2.2.19: fs corrupt after freeze-on-wakeup

[Neale Banks]

Greetings,

Nasty problem: filesystem corruption (ugly, reports of blocks duplicated
between files that are > 6months old, etc, etc).

Background: this is an AcerNote-950C, which exhibits "oddities" in the APM
department.  Last night the battery expired <sigh> but after reconnecting
power and waking it up I was presented with the message:

"probable hardware bug: clock timer configuration lost - probably a VIA686a."
"probable hardware bug: restoring chip configuration."

(from arch/i386/kernel/time.c) and a hard lockup.

(1) how would I confirm if I have a "VIA686a" (not mentioned in dmesg)?  
FWIW, the CPU is a Pentium (as in NOT a -II etc).

This lockup-on-wakeup has occured before (but not every time with 2.2.19,
and without nasty consequences (till today)).

Presumably the "VIA686a test code" in arch/i386/kernel/time.c doesn't
agree with my system:

(2) Is there anything I can do to qualify this?

(3) Lastly, is there likely to be a connection between the VIA686a issues
and the filesystem corruption, or is this corruption likely to just be a
consequence of the unclean shutdown etc?

Thanks,
Neale.