Re: mouse buttons...still...

["C.M. Connelly" <c@eskimo.com>]

"JM" == Jeremiah Merkl <merkjj@uleth.ca> writes:

   JM> Ahh...so the turbo mouse has to be plugged in at startup
   JM> then? My XF86Setup file is the same as yours right now.

I would think so, yes.  The kernel scans the ADB(us) to see what
devices are plugged in.  If they aren't plugged in, the kernel
won't know about them.  ADB isn't treated the same way as USB.


   JM> ...huh? :) Ya lost me. :) I've never played with
   JM> xmodmap...<<checks the manpage>> hmm...ok...a little more
   JM> sense now. I'll probably have to do the same with mine
   JM> then. Kensington Turbo mouse, Model #64210?

Yup, same model.  You may or may not have to mess with xmodmap --
I wouldn't be surprised if the way that things are handled has
changed.  When I originally installed Debian, it required lots of
jumping through hoops (starting with a LinuxPPC install); when I
asked if anyone else was having similar problems with button
assignments, no one responded.  (Once potato is released, I may
have to try reinstalling.)


   JM> I currently have access to one myself, but it's being used
   JM> on another Mac.  If it's plugged in at startup, I _should_
   JM> concievably be able to swap it in and out as I need it?

Hmm.  I've always been under the impression that swapping ADB
devices was a no-no.  I'm pretty sure that I've seen statements
that you should never plug in or unplug an ADB device when the
computer was on, because you could short out the ADB controller,
which would require you to replace the motherboard.  (Granted,
I've always taken that advice about as seriously as similar
warnings about serial and parallel ports, but I've also never
really needed to add or remove ADB devices when the system was
running.)

I'm not sure what would happen if the kernel thought there was a
device in a particular place, and then discovered it was missing.
Could be nothing, could be nasty....


   CMC> Sadly, X setup for PPC is seriously broken.  If you don't
   CMC> have the same kind of machine as someone else who's already
   CMC> figured out a working configuration, you may have a hard
   CMC> road to walk to get one.

   JM> I had some troubles until I unchecked the "Use Video
   JM> Driver" box in BootX (having a bitch of a time getting
   JM> yaboot to work on this thing, mostly because it's an
   JM> oldworld and OF isn't displayed on screen properly), now it
   JM> just works fine.

Oh, yes, that's an important little fact.  My machine is a
PowerComputing PowerCenter 132 (a clone that's roughly similar to
a 7200, although the kernel thinks it's a 7300), and also has
broken Open Firmware.  I just use BootX (since I don't have
another machine that can run MacOS and there aren't equivalents to
PhotoShop and Illustrator for Linux).

I still have to jump through some hoops to get video working
properly on my system.  It starts up fine, then the text turns
blood red until I reconfigure the frame buffer with a script I've
added to /etc/init.d/.  Even then, I have to manually quit gdm,
run the frame buffer configuration script again (because at
startup, there's only one virtual console), and then start gdm
again.  (I could automate this further, but I keep hoping for some
other solution to present itself, and I can't get excited about
the whole making changes, rebooting, checking results, making more
changes, and rebooting loop.)


   JM> I realize that Xsetup is broken, but what I don't
   JM> understand, is why it's broken under Debian, and
   JM> LinuxPPC/YellowDog seem to have gotten around this problem?
   JM> Is it due to GPL issues?

I'm not really sure.  I did try to alien the relevant packages
from LinuxPPC at one point, and discovered that those packages are
heavily dependent on certain Red-Hatisms in the set up of various
configuration files (e.g., one of them expects to find information
about the system in /etc/sysconfig/{keyboard,mouse}), but there
may be other issues as well (since modifying the utilities to look
in the appropriate places for Debian couldn't possibly be that
difficult).

   CMC


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   C.M. Connelly               c@eskimo.com                   SHC, DS
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