Will Apple fix Eve's whine? July 26, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : eve , add a commentLadies and gentlemen, I present Apple knowledge base article 303365. I’d heard about the presence of new logic boards but it seems now there’s some official confirmation of the problem. According to this report, someone at Apple even admitted it was the CPU whine issue instead of the LCD whine, which I don’t have.
I just noticed this. I have a warped screen like in the photo there but it wasn’t enough to make me ask for a replacement because it closes properly. I’m tempted to ask them to fix it when they replace the logic board but I’m scared that might mean a new LCD and the one I’ve got works well.
I’ll update the story when I’ve rung AppleCare.
Update 27 July 2006
I chickened out when it came to the screen. I’d rather have a slightly warped screen that works well than get a dodgy one.
I have a case number! Now I just need to go to an authorised repair shop to get the logic board replaced.
Create EFI programs on Mac OS X July 26, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : Uncategorized , add a commentI tried to get Mac-hosted EFI development going but it never really went anywhere. I think a big part of the problem was my lack of bandwidth. I’m sure if I’d downloaded enough tarballs I would have eventually found a combination that worked.
It seems that others have managed to do what I could not. This page shows the steps required to get a Mac-hosted EFI development environment running.
I guess I’ll go dust off my /efi partition and see what I can do with it.
Isaac has teeth July 23, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : isaac , add a commentIsaac has cut his first teeth. As usual, he was different to Emily. He actually chews on teething toys.
He can also pull himself to a standing position on the couches. No signs of walking yet but he’s definitely got the leg strength now.
He’s quite mobile with his crawling now. He’s starting to find the red lines. He doesn’t like being told no.
We’ve noticed that he’s not really happy going to strangers or even me while Bree is around. We’re going to work on that.
QuartzTextEnabler gets its first update in 2 years July 18, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : programs , add a commentIt’s been 2 years since I got QuartzTextEnabler to the point where it worked for me. In that time I haven’t needed to rebuild it or change anything but when I got Eve, I realised I was going to have to do something. You see, I still use AppleWorks on a regular basis and it’s Carbon text rendering still looks crap.
I was stuck for a while because QuartzTextEnabler relies on APE which wasn’t Universal but I noticed today that it had been updated so I fired up XCode, managed to get it building a Universal binary and now I can enjoy Quartz text rendering in AppleWorks again.
I’ve left up the old version because the new one won’t work on Panther.
If you’re crazy (like me) and you still use AppleWorks, even on an Intel Mac, you need QuartzTextEnabler. You’ll wonder how you ever lived without it :)
Wifi works, Whine stops July 17, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : eve , add a commentWhoa!
I think I’ve just entered Nirvana!
I was playing around and trying some stuff and it seems like:
1) My wireless isn’t dropping (I even updated the router to the new firmware again)
2) My whine is gone
What did I do? Too much to be sure what the fix was. I’ll try to think of everything I did though.
I had coconutWiFi installed (it’s better than the MBAirport program I’d been using before) and noticed that my machine had a problem connecting to my network at boot time. Not a good sign. Quitting the app seems to let Apple’s software do its work. If I didn’t quit the app I couldn’t even see my home network (it broadcasts it’s SSID so it appears in the menu). I stopped using coconutWifi, intending to write an small AppleScript to run it after a delay (to give Apple’s software time to do its work) but I never got that far because by the time I’d finnished, my Wifi was working.
I was hunting around the Apple discussion forums when I found coconutWifi. While there I found a tip that said to disable IPv6 for speedier name resolution. It seems to work but the real test will be if it solves the problems Bree’s had. I don’t know if it’s because the router doesn’t do IPv6 properly or what. I have never found an actual use for IPv6 yet so I don’t mind turning it off.
I trashed com.apple.airport.preferences.plist since I read somewhere on the Apple discussion forums that this can fix the wireless problem. I didn’t test this long enough before moving on to know if it was working or not.
