Lo and behold, the Missing Link hath returned!
Or, quite possibly, "returneth". :-)
Damn! Two full weeks since my last diary entry and
the worst part is
that this is becuase there has been absolutely nothing
to write for two
weeks. :-(
The new G4 finally showed up and I'm a happy
camper. My favourite email
client, Mailsmith,
is finally on hardware that can support it (it's a bit
resource hungry) and
I'm starting to catch up on email again. Will make a
nice change to the last
year or so when I've been keeping up on work-email
using just Micros~1 Outlook
and pretty much ignoring everything else.
Mucking about a bit, and asking a cow orker for
pointers, I finally figured
out that when Intel talks about the "PRO/100" Ethernet
controller they don't
actually mean the "PRO/100" Ethernet
controller. What they
really mean is "an Ethernet controller in
the PRO/100 family".
*sigh* The standard eepro100.o module won't work
on my particular box. I had
to go fetch a new e100.o driver from their web site.
When I finally found it, everything was great, but
figuring out that
"PRO/100 ne PRO/100" and then finding
the requisite driver was a
royal PITA. Anyways... Bygones!
This means I now have the basics for my new
development system. I'm still
lacking sound support (AC7 drivers, anyone? Alsa?),
but I can probably get
around that with a spare sound card I have lying
around. I don't need that
glorious sound; if I can play CDs without the more
glaring artefacts I'm
good to go.
The other snag is connectivity. The local Telco keeps
promising DSL, but it
has yet to materialize and dialup charges are
killing me! If I don't
get anything definite from the telco I'll have to buy
either an ISDN router
(Cisco 803? Low end Zyxel?) or an ISDN card with
Linux support and use my
RH box as a router. The latter is probably the best bet
since I'll probably
have to do that anyway when they finally roll out DSL
around this dump.
In brighter news, I've been out flat on my back with the
flu for the last week.
You wouldn't believe the sheer bloodyminded malice
of the bugs that are going
around up here these days. I've been hurting all over
and seeing pink elephants
doing summersaults in my bookshelves.
How is this good news? Because I think the week of
enforced inactivity has
cured me somewhat of tendencies towards burnout
that has been nipping at my
heels lately. Now that the worst is over, I'll take my
runny nose and
only-occational-cough back to work and I'm looking
forward to it. :-)
While I'm at it, I'm going to set a new precedent for
myself. I've mostly
ignored the tendencies around here to perpetrate
Conversation by Diary up
to now. Mostly because I don't usually have the time to
keep up with recent
diary entries, but also because I think it's a horribly
inefficient way of
communicating. Even a "Web Board" would be better,
but a traditional
mailinglist or a newsgroup would have been perfect.
Anyways, I've decided
to make an effort to keep up and see how it works out.
So...
ian: Apple didn't include any of the
GNU toolset in Mac OS X
because rms insisted they'd have to open the whole
OS -- including Quartz,
Carbon, Cocoa, the works! -- if they did that. However,
the tools are
available in Darwin and you can easily get them from
Apple's web site and
install them on your Mac OS X box.