MorphOS 3.2 on a Powerbook G4 - some issues

[commodorejohn]

So I nabbed myself an Aluminum Powerbook on the cheap (15" 1.25GHz, 1GB RAM) and figured I'd give MOS a shot since I was going to have to do a fresh install in any case (previous owner, this was not hardware well-suited for Leopard.) It installed nicely and runs fine, but I'm having a couple issues. The big problem is that it doesn't seem to believe that it has a touchpad, and thinks there's a mouse connected instead. This wouldn't be too much of a problem except that Powerbooks have no right button, and since it doesn't think it has a touchpad it won't use the provided touchpad workarounds, which means I'm having to rely on IControl's keyboard shortcut to bring up menus. Other issues are that the keyboard controls for things like brightness and volume don't work either, and Chrysalis loaded up a bunch of stupid crap in the title bar that I can't figure out how to get rid of, and installed an ugly icon pack that I'm not sure how to revert from.

Anybody got any advice on getting this stuff sorted out?

[ChaosLord]

If you plug a real Mouse in then the RMB will work, right?

[commodorejohn]

Yes, right button works on a USB mouse. Kinda defeats the purpose of a laptop though.

Additional issue: it doesn't seem to go into sleep mode when I close the lid.

[nicholas]

1. Format, reinstall, don't install Chrysalis again.
2) Option- Left click for RMB same as on OSX.
3. Install Grunch and use it to install the software you want.

[commodorejohn]

Hmm...I thought I tried option-click, but I'll give it another shot.

[commodorejohn]

Well, I reformatted and installed MOS without Chrysalis (had to re-partition to set up an OSX install anyway.) Still no luck getting it to realize it's using a touchpad, but I got option-click working by simply adding a "hotkey" for it in the system settings.

[kickstart]

@commodorejohn

I have a compatible powerbook but trackpad never worked under morphos, i need to use a usb mouse, keyboard retroillumination doenst work too, after many installations with and without dual boot and same result.

[commodorejohn]

Huh. I'd like to know why they bothered to include a trackpad settings page if it's not going to use them... :|

[zylesea]

Additional issue: it doesn't seem to go into sleep mode when I close the lid.

There's no real sleep mode in MorphOS, but should switch off the display though when lid closed.

[commodorejohn]

That doesn't really help much, when it's still burning battery from the CPU idling - and it's not a good situation heat-wise, either.

[nicholas]

Huh. I'd like to know why they bothered to include a trackpad settings page if it's not going to use them... :|

What model of Powerbook are you using?

I have a 5,8 and the trackpad works properly. Two finger tap for right click etc.

There are two possibilities here:

1) Your trackpad is broken
2) There is a bug in MorphOS that affects your particular model

My advice is:

1) Send a subscribe email to the official MorphOS mailing list morphos-subscribe@ml.morphos-team.net
2) Go to #morphos channel on freenode and ask for help
3) Register an account at http://morphzone.info and ask for advice
4) If after all that you can't get it to work properly and believe it to be a bug in MorphOS then:

When you are looking at the Ambient desktop, move your mouse pointer to the screen title bar and select the menu column labelled as "Ambient". Now, choose "About MorphOS" and view the "Support" tab. Read the on-screen instructions and fill out a report. Finally, press the "Generate report" button

Taken from: http://www.morphos.de/faq

[commodorejohn]

The trackpad works fine in OSX, so I doubt it's a problem with the hardware. I'll ask around.

[nicholas]

The trackpad works fine in OSX, so I doubt it's a problem with the hardware. I'll ask around.

Well you really should go through the official channels as listed below so that an official bug ticket can be created and then get the issue fixed for the release of MOS 3.3 (which is apparently due very soon.)

[Kronos]

1.25GHz suggest an older PowerBook (one of those only supported since 3.2), these have ADB keyboards and trackpad which brings some problem compared to USB variants used in PB5.6-5.9
a) left and right "command"/"Amiga" key send the same keycode
b) no support for 2 finger gestures on the trackpad

a) same issue applies for all iBooks (last models have the 2 finger USB trackpad, but all have ADB keyboards), I worked around this issue by reassigning some shortcuts to ALT -.... instead of LAMIGA-...

b) AFAIR there were some attempts to trick around this issue, but not sure what ever came of it (don't have anything with ADB-trackpad here)

[commodorejohn]

I can do without 2-finger gestures now that I've got option-click working, but it'd really be nice for tap-click at least to work...