The kernel currently being used does not have ACPI. ACPI is desired by Compaq for upcoming projects. ACPI is available in the 2.4.6 pre5 kernel.
ACPI will not be enabled. There is no usable ACPI implementation for Linux, and 95% of the existing bioses will just break when we enable ACPI. (To illustrate: the first thing Microsoft helplines do is ask customers to disable ACPI for W2K problems) I want to really really ask Compaq to at least include a $PIRQ table in their new bioses, even for legacy-free machines. That's basically all that is needed for Linux support, we have a more complete checklist available for BIOS writers if you want.
Even the group at Intel who are implementing ACPI for Linux say that their code isn't ready yet. ACPI will not be enabled in fairfax. This decision has been made, and we are past feature freeze for everything but drivers so we are well beyond the point where that could be reconsidered even if it were worth reconsidering. Hardware that requires ACPI to boot will not be supported in fairfax.