quirky boot happenings

[roccorobb]

I've got a reasonably stable system now: XP/10.4.5 on a Compaq R3000 (r3420us), but there are some 'quirks' that i was wondering if others were experiencing:

 

 

1) CPU Throttle: My AMD 64 3200+ (2.0 Ghz) either runs at full throttle, or at 4x stepping (800 mghz). What causes it to run at one or the other? Well, if my last boot was into windows, it runs at 10x, whereas if my last boot was osX, it runs at 4x. In other words, i have to run windows in between each osX run, otherwise it takes a year to boot and is extremely sluggish once it does. I have about zero control over ACPI or anything else in my BIOS, so don't bother advising toward that end. Oh, and by the way, i'm only guessing about the 'exact' stepping that is occurring (could be 6x or 8x i suppose). I'm basing it on the fan speeds, preceived agility of the system, and the fact that the processor usually defaults to it's highest or lowest power capability.

 

2) Keyboard/Trakpad: At first, i thought my onboard keyboard and trackpad just wouldn't work, so i plugged in some externals and they worked fine. Then one day, i noticed that my trackpad was working. On another occasion, it was my keyboard. Since then, i think i've narrowed it down to this:

 

- If i boot with no external devices plugged in, my trackpad will work until i try to use my keyboard. THen both tp and mouse are disabled.

 

- If i boot with the external mouse and keyboard plugged in, neither of the onboard controllers will work for the remainder of the boot.

 

- If i boot with only the mouse plugged in, both onboard TP and keyboard are fully functional. I can actually unplug the external mouse after boot and use the laptop controls.

 

3) Ethernet: My Realtek fast ethernet card is identified and is listed as functional, but the computer is telling me that the card is configuring it's own IP address, and it is a 169.xxx.xxx.xxx. In otherwords, it is not connected to the internet. Besides the typical things that are done to reset the IP address, i also tried logging into windows, writing down the IP address, and then going back into osX and manually configuring the address. No luck. I've yet to try connecting to the T1 connection at school. I don't know that it will be any different.

 

4) SSE stuff: I am a noob's noob; all i know about sse2/sse3 is that 3 is better for an osx install, and that the AMD 64's (not turion) are not compliant with sse3. However, i've heard that itunes and other programs crash without sse3 support and/or a patch. I installed from the Myzar install dvd, and from what i understand it is not patched for sse2-only machines. Yet, i've not had any programs crash on me yet. The system does feel a little sluggish overall, though. Windows don't open immediately, but they also don't visibly scroll into place. i don't have an appleTPMACPI kext sucking resources, so is this slight sluggishness the result of running an sse2 machine? Would a patch make things run faster, or is it only useful for getting programs/rosetta to work?

 

Let me know if you have similar problems, or answers to any of these. Thanks!

[roccorobb]

oh, and one more thing:

 

in the OSX boot loader, i believe my NTFS windows partition is the default, though i've heard that is not possible. What i mean is, if i let it count down and perform a default boot without pressing any buttons, it boots windows. The NTFS partition is listed as hdd 01 and the HFS+ partion as hdd 02, or something like that.

 

quirky!