Laptop keyboard and trackpad work without cached extensions

[kwoodrin]

Hello folks,

 

This is my first post--so go easy on me here. I have read as much as anyone and just want to look for any valuable insight that might help me understand this issue.

 

Here's how it goes. Installed JaS 10.4.8 on Gateway MX8711 laptop. Works superb minus PCMCIA.

 

Ok, so here is my mistake. I just couldn't leave well enough alone! Although I have read through everyone having problems with this and that, all of my hardware was working well and it just kept eating at me thinking that if I could just get the PCMCIA working, I would be in "fat city!"

 

So, here's where things take a descending spiral. For two solid days I tried more variations of edits on the IOPCCardFamily.kext than I care to go into. Suffice it to say--I don't think it's gonna happen.

 

My last ditch effort was something I KNEW I shouldn't do, but you know how you get into that crazy irrational "this thing WILL work mode?" ...Well, I was there. So, I download a set of glitchman's patched kexts, backed up mine, then copied his patched kexts into the extensions directory, deleted the extensions cache, and repaired all permissions.

 

What happened? Nothing. Same issue: PCMCIA does nothing. System reports an error 0x0 starting PCMCIA, so I figure "ah forget it--it's not worth it any more." I copied my original kexts back rebooted, deleted cached extensions, repaired permissions and rebooted. Everything worked as normal.

 

However, after a ride from my office to the house (about 1 minute) I discovered a suprise! The ghost of Steve has come to haunt me! Indeed, little did I know that now I would no longer have a built-in keyboard and mouse! Well, actually, after some testing I found that the keyboard and mouse only fail to operate if the extensions cache files are present at boot up.

 

I have tried all kinds of things but the problem remains. For now I made an automator script to delete the files. I just click it and it asks for my password and then I shut down--but that sucks!

 

Anyone got any suggestions that might actually solve this problem as opposed to working around it?

[kwoodrin]

I wanted to add an update to this. I am suprised in all this time that no one replied to this post. The solution was posted no where but I finally figured out that if I added -f boot flag to the kernel startup parameters in the boot.plist file that the mkext file would be rebuild each time on boot and that the keyboard and mouse would work every time.

 

I have been doing this for weeks now and it works great.

 

I imagine that this could be the solution for a lot of devices that I see mentioned by people that seemed to work initially but somewhere along the lines stopped working unless they boot into safe boot mode or delete the extensions cache and restart.

 

As another option (sucky, but still an option), if you do not want to change boot parameters, I did employ another solution temporarily. I built an automator (apple script) program that I could click which delete the extensions cache. I had never used automator before and it is very easy, so I won't even bother to post a download for the program. You can easily make on of your own. Just run the program each time before you shutdown--however, if you forget to run it before you shut down, then you will have no keyboard and mouse next time you boot up.

 

Adding the -f kernel flag to boot.plist is DEFINITELY the way to go!

[gaoty133]

Could you please explain more details on how to change the boot.plist and where is the boot.plist located.