APM.SYS, other system files and the Kernel to process APM power off requests correctly, for other requests you may use Warp 3 too.

Under OS/2 versions prior to Warp 4, for APM power off requests the filesystem will not be closed correctly, causing a CHKDSK during the next reboot. And to cite a tip from Frank Schroeder (OS/2 I/O Subsystem/Device Driver Development): "Do not try to run the Version 4.0 APM device driver on OS/2 Warp Version 3.0 as there are dependencies upon other system files including the os2krnl".

APM/2 has the commandline option /Force that allows you to force APM requests under Warp 3 and before. This option may be useful when a fixpack or computer vendor improves APM support, but most likely it will not work or cause a CHKDSK during next boot.

I've also heard that Warp 4 fixpacks 2 and above have broken APM support. I haven't verified if restoring the Warp 4 GA APM.SYS driver restores working APM support but it's sure worth a try. Just to remember, the rule of thumb "Never fix a running system" still applies.

Commandline syntax

.

/Verbose This option displays the APM support available from APM.SYS
/Ready This option restores APM support to the state before an APM standby, suspend or power off request was submitted. For example, if you have put your PC into APM standby using the /Standby option, then you may restore from that state by activities defined in BIOS (usually keyboard and mouse events) or by running APM/2 with the /Ready option. This option may be useful when scheduled or invoked by e.g. a remote telnet session. However, I think it may be very APM BIOS and hardware dependent for which APM requests this option restores the previous state (e.g. if BIOS slows down the CPU it likely will work, if BIOS stops CPU I'm afraid you can't execute any program).
/Standby This option requests APM support to put your PC into APM standby. Most likely this will cause your display to be switched into standby mode, your disk may be spinned down and/or the clock speed of your CPU to be reduced
/Suspend This option requests APM support to put your PC into APM suspend under Warp 4. Most likely this will cause your display to be switched off and your PC to go into sleep mode (for ThinkPads this request likely causes a hibernation to disk).
No Shutdown of the file system will be performed, you PC will be able to continue when awakened.
/Poweroff This option requests APM support to shut down the filesystem (and thus no CHKDSK during next boot) and to power off your PC.
As only Warp 4 has the required changes to shut down the filesystem, APM/2 by default refuses to run on Warp 3 and before.
This option is hardware and BIOS dependent and may not work for your PC.
/Poweroff- This option is the same as option /Poweroff except that thread execution will be quiescent by calling DosShutdown(1) before the APM request, the file system is still not locked.
As Warp 4 is supposed to shut down the file system this option should not be required, however a user has surprisingly found out that this made power off requests more stable (no more CHKDSKs during next boot).
/Poweroff+ This option is the same as option /Poweroff except that the file system is shut down by calling DosShutdown(0) before the APM request, which causes subsequent file I/O to fail or block.
As Warp 4 is supposed to shut down the file system this option should not be required too, however one never knows (so you may try if /Shutdown fails).
/Poweron This option allows you to schedule the date and time when your PC automatically powers on by using the automatic APM power on timer. However, this requires APM support at level 1.2+ and possibly also activation of some BIOS settings. This option is only valid in addition to the /Schedule [yyyy:mm:dd:]hh:mm option).
This option is hardware and BIOS dependent and may not work for your PC.
/Device BIOS|All|Display| Disk|Parallel|Serial| This option allows you to specify the device the APM request is performed on. If this option is not specified All is the default, causing the APM request to target all APM devices in your PC.
Of course, only the /Ready, /Standby, /Suspend and the /Poweroff options make sense, so be cautious. This options are hardware and BIOS dependent and may not work for your PC.
/Schedule [yyyy:mm:dd:]hh:mm This option allows you to schedule APM requests, except the /Verbose option, which can't be scheduled. This option must be used when you want to use the /Poweron option to schedule the automatic APM power on timer.
/Language xx This option allows you to force using the national language version of APM/2 where APMxx.msg exists. APM/2 ships with APMUs.msg and APMGr.msg, being the English and German NLS versions.
APM/2 tries to load messages in the language of the system where it is running on, e.g. on a German setup (049 at the COUNTRY statement in CONFIG.SYS) the German message file is used, though those automatic support is limited to only major languages.
You can easily use APMUs.txt as a template, translate the messages while preserving the row and column layout, and then compile them into your national language APMxx.msg messagefile. As said, if you're running a major language as e.g. French or Spanish, NLS support will be used automatically then, otherwise just supply the /Language xx option.
/Force This option allows you to force APM/2 accepting the /Poweroff options under Warp 3 and before. Most likely the APM requests will fail or may cause a CHKDSK during next boot.

