2001-(Ali chipset)mainboard with no ACPI because "from '97 and too old"!

The subject explains almost all. On my desktop, my mainboard (from 1st 
mainboards, with an AMI bios, if I don't remember badly) appears, on boot, as 
"from '97 and too old" so ACPI is disabled; see top of dmesg output (on 
kernel 2.4.22). On some older version of the patch(I've used the -ck patchset 
since kernel 2.4.20, and it included ACPI, and I've had it in the Mandrake 
9.0/9.1 kernel) my mainboard was correctly handled and ACPI didn't create any 
problems. All required data is attached. Please address any question on Cc: 
to me, since I'm not subscribed. Thanks.
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cat <<EOSIGN
Paolo Giarrusso, aka Blaisorblade
Kernel 2.4.21/2.6.0-test on an i686; Linux registered user n. 292729
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