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Date: Fri, 12 Dec 2003 15:48:57 +1000
From: Peter Grehan <grehan@freebsd.org>
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To: Barry Hawkins <ly5t5@allthingscomputed.com>
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cc: FreeBSD PowerPC <freebsd-ppc@freebsd.org>
Subject: Re: FreeBSD on an nVidia-based PowerBook G4 17" 1GHz
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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.