Macintosh

My Radeon 9000 card arrived today. It took less than 5 minutes t install and it worked immediately. The first thing I noticed was the shadow cursor which indicates Quartz Extreme is supported. iTunes visual effects give frame rates up to 60 FPS, vs. 15-20 with the old Rage 128 Pro. I’ll write a review later after I try some more software with it.

According to MacWarehouse, my Radeon 9000 shipped yesterday. I should receive it tomorrow, hopefully.

After several panic-free weeks, I got a kernel panic this morning. I finally got a panic log written:

panic(cpu 0): IOSCSIPeripheralDeviceType05: attached at free()
Latest stack backtrace for cpu 0:
      Backtrace:
         0x000856CC 0x00085AFC 0x000287A8 0x00214E00 0x19C92464 0x19C8B218 0x1A345954 0x1A349BF8
         0x1A34AFB0 0x0003EAB4 0x0003E9BC
      Kernel loadable modules in backtrace (with dependencies):
         com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIMultimediaCommandsDevice(1.2.2)@0x1a340000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IODVDStorageFamily(1.2)@0x1a28e000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIBlockCommandsDevice(1.2.2)@0x1a117000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOCDStorageFamily(1.2)@0x1a231000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily(1.2.2)@0x19c87000
            dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily(1.2.3)@0x19d47000
         com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily(1.2.2)@0x19c87000
Proceeding back via exception chain:
   Exception state (sv=0x01813C80)
      PC=0x00000000; MSR=0x0000D030; DAR=0x00000000; DSISR=0x00000000; LR=0x00000000; R1=0x00000000;
 XCP=0x00000000 (Unknown)

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 6.3:
Sat Dec 14 03:11:25 PST 2002; root:xnu/xnu-344.23.obj~4/RELEASE_PPC

Note that I have no SCSI devices. Has anyone seen this?

Nobody even came close to predicting Steve’s announcements today. Video iPod? No new PowerBooks? At least the $50 iApp bundle was more or less right.

None of the rumor sites had even a hint of Keynote and nothing about 12″ or 17″ PowerBooks.

The new models make my powerbook choice even more difficult. I really like the 12″ – it’s almost EXACTLY what I wanted: a G4-based iBook. The 17″ looks really tempting, though it’s too big to carry around a lot. I’d really like to replace my desktop machine with a laptop.

My friend Justin bought a new 1 GHz TiBook a few days ago.

I plan to replace my 500 MHz iBook Dual USB in a few months and I’m trying to decide whether to get a new 800 MHz iBook (or whatever Apple introduces Tuesday) or a TiBook, which will then become my primary system.

Right now I use my G4/500 AGP Minitower as my primary system and sync it to my iBook before I travel. The iBook is a wonderful machine to travel with, but I find it painfully slow. Also, keeping all of the installed applications on both machines up to date is a pain. Having one machine as my primary system which is also my travel machine would make that a lot easier.

The TiBook is also a lot faster than my current G4 minitower, so it would definitely be fast enough to be my primary system. However, laptops are less comfortable to work with (although an external keyboard & monitor would help). I also don’t like the TiBook’s limited Airport range & fragile case.

I’ve set up a Macrumor mailing list at MacMegasite.

Since I reformatted & did a fresh install Wednesday, I haven’t seen a single kernel panic. I was previously getting 1-2 a day. I have all of my extensions installed except MU Menu & Fink. I’ll probably install Fink later today so I can install X11.

This may be my next G4 upgrade. I just ordered a Radeon 9000, which should arrive on the 15th. Next, I’d like to replace the DVD-RAM drive with something more useful, like a SuperDrive.

The Kernel panics still persisted for the last few days, now at random times. I created this thread on Apple’s discussion board and found that several other people are having the same problem.

This morning I backed up my system to my 120G external drive, reformatted, did a CLEAN install of 10.2, and restored all of my applications & settings. I now have my system pretty much back to normal. I’ll see if it remains stable now.

I still haven’t reinstalled Fink & XDarwin, which I need to run SourceOffsite.

I’ve started a No Mozilla for MacOS 9 after seeing the petition to bring Mozilla to MacOS 9. I believe doing so would be a mistake for the Mozilla development team, as they’d be wasting time & effort that could better be spent elsewhere.