I got a binary package of ghc from Wolfgang yesterday. But I haven’t had luck with bootstrapping ghc yet. I will give it another try. But meanwhile, I have downloaded alex 2.01 and happy 1.15 and compiled with some minor changes. I had to add the platform to the configure.ac and regenerate configure script. The rest just goes smoothly.

case $HostPlatform in
...
i[[3456]]86-*-darwin*)    
    HostPlatform=i386-apple-darwin    
    TargetPlatform=i386-apple-darwin #hack
    BuildPlatform=i386-apple-darwin #hack
        HostPlatform_CPP='i386_apple_darwin'
        HostArch_CPP='powerpc'
        HostVendor_CPP='apple'
        HostOS_CPP='darwin'
        ;;

Emacs: pulled the source code from CVS. Built a Carbon version. Works fine.

ESP Ghostscript: downloaded source code (and libjpeg) compiled and installed. It does not include the gs fonts though. Got the PPC version of 7.07 and extracted the font package and installed.

Hugs: works out of box. Not surprising.

GHC: downloaded Wolfgang Thaller’s package and it runs over Rosetta fine, although slow.

I finally made the sound card work under OS X86 for two PCs. First one is a PowerEdge 400SC. South bridge is Intel ICH5 chipset. The sound card is SoundMax AD1980. It was not working just because of the codec kext. These are the steps I took:

• Download EVEREST from http://www.lavalys.hu/index.php, which is a windows software for checking the Codec ID. I don’t know, but there should be some Linux equivalent out there, I guess. If you are reading this and happen to know, please let me know, thanks. Installing Windows just because of this is not worth.
• Edit “/System/Library/Extensions/AppleAC97Audio.kext/Contents/PlugIns/AppleAC97CodecAD198x.kext/Contents/Info.plist”, add “ADS70 in the Vendor ID list:

  <dict>
      <key>AD198x</key>
      <dict>
          <key>CFBundleIdentifier</key>
          <string>com.apple.driver.AppleAC97CodecAD198x</string>
          <key>IOClass</key>
          <string>AppleAC97CodecAD198x</string>
          <key>IOProbeScore</key>
          <integer>10000</integer>
          <key>IOProviderClass</key>
          <string>IOAC97CodecDevice</string>
          <key>PNPVendorID</key>
          <string>ADS70 ADS75 ADS74 ADS73 ADS72</string>
      </dict>
  </dict>
  

• Reboot and it works fine. My PCI ID is 8086:24D5

The other one is ridiculous. It’s an ECS 848P-A motherboard. South bridge chipset is also Intel ICH5, with Realtek ALC655 (somehow “lspci” on linux doesn’t list it, but I figured it out by looking up the manual of the mobo). It was not working when I first attempted just because the jack was bad, or at least it now appears so. I used the jack on the front panel and now it’s working. I tried both Windows and Linux and it’s always the same case so I assume the jack is bad, not os x. I bought this board refurbished when my old 865 board went bad. The sound card probably never worked properly but I never struggled coz I had a couple of extra SB Live PCI cards.

Tiger 10.4.5 with Maxxuss patches. I don’t have a DVD drive on any of my PCs but I managed to get it installed on another PC and bring the HD back. Application wise, I have these stuffs working natively so far: emacs, tetex, espgs, firefox, mplayer, iterm.

Hardwares are causing a little more problems. I thought the SB Live sound card was working but unfortunately the sound becomes crumbled and chipped after playing for about 5 minutes. I tried two cards, the same result. The onboard card is an ICH5, I believe, at least the PCI ID says so: 8086:24D5. OS X didn’t report any problem, but there is just no audio. This card does not work on Linux either, same symptons. I am installing a Windows to see if I can figure something out.

Video card has a mouse tearing problem, which is a little annoying. I have read about complaints from other users but haven’t found a perfect solution yet.

Anyway, there seems to be a long way to go before I can totally count on an OSX86.

Bumped into this DVI/PDF previewer today. I have always been complaining about the performance of MacGhostView, which is unbearable. I almost pulled out the source code of GV and compiled an X11 version. This TeXniscope thing seems pretty fast, even if it converts PS to PDF using an external distiller. I don’t have anything against PDF, but I just use PSTricks, so that I have to rely on PS.