latest benh kernel on powerbooks/tibook rev III

[Stefan Bruda]

At 18:20 +0200 on 2-8-2002 Carsten Milling wrote:
 >
 > Thanks for your quick response. Seems to be easier than I expected, at
 > least with a TiBook 400MHz which is what I have too. I had some
 > discussion a week or so ago with someone using the benh kernel on a
 > revIII TiBook who reported that neither the modem nor sleep would work
 > for him. 

Quite right in my case too (I also have a rev III tibook). Some other
things are problematic as well. The following is a comparison between
the three kernels that I have tried.

First, the YDL 2.2 (2.18-something) stock kernel is close to useless,
as it would not properly recognize the Radeon Mobility card and would
not allow anything else than 8-bit, framebuffer X. I did not go with
this one any further. In fact, I could not really use my machine till
I upgraded to other kernel.

The other two kernels that I have used are 2.4.19-rc3-ben0 (benh
henceforth; I have also used rc1 and pre10 in the past) and 2.4.19-4a
(the YDL 2.3 kernel, YDL henceforth). I have compiled benh myself in
various configurations, but I did not do this for YDL (I just
installed the rpms).

Both kernels work pretty well. The things that I have problems with
are (in no particular order) X, sound, sleep, modem, and IPX
networking.

o  X: No major difference between kernels. 

     Both kernels allow 24-bit depth X using X's radeon driver but
     with "UseFBDev" option. Without this option things *almost* work
     (specifically, there are some lines on the screen and the image
     is a bit unstable).

o  sound: No major differences between kernels.

     Sound output works quite well, but the mixer controls are totally
     screwed (each control, e.g., volume, balance, Pcms interfere
     with the others!). Just make sure that you load the dmasound_pmac
     module.

     Sound input does not work at all. In fact, the input controls do
     not even appear in the mixer. I could really use sound input, but
     for the time being (one hopes...) I cannot do better than boot
     Mac OS for this purpose.

o  sleep: YDL wakes up the computer, benh does not.

     With the benh kernel, the machine goes to sleep alright, but
     freezes completely on wakeup. With the YDL kernel the machine
     does wake up and appear to work--at least, I can reboot it upon
     wakeup. Why do I need to reboot you ask? Because X does not wake
     up properly and screws the display (that goes dark, in what
     appears to be a failsafe mode). So, all I can do is to blindly
     switch VTs, log in as root, and reboot.

     Related to sleep: if I do not instruct the machine to sleep but I
     close the lid and unplug (order irrelevant), it shuts down
     uncleanly after a couple of minutes or so. This happens
     independently on pmud and pbbuttonsd, i.e., it occurs even if
     these two daemons are not running. Nothing appears in the system
     log. The whole thing happens with both benh and YDL.

o  modem: Neither kernel recognizes it.

     kppp detects a modem on /dev/ttyS1 (sic!) but the modem times out
     during initialization. wvdial cannot communicate with the modem
     either. This happens with both kernels.

o  IPX: YDL works, benh does not.

     The binary benh does not come with IPX support. Upon compilation
     of such (as module) references to undefined symbols are reported
     by both depmod and modprobe. I do not remember these symbols
     exactly, take a look at a previous message of mine. I must be
     missing something while recompiling the kernel, but I have no
     idea what.

     The binary YDL comes with IPX support compiled in, and it does
     work out of the box. There seem to be some problems with both
     Netware volume mount and printing, but this may as well happen
     because the shitty netware configuration we have here at Bishop's
     University. Besides, I am totally new to Netware in general: I
     came to Bishop's only recently (and I still ask myself who was
     the genius that came up with the bright idea of using Netware in
     the first place), and my attempts at communication with the damn
     Novell network are even more recent, I did not in fact spend more
     than two hours yesterday in my attempts.

o  All the other things that I tried worked with no apparent
   difference with both benh and YDL. I have never tried Firewire
   though, nor PCMCIA.

Overall, I prefer YDL. Mind you, the sleep function is useless anyway,
and IPX is a marginal issue, as the CS department will shortly have a
TCP/IP net, yay. Still, YDL seems to improve the overall stability of
my system. Of course, all of these might happen because errors of
mine, I do have some experience with Linux but I am not by any means
an expert.

By the way, my previous questions about sleep (the most annoying issue
for me right now) and sound input support went without any answer at
all on this list. Could somebody please suggest some other list where
my chances to get some ideas are better? I know, rev III tibooks are
quite new, but one nevertheless hopes that one day, on one list...

Cheers,
Stefan

-- 
If it was so, it might be; and if it were so, it would be; but as
it isn't, it ain't. That's logic.
    --Lewis Carroll, Through the Looking-Glass