The other main thing that’s discussed about the MBP is the whine issue. I found 2 separate “solutions”. The first (modifying an Apple kext’s Info.plist file) didn’t work for me. A variation (removing the kext) has been reported to work but totally disables CPU throttling (ie. they run at full speed all the time) so it has a big battery/heat impact. The second one (forcibly disabling the “C4″ power saving feature on the CPU) did work but I’m told that one also has a pretty severe battery hit (30-60 mins).
I remembered that there had been some releases from the speedit crew I’d never got around to trying so I downloaded an app called speedctl that claimed to be a whine killer. It works but it also does some funky things with CPU scaling. For instance, when your machine is idle enough, it turns off a CPU. If you kill speedctl while the CPU is disabled it stays disabled. When you stress the machine again, it enables both CPUs and lets them work hard. I think I noticed an oddity from MenuMeters. It was showing massive workload on the second CPU but top (and others) showed no such load. Perhaps it’s because of how the the frequency of the CPU is adjusted.
Anyway, of all the methods I’ve tried so far, my favourite till now has been my customised, daemonised version of QuietMBP but I think I’m leaning towards speedctl now. Unlike all the other methods, it doesn’t prevent power saving or cause excessive load so it should have the smallest hit to battery life.
Update 18 July 2006
Noooooooooooooo!
My Wifi was cutting out again. I’m running coconutWifi again but this time it doesn’t seem to kill the first connection after boot (yay).
I have noticed a very bad bug in speedctl. From what I can piece together, it’s a user-space program that uses undocumented Apple kernel interfaces to put the second core into deep sleep mode when there’s not much load. Theoretically this stops the whine. In reality it does too but it also confuses things because the OS suddenly thinks you’ve got a single core instead of two. Now for the real problem, the app isn’t driven by interrupts of events but by polling. Twice a second, it checks the load and turns the second core on or off. The problem is that this allows brief whines to come out of the machine. To my ears, this is almost as bad as the constant whine. I’m back to QuietMBP again and the whine is gone all the time.
If the increw forums weren’t down, I’d try to figure out how I might be able to use speedit 0.5’s features to prevent the whine. It’s supposedly possible but I don’t think anyone outside of increw actually knows what the speedit settings do, much less what they need to be set to in order to stop the whine.
Sigh. Maybe next time.
Kid Update July 17, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac , add a commentBree took Isaac to the paediatrician so we’ve adjusted his meds a bit. He’s still on Losec to reduce the effects of reflux. He’s now on liquid paraffin to help relieve constipation (he did his first soft poo in months today). We’re changing his diet a bit, including things like prunes so that we don’t need to keep giving him the paraffin.
We’ve got Isaac’s mattress angled so he doesn’t have to lie flat. We recently got a seat thing for him. It’s like a walker but without the wheels (walkers teach bad walking style). We needed something because he’s too old for the bouncer (he can virtually climb out of it).
Isaac can crawl now. He’s not terribly fast but he’s getting better all the time. The hallway is now one of the grottiest places in our house. I was sweeping the floor on the weekend and the broom was sticking to the floor. Ew.
Both kids have been sick for about a week now. Just a cold but a pain nonetheless. Emily was up till around 2am on Saturday because she kept being unable to breathe every time she went to sleep.
Isaac sleeps but won't eat chunks July 7, 2006
Posted by a1291762 in : emily, isaac , add a commentIsaac’s long battle with sleep seems to be over. He’s been sleeping all night an has even managed to sleep in some days. Like Emily, our insistence on him staying in bed until 7 means he’s happy to wake up earlier and sit there quietly in his bed.
Isaac is also starting to crawl. Not just the commando-style he was doing before but real crawling.
Despite these advances, he is still barely eating enough. He’s reduced his bottle size but he won’t eat anything other than smooth, thick ’solids’. Bree’s tried chunks, even really small ones but he won’t take them.
With a little twist, Emily can finally say her name. wOOt!
The twist is that we’ve changed her name to Ellie. When she can manage Emily, she can have that name back.