ppc hardware support (was: iBook G3 14" or PowerBook G4 15"?)
On Thursday 12 June 2003 08:33, Soeren Sonnenburg wrote:
> it does no get as hot as the 12" one, i.e. the front (where the akku/hd
> is located) stays cool all the time... however on the back it can become
> really hot... ...
I can second that. Only if I compile the kernel the back gets so hot I
cannot leave it on my lap. Only then the ventilation kicks in.
> > - - And finally (this is less important), what about the sleep mode?.
> works more or less perfect... I have like 2 crashes when entering sleep
> mode per month and I put it into sleep mode 3-5 times a day...
I have absolutely no crashes if I always wait for the PB to finish entering
the sleep mode or the wake-up procedure to complete successfully. I use
Ben's "stable" kernels and pmud.
> I am very satisfied with that notebook... every hardware except external
> TFT/CRT/Video output are supported ... never had that with a notebook.
I am amazed how well Linux works on the ppc platform. I never liked Macs
before I got to know Linux and since then I have had a variety of ppc
machines. On my TiBook 400 MHz, the VGA and S-Video outputs do not work,
however, which makes the laptop unsuitable for presentations. I can
activate the VGA output with Ben's kernel driver (and m3mirror utility),
but it shows just a few lines as long as in character mode and garbage as
soon as in X. Once in X, the garbage remains, even if I switch to console
in between. (Console blanking works, however.) I should post a separate
message regarding this problem. The cpufreq issue is just another one I
gotta investigate.
My further grief goes to the lack of math libraries using the Altivec
instructions. (???) I haven't investigated yet, but FPU (?) processing in
Linux seems really slow on the PPC processor. If I rotate a picture in
GIMP on a Duron 1000 MHz and on a PowerPC G4 400 MHz, the Duron finishes
in less than half the time. Anyone knows why this is the case? Can this be
fixed at the compiler level? I can imagine, the new IBM PowerPC (?907)
would offer an amazing Altivec processing power to justify the efforts. On
the other side, Apple certainly has adapted gcc so I do not know what is
wrong. Watching DVD movies with xine works much more smoothless on my ppc
than on my x86 machines.
Salut
Mark
--
Krisztian Mark Szentes
produktivIT - Open-Source Solution Provider
Siebenbrunnengasse 55/7
A-1050 Wien
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