[Sugar-devel] Adventures with GPA Macbooks

[Caroline Meeks]

We worked with the 4th graders in the computer lab today.
The computer lab is not working well for us this year.  Its booked solid so
its hard to get time.  More computers are broken so there will not always
be enough for everyone to have one. Internet is mysteriously broken on
Sugar.  The Computer teacher was not happy that the machines needed to get
rebooted to Windows when the next class came in.  We can't use the projector
we used this summer and its hard to get to the screen which is stored in the
now always busy auditorium. etc.
Bottom line is we'll get a lot farther if we can use the macbook laptop
cart.

Anurag and I spent a couple hours trying things today.

The first time we tried to boot with the CD and the USB it went through 4
lines of looking for USB ports. Then assumine drive cache then it booted!
 All seemed ok but the mouse did not work.

We tried again and it wouldn't go past the first isolink line. We did not
get to the 1 second to start splash screen.

The we tried to boot back to Mac OSX. We got a grey forbidden sign. In
verbose mode it had errors about lo0oking for USB and root.  We tried safe
mode. We tried holding down x to force OSX boot. Finally we took out the
battery and it booted back to OSX.

Bravely we tried again with the CD and USB. We got the iso linux line and
teh blue splash screen. But then "not responding" and it stopped.

When we tried to boot back into OSX it was grey forbidden sign again.
Removing the battery again fixed this.

Next we tried a Puppy CD. It failed to boot, got stuck at loading kernal
modules

Next we tried the Sugar CD. We got to the green screen asking about language
but the keyboard did not work so we can
t get any farther.  Note that when we got the USB to boot earlier the
keyboard did work, it was the mouse that didn't work.

It seems like there is an issue finding the USB on these macs and the Linux
system seems to leave the computer in a bad state.  We have never seen this
on any other MacBooks or iMacs.

I think the next thing i want to try is a CD version of Bill's Floppy boot.
It works differently doing a full linux boot then booting another kernal on
the USB.

We have some screenshots, including the macbook hardware, vidoes etc. we can
add later today.

Any clues welcome.



-- 
Caroline Meeks
Solution Grove
Caroline at SolutionGrove.com

617-500-3488 - Office
505-213-3268 - Fax
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