Re: Screwed by PowerBook FireWire


Subject: Re: Screwed by PowerBook FireWire
From: Dan Burcaw (dburcaw@terraplex.com)
Date: Sat Feb 26 2000 - 12:59:28 MST


>
> I just talked to the salesman at Elite Computers. He said that
> the Lombards are no longer available and Apple told them to
> return all of them. (Sounds kind of weird to me, but...)
> Anyway, so I can't get one of those even if I wanted to.

Sure, I'm not saying that is the solution to the problem, just.. those
machines work. I'm typing this email on one of them.

> Previous reports from whom? Somebody somewhere has it working?

A contact at Apple tried running Linux on the box. That is where my
reports are coming from.

> I tried both. I get farther. It boots. It prints a bunch of
> stuff, then complains about "lost interrupts" to the hda*
> devices. However, it contues past that to the blue welcome
> screen. But, once there, the machine locks up. Pressing
> return, space, tab, F12, whatever, doesn't make it continue.

Right, these are the problems that I'm speaking of. Basically, there is
an IDE tuning problem and ADB seems to be broken.
 
> From the TSS pages, another guy said to try the ruffpack 1.8 (I
> think it was) kernel. Of the two kernels, the benh one is
> better (I suppose) because the ruffpack one complains a bit
> about an "unsupportd Macintosh display" whereas the benh one
> makes no such complaint.

Ok, good to know, thanks.

> So, anyway, I'm farther, but still stuck. Anything else I can
> try?

If you happen to have a USB keyboard around, you might try that.

> Both the first and second lines. The FireWire machine has a
> "bronzish" keyboard also (perhaps more brown). The point is
> that, in lokking at it, I assumed I had a supported machine.

Unfortunatly, with Linux we can't make assumptions. The list has been
updated to specify that the Firewire models don't yet work.

> I'd at least like some warm-fuzzy statement from you guys that
> you ARE working to MAKE the FireWire PowerBooks work in the very
> near term, not only for me, but since all the new PowerBooks are
> FireWire, to make your product work on them for everybody.

Whenever Apple releases hardware, we do what we can to get machine
supported. I can't give you a timeline because we don't have one of
these machines yet.

Regards,
Dan

Terra Soft Solutions, Inc.
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