Known problems

Unfortunately launching APM requests causes complicated processing inside OS/2 and heavily depends upon a bugfree APM BIOS (and as Windows and OS/2 may used different entry points, the result of same request may differ between both OSes, and yes, I've also seen a preloaded WIN95 machine that solidly hung after requesting a APM power off). I have discussed the problems I encountered with Frank Schroeder, the owner of the APM.SYS code, and the most likely reasons for APM requests to fail are the APM BIOS implementation, timing issues and other implementation problems (like orders of APIs called, frequency of polling, method of power management and event notification, etc.).

I know there are many problems with APM, I would almost say APM is broken by design or the lack of, so I welcome any feedback. If I get reasonable response I plan to collect and document the feedback into a pro and cons list for OS/2's APM support.

Per design, the option /Poweroff should work without additional parameters, but if you experience one of the problems mentioned above, you may experiment with adding - or + to those options.

If APM requests fail, most likely a CHKDSK will be run during next boot, but it's a good idea for sure to have a backup!

Now what can you try to improve the situation?

It should not hurt if you're flash the latest BIOS and watch out for the latest OS/2 APM.SYS driver.
You may have to play around with your APM BIOS settings, e.g. I've been informed by a APM/2 user that his problems were at least partly solved after he enabled the Wake-up functionality (e.g. Wake-up on Ring, Wake-up on LAN), though I don't even have a guess why that should make any difference.
You might compare APM/2 functionality with DOS (under real DOS, as the OS/2 VAPM.SYS driver prevents APM access from VDMs, this of course includes WIN-OS2) and WIN programs. You may find combinations of settings that may help.
Try to change the hardware ;-). Well, it seems that the same requests behave different on different hardware, thus my guess that APM BIOS is the most critical checkpoint for successful use of APM/2. From my experience, e.g. APM power off works worse the faster the PC (on a IBM P-200 powered PC it worked, whereas on a newer PPro-200 and PII-233/266 is consistently failed.
And, after upgrading to Warp 4 Fixpack 6, the WPS Power Object is also enhanced, verify if APM request from that object behave differently by APM/2, the source is included, so you can code (and mail me hopefully ;-) improvements.
You may have to change the activity surveilance of IRQs (InterRupt Requests) in BIOS, so that only keyboard (IRQ1) and mouse (IRQ12 for PS/2-style, IRQ4 or IRQ3 for serial mice) events wakeup from APM standby and suspend. To wakeup due to a network adapter you may want to include IRQ11 (or IRQ15 if you're not using IDE drives). To use the APM poweron timer, you may have to include the RTC (Real Time Clock on IRQ8).

Feedback

Please take a few minutes and fill out the online APM/2 survey. Without feedback I can't improve APM/2 or add some hints here, as I have very limited hardware to test OS/2 APM support with.

Changes between V1.30 and V1.40

Fixed that message at line 424 was displayed without having been completed by the required parameter (DosDevIOCtl() return code).
Fixed that when running on a non Us or Gr installation that each message got prefixed by a message stating that the NLS message could not be found and the Us one is taken instead.
Now, if no /Language option is specified, the Us messagefile is taken silently when no NLS messagefile was found, if /Language was specified but the file doesn't exist, a single message informs the user about that and that from now on the Us one will be taken.
Fixed minor spelling and layout mistakes in English and German message files.

APM/2 download

You are welcome to download APM/2 V1.40 (inclusive its source written with VisualAge C++) from this site.

APM/2 is Freeware, but I welcome you to credit me if you're going to reuse some code and I'm also very interested to hear about your product where you are using the code, likely I will also add a link to it from my pages!

You are also welcome to upload this program to any distribution (like e.g. Hobbes, Leo, ...) or to mention it in foras or E-Zines (like e.g. Warpcast) as I might not have the time to it myself.

