Active Protection System
With the new series of Thinkpads IBM introduced the Active Protection System (APS) in 2003. The APS is a protection system for the Thinkpads internal harddrive. A sensor inside the Thinkpad recognises when the notebook is accellerated. A software applet then is triggered to park the harddisk. This way the risk of data loss in case of when the notebook is dropped is significantly reduced since the read/write head of the harddrive is parked an hence can't crash onto the disc when the notebook drops onto the floor.
The whole concept of the technology seems very enhanced. For the first part, the hardware sensor is capable of not only recognising accellaration of the notebook, but also (to a certain degree) of it's whole orientation in space, relative to gravity axis. Furthermore, having the actual control put into software, it's functionality is extendable and it gives chance to implement features like the "ignore minor shocks" feature which is present in the Windows based control applet. (This feature prevents the harddrive from parking in case of minor regular shocks as being occuring in a train or car.)
Linux Support
Linux support is so far not available.
IBM made general (inofficial) statements that they are willing to release the specifications of the hardware sensor and its API to the linux community or some developers, but they in fact never did. Also some linux developers actively tried to take contact with IBM about the issue but got stuck somewhere on the way through the different instances at IBM.
The following table is supposed to give us a chance to gather information about the efforts made and how they ended up.
| Date | User | effort made | result |
|---|---|---|---|
| March 2004 | Wyrfel | asked IBM representatives at CeBIT 2004 about state of linux support | got promise that specifications will be released, but nothing actually happened |
