OpenBSD Journal

OpenBSD-MacPPC Resource for TiBook Users

Contributed by jose on from the G4-800+-resources dept.

Lurene Angela Grenier posted a resource page for the users of OpenBSD-MacPPC who use the TiBook: 
I tossed up a page about my tibook with some useful information. If
anyone can fill in the gaps or help out with the Xconfig at all, let me know.

http://www.daemonkitty.net/lurene/index.cgi?page=TiBook
Another piece of information is available on theapt.org for the TiBook 550 with the DVD drive. If you haven't yet seen Apple's hardware lately, it's very sexy, and runs OpenBSD really nicely.

(Comments are closed)

Comments

  1. By Wanna-Be Mac User () on

    Apple laptops are effectively unusable for unix users.

    I am a long-time Unix user. That means I need to have the Ctrl key to the left of the A key. This is a genuine need , not merely a want; it is based upon ergonomics . The Ctrl key is heavily used in unix, and it must be easily accessable. It cannot be off in the lower left corner of the keyboard where it is difficult to get at, and where it distorts the position of your left hand such that you can't easily type other keys while holding the Ctrl key down.

    Apple desktop keyboards are now all USB. They are all OK. The CapsLock key can be re-mapped into a Ctrl key.

    Unfortunately, even in this modern age, all Apple laptops have built-in ADB keyboards. The ADB keyboard is broken-by-design . It is, in general, not possible to remap the CapsLock key into a Ctrl key.

    There are some exceptions, but they are horrible kludges . They are horrible kludges because the original design of the ADB keyboard was a horrible kludge. The correct solution would be for Apple to re-design their laptop motherboards to use built-in USB keyboards. This hasn't happened yet. If you run Linux, use Debian's solution. For Mac OS X users, uControl works. There are no solutions (that I know of) for either NetBSD or OpenBSD. Please note once again that the "solutions" above are in fact kludges, because of the original bad design of the ADB keyboard.

    Apple is (currently) ignoring Unix users! This is not merely speculation on my part. In an on-going email exchange I am having with an Apple employee (whom I won't name) in their marketing department, the Apple marketing person directly stated to me that Apple was catering to their historic Mac customers, and is purposely ignoring the Unix market . He also claimed that Apple would soon start paying more attention to the Unix market. I won't hold my breath. Apple has been ignoring Unix users for more than 10 years . I expect that trend to continue. (Also note that my Apple contact indicated that Macs would never ship with a 3-button mouse, even though Apple intended to port almost all X-window software and deliver it either on a CD/DVD or installed directly on each Mac's hard drive. How Unix friendly is a 1-button mouse with X programs that often require 3 buttons?)

    Apple has now lost two opportunities to sell me hardware . I really wanted an Apple laptop for their superior battery life , and for the PowerPC with Altivec CPU. (The Altivec is vastly superior to the x86 line for DSP.) Because I can't live with the broken-by-design built-in ADB keyboard in all Apple laptops, Sony and IBM sold me laptops instead. If Apple fixes this problem, they will sell me a PowerBook next year; if they don't, I'll still be running OpenBSD on x86 hardware, and wishing I could use a Mac.

    Comments

    1. By Daniel Hartmeier () daniel@benzedrine.cx on http://www.benzedrine.cx/pf.html

      When did you last try to solve the problem instead of repeating that rant?

      adb0 at macobio0 irq 25: via-pmu 3 targets
      aed0 at adb0 addr 0: ADB Event device
      akbd0 at adb0 addr 2: iBook keyboard with inverted T (ISO layout)
      wskbd0 at akbd0 (mux 1 ignored for console): console keyboard, using wsdisplay0

      Pressing capslock:

      KeyPress event, serial 17, synthetic NO, window 0x1400001,
      root 0x31, subw 0x0, time 1441735746, (157,103), root:(217,236),
      state 0x0, keycode 66 (keysym 0xffe5, Caps_Lock), same_screen YES,
      XLookupString gives 0 characters: ""

      Releasing it again:

      KeyRelease event, serial 22, synthetic NO, window 0x1400001,
      root 0x31, subw 0x0, time 1441736096, (157,103), root:(217,236),
      state 0x2, keycode 66 (keysym 0xffe5, Caps_Lock), same_screen YES,
      XLookupString gives 0 characters: ""

      The capslock led is now on. Pressing capslock again:

      KeyPress event, serial 22, synthetic NO, window 0x1400001,
      root 0x31, subw 0x0, time 1441736826, (157,103), root:(217,236),
      state 0x2, keycode 66 (keysym 0xffe5, Caps_Lock), same_screen YES,
      XLookupString gives 0 characters: ""

      Releasing it again:

      KeyRelease event, serial 22, synthetic NO, window 0x1400001,
      root 0x31, subw 0x0, time 1441737046, (157,103), root:(217,236),
      state 0x2, keycode 66 (keysym 0xffe5, Caps_Lock), same_screen YES,
      XLookupString gives 0 characters: ""

      The led is now off again.

      With ~/.Xmodmap

      keycode 66 = Control_L

      I can just use capslock instead of control, ignoring the led.

      Comments

      1. By Anonymous Coward () on

      2. By David Krause () on

        XFree86 has a builtin option for this:
        Section "InputDevice"
        Option "XkbOptions" "ctrl:nocaps"

    2. By Anonymous Coward () on

      huh, last time i checked the open-apple and function keys worked as ctrl and alt

  2. By Lurene Grenier () lurene@daemonkitty.net on http://www.daemonkitty.net/lurene/

    X is working perfectly, all thanks to Mark Grimes (so don't thank me). Trolls suck, and you can kill the caps lock LED with a tiny little kernel change as far as I know... Onward to abtn and sound support.

  3. By Peter Hessler () spambox@theapt.org on http://www.theapt.org

    I guess I should update my page wrt my TiBook. I took KDE3 off, and now I'm running XFCE. Did some updates for gkrellm, and (is attempting to at any rate) are trying to get the plugins working on it. It's a platform specific problem (as it works fine on my i386 based machine.)

    Will post info about sound on my TiBook (via a usb-audio device), and about the status of the Xv drivers when I get home tonight.

    My full OpenBSD page is at http://www.theapt.org/openbsd/ I have more info wrt my TiBook, and my other projects there.

    Comments

    1. By Brad Smith () brad@comstyle.com on mailto:brad@comstyle.com

      >Did some updates for gkrellm, and (is attempting to at any rate) are trying to get the plugins working on it.

      This is a binary format issue, a la ELF. You fix the plugins on your system and they will "just work" on alpha/sparc64. It should be fairly simple to get the plugins to work.

      Comments

      1. By Peter Hessler () spambox@theapt.org on http://www.theapt.org

        I assume you mean I just add the plugins.c patch (from gkrellm/patches) to the plugins that I want manually? Ok, I'll work on that, then update ports as nessasary. =)

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