Thanks to Cornelis Bockemuehl, there also exists a PM-Frontend to APM/2 providing a much more user-friendly interface than the commandline utility APM/2. It should be available as PMAPM V0.10 on all major anonymous-ftp OS/2 file servers.

APM Toolkit (C/C++)

APM/2 includes a C/C++ Toolkit header, which includes the most comprehensive information about OS/2 and APM available. You may want to use this toolkit to do your own APM OS/2 programming.

/Verbose	This option displays the APM support available from APM.SYS
/Ready	This option restores APM support to the state before an APM standby, suspend or power off request was submitted. For example, if you have put your PC into APM standby using the /Standby option, then you may restore from that state by activities defined in BIOS (usually keyboard and mouse events) or by running APM/2 with the /Ready option. This option may be useful when scheduled or invoked by e.g. a remote telnet session. However, I think it may be very APM BIOS and hardware dependent for which APM requests this option restores the previous state (e.g. if BIOS slows down the CPU it likely will work, if BIOS stops CPU I'm afraid you can't execute any program).
/Standby	This option requests APM support to put your PC into APM standby. Most likely this will cause your display to be switched into standby mode, your disk may be spinned down and/or the clock speed of your CPU to be reduced
/Suspend	This option requests APM support to put your PC into APM suspend under Warp 4. Most likely this will cause your display to be switched off and your PC to go into sleep mode (for ThinkPads this request likely causes a hibernation to disk). No Shutdown of the file system will be performed, you PC will be able to continue when awakened.
/Poweroff	This option requests APM support to shut down the filesystem (and thus no CHKDSK during next boot) and to power off your PC. As only Warp 4 has the required changes to shut down the filesystem, APM/2 by default refuses to run on Warp 3 and before. This option is hardware and BIOS dependent and may not work for your PC.
/Poweroff-	This option is the same as option /Poweroff except that thread execution will be quiescent by calling DosShutdown(1) before the APM request, the file system is still not locked. As Warp 4 is supposed to shut down the file system this option should not be required, however a user has surprisingly found out that this made power off requests more stable (no more CHKDSKs during next boot).
/Poweroff+	This option is the same as option /Poweroff except that the file system is shut down by calling DosShutdown(0) before the APM request, which causes subsequent file I/O to fail or block. As Warp 4 is supposed to shut down the file system this option should not be required too, however one never knows (so you may try if /Shutdown fails).
/Poweron	This option allows you to schedule the date and time when your PC automatically powers on by using the automatic APM power on timer. However, this requires APM support at level 1.2+ and possibly also activation of some BIOS settings. This option is only valid in addition to the /Schedule [yyyy:mm:dd:]hh:mm option). This option is hardware and BIOS dependent and may not work for your PC.
/Device BIOS\|All\|Display\| Disk\|Parallel\|Serial\|	This option allows you to specify the device the APM request is performed on. If this option is not specified All is the default, causing the APM request to target all APM devices in your PC. Of course, only the /Ready, /Standby, /Suspend and the /Poweroff options make sense, so be cautious. This options are hardware and BIOS dependent and may not work for your PC.
/Schedule [yyyy:mm:dd:]hh:mm	This option allows you to schedule APM requests, except the /Verbose option, which can't be scheduled. This option must be used when you want to use the /Poweron option to schedule the automatic APM power on timer.
/Language xx	This option allows you to force using the national language version of APM/2 where APMxx.msg exists. APM/2 ships with APMUs.msg and APMGr.msg, being the English and German NLS versions. APM/2 tries to load messages in the language of the system where it is running on, e.g. on a German setup (049 at the COUNTRY statement in CONFIG.SYS) the German message file is used, though those automatic support is limited to only major languages. You can easily use APMUs.txt as a template, translate the messages while preserving the row and column layout, and then compile them into your national language APMxx.msg messagefile. As said, if you're running a major language as e.g. French or Spanish, NLS support will be used automatically then, otherwise just supply the /Language xx option.
/Force	This option allows you to force APM/2 accepting the /Poweroff options under Warp 3 and before. Most likely the APM requests will fail or may cause a CHKDSK during next boot.