FreeBSD on an nVidia-based PowerBook G4 17" 1GHz

[Barry Hawkins]

On Dec 12, 2003, at 12:48 AM, Peter Grehan wrote:

> Hi Barry,
>
>>     I will list the items about this particular PowerBook model that 
>> are problematic for Debian, or more specifically, the Ben H. Linux 
>> kernel, and if anyone sees something that shouts "waste of time", 
>> please let me know.
>
>  Ben H is a pretty sharp guy, I doubt very much that we'd have
> solved problems that he hasn't.
>
>> The Problem Issues with a 1GHz 17" PowerBook G4
>> -The 100MHz bus
>> -The 1MB L3 cache
>
>  Not sure why these would be a problem: perhaps some tricky timing
> issues.
>
>> -The nVidia GeForce Go 440 card
>> -The Airport Extreme wireless card (Broadcom chipset)
>> -The USB software modem
>
>   No go for any of these, except as mentioned by Peter Hessler that
> XFree will support the NVidia card soon. But, FreeBSD/PPC doesn't
> have XFree yet, hopefully soon.
>
>>     Thanks in advance for your time.  I noticed that there was a 
>> binary FreeBSD driver on nVidia's website for my particular card.  
>> That shocked me.  Is there some reason that nVidia would come up with 
>> a FreeBSD binary and not a Linux one?
>
>  The FreeBSD/i386 Nvidia driver is relatively recent: there's no PPC
> one. A Linux/i386 driver has been available from Nvidia for a long
> time.
>
> later,
>
> Peter.
>
Peter,
	Yeah, Ben is great.  He amazes me.  He actually gave me the tip to 
pass the "nol3" directive to the kernel to get it to even boot up.  He 
mentioned that the L3 cache was problematic.  Funny thing is that if 
you go look at the current model for the 17", they have gone back to 
the 512K SRAM L2 cache.  This unit has eBay written all over it more 
and more with each passing day.
	Sorry for not checking that the FreeBSD driver was i386 only; I should 
have known. :^)

Regards,
-- 
Barry C. Hawkins
All Things Computed
site: www.allthingscomputed.com
weblog: www.yepthatsme.com