TonysMacJournal Jan07 - Revision history

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Tonyr at 07:01, 13 February 2007

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January 2007 Journal enties

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 ==4jan07==
 ''Audio Skipping''<br>
 iMacs/PowerMacs with CPU speeds less that 450MHz seem to have problems playing CDs using '''SoundJuicer''' and '''RythmBox''', the CD ripper and CD player installed with Ubuntu.  Playback audio will 'skip', producing gaps of a few seconds, and may even cease altogether.  Loren has been able to solve this by replacing CD drives in slot loading iMacs and PowerMac Towers.  I have solved it by installing '''gxine''' and manipulating its configuration parameters, specifically the increasing the number of buffer blocks and increasing the value of media.audio_cd.drive_slowdown in the xine configuration.  The xine configuration file usually shows up in the users home directory as .xine/xine_config.  '''gxine''' provides access to most of the configuration parameters through Preferences in its menu.  There are several levels of parameter control in Preferences.  The level named '''Master of the Universe''' allows a the most access.  I have been increasing the slowdown parameter from 4 to 12, and increasing the number of buffer blocks from 230 to 500.  Both of those were guesses on my part.  Increasing the number of buffer blocks may not be necessary.
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 There are several problems with the '''gxine''' solution with the lower CPU speed Macs (233-400MHz).  '''gxine''' has a visualization feature that competes with audio for CPU cycles.  Turning the visualization off reduces
 or eliminates the 'skip' problem.  Visualzation control is under the '''View''' drop down menu, but changes there do not persist across '''gxine''' restarts.  I haven't found a way to make the visualization change permanent.
 ==5jan07==

