Difference between revisions of "MacBuild Tips 'n Tricks"
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==G4 Cube Sound== | ==G4 Cube Sound== | ||
==iMac auto restart after software shutdown== | ==iMac auto restart after software shutdown== | ||
− | ==Laptop/Notebook recycling | + | ==Laptop/Notebook recycling== |
Laptops and notebooks that are to be recycled should have the hard drive and battery removed and the display separated from the rest of the body. The hard drive goes to advanced testing, or can be permanently disabled by MacBuild before recycling. The display goes into a Gaylord (Huge Cardboard Box) currently right outside of the Black Hole. The rest of the body goes in a Gaylord currently beside Monitor Testing. The battery goes into the battery recycling mailer carton, sealed in a plastic bag (should be some in the carton). | Laptops and notebooks that are to be recycled should have the hard drive and battery removed and the display separated from the rest of the body. The hard drive goes to advanced testing, or can be permanently disabled by MacBuild before recycling. The display goes into a Gaylord (Huge Cardboard Box) currently right outside of the Black Hole. The rest of the body goes in a Gaylord currently beside Monitor Testing. The battery goes into the battery recycling mailer carton, sealed in a plastic bag (should be some in the carton). | ||
==MacBook intermittent shutdown problem== | ==MacBook intermittent shutdown problem== |
Revision as of 09:50, 18 May 2007
Audio setup on Digital Audio/Gigabit
CD Audio Skip
iMacs/PowerMacs with CPU speeds of 40MHz or less and with older CD drives seem to have problems playing CDs using SoundJuicer and RythmBox, the CD ripper and CD player installed by default 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. Replacement drives are not always available for iMacs, however. Another solution is to install gxine from the Applications->Add/Remove menu and modify some of its configuration parameters.
gxine configuration parameters are found in the user's home directory, ~/.gxine/config. There may be a global/default version of this somewhere but I haven't looked for it. The parameters for tweaking are media.audio_cd.drive_slowdown, default 4, revised to 0 or 12, and engine.buffers.audio_num_buffers, default 230, revised to 500 (maybe unnecessary). It turns out there is also a visualization parameter there, which can be set to do nothing: gui.post_plugins.audio_visualisation, default goom, revised to None. These revisions make the default operation permanent.
The remaining issue is how to make gxine do the right thing as the default audio auto-startup application. Default preferred applications can be modified through the System->Preferences->Removeable Drives and Media->Multimedia menu. In the Audio CD Disks command box, replace the existing sound-juicer -d %d entry with gxine vcd://dev/cdrom@ (untested as of 15may07).
The modified sections of ~/.gxine/config look like this:
- for cd_drive.slowdown
# slow down disc drive to this speed factor # numeric, default: 4 #media.audio_cd.drive_slowdown:4 media.audio_cd.drive_slowdown:12
- for audio_num_buffers
# number of audio buffers # numeric, default: 230 #engine.buffers.audio_num_buffers:230 engine.buffers.audio_num_buffers:500
- for audio_visualization
# Default audio visualisation plugin # { None fftgraph oscope fftscope goom }, default: 1 #gui.post_plugins.audio_visualisation:goom gui.post_plugins.audio_visualisation:None
<still needs a set of step-by-step cli instructions - tr 15may07>
Defeating Mac OSX Security
Desktop applets fail to initialize
Dual Boot OSX and Ubuntu
Dual Processor G4 tower
DVD play with ogle
DVD play failure, strange color effect
Firmware upgrade
G3/G4 tower power supply testing
G4 Cube Sound
iMac auto restart after software shutdown
Laptop/Notebook recycling
Laptops and notebooks that are to be recycled should have the hard drive and battery removed and the display separated from the rest of the body. The hard drive goes to advanced testing, or can be permanently disabled by MacBuild before recycling. The display goes into a Gaylord (Huge Cardboard Box) currently right outside of the Black Hole. The rest of the body goes in a Gaylord currently beside Monitor Testing. The battery goes into the battery recycling mailer carton, sealed in a plastic bag (should be some in the carton).
MacBook intermittent shutdown problem
PCI video in AGP tower
PMU/CUDA
PowerBook memory slot failure
Ubuntu splash
Video setup on Flower Power iMac
iMacs with 500MHz, 600MHz, and 700MHz processors, the so called Flower Power models, have a 750cx version CPU and ATI Rage 128 Pro Ultra video controller. After a normal Edgy alternate CD install, video response is extremely sluggish. For example, mouse cursor movements lag several seconds behind physical mouse movement.
A fix is suggested in http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=191080. It consists of the following changes to /etc/X11/xorg.conf:
- in the Module section
Section "Module" # Load "i2c" # Load "bitmap" # Load "ddc" Load "dri" Load "extmod" Load "freetype" Load "dbe" Load "glx" # Load "int10" # Load "type1" # Load "vbe" EndSection
- in the Device section
Section "Device" Identifier "ATI Technologies, Inc. Rage 128 Pro Ultra TR" Driver "ati" Option "UseFBDev" "false" Option "SWcursor" "true" Option "ForcePCIMode" "true" Option "XAANoOffscreenPixmaps" EndSection
The normal way to apply these changes is
- CTL+ALT+F1 to use a virtual terminal (command line interface)
- login as oem
- command: sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop
- edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf, for example, sudo nano /etc/X11/xorg.conf
- modify the Module and Device sections as indicated above
- save the file and exit
- command: sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start
The normal Ubuntu login page should appear with much better video response.
Note that the original problem is observed in Ubuntu Edgy (Release 6.10). ATI video driver installation is different in Ubuntu Feisty (7.04), in that a best driver version is selected to match the detected video controller. The problem may not be present with Feisty, but that has not been tested as of 15May2007.