I don't *want* to do fine-grained control of the fan in userspace. Its because
my fan doesn't appear to work under current ACPI I'm asking if I *can* do it.

I appear to *have* to use ACPI to get cardbus on my laptop.

If I have ACPI. I do *not* get a working fan. its a BIOS bug, unfixed and
probably unfixable given Dells attitude to Intel standards (c/f various Intel
graphic chips problems under X11)

so, I was asking if the boot probe about a thermal zone function was enough to
give me 'hooks' which might let me turn my fan on.

Ideally, I'd like ACPI to get close to current apmd/apm thermal/speed
management but its a given thats some time off.

I'm going to try and re-make a kernel with the PCI_FIXUP_<foo> stuff and not
the ACPI, to see if I can avoid ACPI and still get cardbus working. Soren
suggested ACPI was needed on some laptops.

cheers

-George