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 ==4jan07==
 I'm going to try to record my experience working with the Macs at FreeGeek.  This will be mostly subjective
-train of thought, first impressions,  immediate reactions, that sort of thing.  This first few entries will be
+train of thought, first impressions,  immediate reactions, that sort of thing.  This first few entries will be a recap of the things I can remember from that past couple of weeks.
 ''Audio Skipping''<br>
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 ''Macs That Resist Ubuntu Installation''<br>
-The ''G4/700 iMac'' and ''The Cube'' raise the question of what to do with nice iMac systems that require undiscovered contortions to get Ubuntu to install with incomplete functionality, or not at all.  The two obvious  suggestions are 1) let MacRenewal have then, and 2) sell them in the store at a discount with labelling that indicates no OS or missing functionality.  A third possibility is to keep them in limbo in hopes (that Saint Nicholas soon would appear, but I digress) that there migh be resource at some point to explore for solutions.
+The ''G4/700 iMac'' and ''The Cube'' raise the question of what to do with nice iMac systems that require undiscovered contortions to get Ubuntu to install with incomplete functionality, or not at all.  The two obvious  suggestions are 1) let MacRenewal have then, and 2) sell them in the store at a discount with labeling that indicates no OS or missing functionality.  A third possibility is to keep them in limbo in hopes (that Saint Nicholas soon would appear, but I digress) that there might be resource at some point to explore for solutions.
 ''Deviant ATI video controller''<br>
-Almost all of the iMac machines use ATI controllers. The half-basketball machine mentioned earlier and some higher end G4 PowerMac Towers use nVidia controllers.  Other High end G4 Towers use Radeon controllers (which are also ATI, I believe).  The older iMacs use ATI Rage controllers.  There are many, many variations of the ATI Rage contoller.  The list can be found in the log file produced when the Ubuntu desktop start up, '''/var/log/Xorg.0.log'''.  All of the iMacs I have worked on so far have installed Ubuntu with working video, with the exception of the one I worked on today.  This was a 500MHZ 'bubble' iMac.  The video controller was an '''ATI Rage 128 Pro Ultra TR'''.  After installation, Ubuntu was extremely sluggish, and any event (mouse, keyboard) that required video reaction would produce a hang of many seconds, on the order of 30-60.  The best way I could find to solve this problem was to remove the '''glx''' module from the xorg startup configuration.  I did it by running '''dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg''' and unchecking the '''glx''' module when it asked which modules to include.  Removing
+Almost all of the iMac machines use ATI controllers. The half-basketball machine mentioned earlier and some higher end G4 PowerMac Towers use nVidia controllers.  Other High end G4 Towers use Radeon controllers (which are also ATI, I believe).  The older iMacs use ATI Rage controllers.  There are many, many variations of the ATI Rage contoller.  The list can be found in the log file produced when the Ubuntu desktop start up, '''/var/log/Xorg.0.log'''.  All of the iMacs I have worked on so far have installed Ubuntu with working video, with the exception of the one I worked on today.  This was a 500MHZ 'bubble' iMac.  The video controller was an '''ATI Rage 128 Pro Ultra TR'''.  After installation, Ubuntu was extremely sluggish, and any event (mouse, keyboard) that required video reaction would produce a hang of many seconds, on the order of 30-60.  The best way I could find to solve this problem was to remove the '''glx''' module from the xorg startup configuration.  I did it by running '''dpkg-reconfigure xserver-xorg''' and unchecking the '''glx''' module when it asked which modules to include.  Removing the '''glx''' module takes away the high performance features of the controller, but does allow reasonable behavior under normal circumstances.
 Moral:  Watch out for the '''ATI Rage 128 Pro Ultra''' video controller!
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 Without the OpenFirmware password feature, Mac OS X login supposedly can be defeated by booting into single-user mode at power-up with the Command+S keyboard combination.  The object for Freegeek MacBuild is really to be able to boot an install or rescue CD.  If the keyboard is locked out at the firmware level, the only way I know at this point to defeat the protection is to completely drain the logic board of any residual charge and press the PMU button, which does something to the PRAM that resets it (if
-I understand the procedure correctly).  The steps are described in the step-by-step i the 6jan07 entry under item 8.
+I understand the procedure correctly).  The steps are described in the step-by-step in [[#6jan07|6jan07]] under item 8.
 ==11jan07==
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 Worked on a G3 B&W Tower today.  It had OSX 10.3.3 installed with high security (kbd lockout).  I defeated it by reinstalling OS X (10.0) and resetting the CUDA/PMU.  This model has two buttons that look  like the CUDA/PMU button, near the battery and PCI slots.  I think the left one (me facing the front of the box with the side panel open) is the Power button and the right one is the PMU/CUDA. I'm not sure what the Power button does.  The bit about installing Mac OSX might not be necessary.  Before pushing the PMU/CUDA button, I removed and replaced the PRAM battery.  A good PRAM/NVRAM references is [http://www.geocities.com/texas_macman/pram.html here].
-This particular box is one of the earliest B&W Towers, and uses SCSI drives. It has and Adaptec AHA-2940 controller (I think).  The instructions for removing the SCSI drives are [http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=111769 here].  There are 2 SCSI drives, a 9GB (the original, I believe), and an additional 4GB drive.  Dave found a pair of 18GB drives to replace them with.
+This particular box is one of the earliest B&W Towers, and uses SCSI drives. It has an Adaptec AHA-2940 controller (I think).  The instructions for removing the SCSI drives are [http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=111769 here].  There are 2 SCSI drives, a 9GB (the original, I believe), and an additional 4GB drive.  Dave found a pair of 18GB drives to replace them with.
-The information about defeating security should go in the Triage/Rebuild graph.  It's included in my step-by-step description as item 8 in the [[#6jan07]] entry.
+The information about defeating security should go in the Triage/Rebuild graph.  It's included in my step-by-step description as item 8 in the [[#6jan07|6jan07]] entry.
 ==12jan07==
-There are actually two G3 B&W Towers on the work bench.  The second one is more conventional, with a single IDE hard drive.  The video contollers in the two boxen are the same: ATI Rage 128 RE/SG (PCI).  I got as far as installing Ubuntu on the IDE box, but the installation would hang at random places, hang so bad that keyboard and mouse events were ignored. I remembered that this IDE box had not powered up at first, and since I had to install memory (there was none in it) the only other thing to reseat was the video card, so I had done that. Because of that I suspected that the video card might be involved.  I swapped the video cards between the IDE box and the SCSI box.  The hang symptom disappeared from the IDE box, and the installation and sale prep were successfully completed.  Not surprisingly, the hang symptom appeared in the SCSI box.  In addition, Ubuntu installation on the SCSI box reported many many package retrieval failures (CD read failures).  That particular Ubuntu CD has been used many times with no problems.  That is not to say that the CD is not damaged; it could be, and I will need to check that.
+There are actually two G3 B&W Towers on the work bench.  The second one is more conventional, with a single IDE hard drive.  The video controllers in the two boxen are the same: ATI Rage 128 RE/SG (PCI).  I got as far as installing Ubuntu on the IDE box, but the installation would hang at random places, hang so bad that keyboard and mouse events were ignored. I remembered that this IDE box had not powered up at first, and since I had to install memory (there was none in it) the only other thing to reseat was the video card, so I had done that. Because of that I suspected that the video card might be involved.  I swapped the video cards between the IDE box and the SCSI box.  The hang symptom disappeared from the IDE box, and the installation and sale prep were successfully completed.  Not surprisingly, the hang symptom appeared in the SCSI box.  In addition, Ubuntu installation on the SCSI box reported many many package retrieval failures (CD read failures).  That particular Ubuntu CD has been used many times with no problems.  That is not to say that the CD is not damaged; it could be, and I will need to check that.
 A more hopeful assumption is that the video card is really screwed up and causing lots o' problems.  In order to test that, I would need another video card, the same kind.  As far as I know, that means taking one out of another G3 B&W Tower. That Tower would become either a zombie, waiting around for a spare video card to turn up, or a mining source.
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 ==23jan07==
-''Macs that Resist Ubuntu Installation, Revisited'' (see [[#5jan07]] entry)<br>
+''Macs that Resist Ubuntu Installation, Revisited'' (see [[#5jan07|5jan07]])<br>
 The G4/700 Flast Panel half-dome CD boot problem is apparently a weakness in the Dapper and Edgy installation CDs.  Both Breezy (5.10) and Feisty (7.04 alpha) installation CDs boot in the G4/700 just fine.  The Breezy CD uses a less than perfect video interface, but it works.  The Feisty CD apparently solves the video problem for nVidia controllers; unfortunately, it seems to have forgotten how to handle ATI controllers in G3 machines.  It boots in a G3 'bubble' iMac (at least it gets to the login sound report) but without video.

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