sumarise ppc problems

[Eric Dunbar]

On Tue, 28 Dec 2004 19:45:45 -0500, volvoguy <volvoguy at gmail.com> wrote:

> Yeah. That kinda stinks. Is it definitely Apple's fault and not the
> chip maker (or "real" Airport Extreme maker, since Apple probably
> doesn't make them in-house). If so, just for the record I'd like to
> email them about it. One email won't do much, but maybe if lots of
> LinuxPPC users are doing it....

I suspect that Apple doesn't own the rights to AE chipset which is why
they won't be in any hurry to release that info to the community at
large (same reason they can't release OS 7.6 and later into the public
domain -- they don't have the rights to some key underlying
technologies). Keep your eye on YDL for solutions. They work closely
with Apple and tend to be ahead of the curve on finding solutions to
PPC problems (even if they did drop the ball with YDL 4.0). One
suggestion I saw was that they could use a proprietary (binary) driver
wrapped in something or other (I didn't bother following the
discussion).

> You started to answer my next question already. :o) I didn't see any
> specifics on the supported hardware page in the wiki yet. Do we know
> of any USB 802.11 g/b (I only have a "b" access point) adapters that
> will definitely work? I know they go on sale super cheap sometimes and
> it would still be better than fighting with a cat5 cable in my
> hospital bed.

Ugh. Hospital beds suck (I spent last Friday in emerg with my fiance
checking out a persistent chest pains she had (fortunately nothing
more than a bad reaction to a flu shot... better safe than sorry when
there's a family history... am I ever glad we live in a country where
you don't have to worry about your health care :) :) :).

As for your cards... check out Orinoco's Gold or Silver cards. They're
supported by OS 9 natively as if they were Airport cards on laptops
that don't have Airport slots so they probably will work nicely in
Linux. Also do a Google to see what the web says about PPC Linux
supported 802.11b/g cards (& let the list know what you learn). I
suspect that site:TerraSoftsolutions.com has something on the subject.

Good luck, Eric.