User:Tonyr/Journal/Jun07

15Jun07

PRAM (bacup) batteries
The PRAM battery for iMacs and G3/G4 towers is a smallish cylindrical 3.6v (or 3.7v) lithium battery. Some are green-and-white, some are red/silver/yellow, some are blue-and-white, some are purple-and-green. A suggested good battery voltage range is 3.39v to 3.69v. A battery showing a lower voltage is considered 'bad', and should be recycled.

All G3 ibooks and G4 12" ibooks do not have a PRAM battery. They use a capacitor to supply enough power to maintain the clock and PRAM contents for about 20 seconds while changing a system battery. This is documented at http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58445 and http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86181 .

19Jun07

Edgy software update I cloned an Edgy HD for an iMac on Saturday and then updated the distribution. Before starting the update, I edited /etc/apt/sources.list to enable the edgy-backports repositories. The resulting update consisted of what looked to me like 50+ packages, or about a 160 Mbyte download.

At the same time, FG is preparing to migrate its PC installation Ubuntu version to Feisty Fawn (7.04). Mac Build should either replace its Edgy HD images with updated images, or with Feisty images, or both. There have been dual-processor G4 Mac tower machines showing up, so adding an image for that would seem to be in order.