17" PowerBook G4 Problems

[#2!]

I used a live CD burned onto a DVD-RW and it booted up and worked great. So I installed it using the entire hard drive, Ran Update manager, enabled the driver for the wifi card. Before I was using 10.5 with all recent updates done.

A few things don't work. It fails whenever I try to connect my Bluetooth mouse and keyboard, CD drive doesn't mount anything, I thought it would bring up the restricted nvidia driver but it doesn't so the video is slow and sketchy.

[linuxopjemac]

you can install "bluetooth manager" or "blueman" for your Bluetooth device. The CD drive is a known bug (see this thread (http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1323153). There are no nvidia drivers for PPC. you have to live with the nouveau driver. What is your exact Mac Model or even better, what model nvidia card do you have ?

[linuxopjemac]

I checked, the only 17'' PowerBook G4 with nVidia card was the 17'' introduced in January 2003.
Screen: 17" active matrix TFT
Monitor: 24 bit 1440x900
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce4 440 Go 4x AGP

try this in Xorg.conf:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
BusID "PCI:0:16:0"
Driver "nouveau"
EndSection

The BusID is probably not correct, you will have to find it yourself with
lspci | grep VGA

output for example:

01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4
MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1)

where 01:00.0 is the BusID, which would translate into:
PCI:1:0:0

another way is to
Xorg -scanpci


Instead of the "nouveau" driver, you might also want to try the "nv" driver, don't know if that makes a difference.

[linuxopjemac]

to find the corrsponding modelines for your monitor, you should read this:
http://mac.linux.be/content/black-screen-or-missing-gui

and read the part about fbset

[linuxopjemac]

if you find a working Xorg.conf, please post it here.

[linuxopjemac]

here you find a working xorg.conf for a powerbook g4 with ati. I would just copy and paste the monitor section from there and change ati into "Configured Video Device"

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PowerPCKnownIssues

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
HorizSync 60-60
VertRefresh 43-117
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Configured Video Device"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
EndSection

[linuxopjemac]

This would then add up to the following Xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
BusID "PCI:0:16:0"
Driver "nouveau"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
HorizSync 60-60
VertRefresh 43-117
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Configured Video Device"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
EndSection

The modelines may be wrong...see post above

[linuxopjemac]

This would then add up to the following Xorg.conf file:

Section "Device"
Identifier "Configured Video Device"
BusID "PCI:0:16:0"
Driver "nouveau"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Configured Monitor"
HorizSync 60-60
VertRefresh 43-117
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Configured Video Device"
Monitor "Configured Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1440x900"
EndSubSection
EndSection

The refresh rates of your monitor might be wrong, see post above