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.