Re: Is any part of Ethernet circuitry tied to Open Firmware?

Mark Conrad <this.is@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

In article <1ij07v3.1s89mtb135eer1N%dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>, David
Empson <dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:

Did you install Apple's Boot Camp drivers for Windows, which are
included on the Leopard DVD? Without those, you can't make use of
several hardware features on the Mac, and the Ethernet port might be one
of them.

There was a belief, among me and others, that the separate
installation of drivers was no longer needed when Apple's
Boot Camp went out of beta, and Apple _included_ Boot Camp
already installed during a normal OS X install procedure.

I hope that I've shaken you of that belief.

To explain it more fully:

The only significant things that changed with Boot Camp and Leopard are
that Boot Camp went out of beta, and Apple included the Windows driver
installer on the Leopard DVD (when accessed from Windows) rather than
requiring a big download from Apple and burning the drivers to CD.

The only part of Boot Camp which exists within Mac OS X (in an
installation of Mac OS X 10.5 on your hard drive) is the Boot Camp
Assistant application, which does little more than repartition your hard
drive (it is a specialised version of Disk Utility), start the Windows
installation, and provide documentation.

The installation guide you get by clicking on the button in Boot Camp
Assistant clearly describes three steps:

1. Use Boot Camp Assistant to partition the hard drive.
2. Install Windows.
3. Install the Boot Camp drivers for Windows.

It tells you where to find the drivers (by inserting the 10.5 DVD while
running Windows), and that they are required for many features including
networking.

It wouldn't be possible for Mac OS X to have a pre-installed copy of the
Boot Camp drivers for Windows, because you can't install Windows drivers
before you've installed the Windows operating system.

Windows itself wouldn't be able to go looking for the drivers on your
Mac OS X partition, because it doesn't understand the Mac file system.

(The Windows-accessible portion of the 10.5 DVD is in ISO-9660/Joliet
format, rather than a Mac-specific format.)

When you are installing Windows, you are booted from a CD supplied by
Microsoft, which knows nothing specific about Apple's hardware, and you
aren't running any code supplied by Apple (apart from the firmware
inside the computer).

Apple can't "take over" the Windows installation procedure, so their
drivers must be installed after Windows has been installed.

This is the situation with a Mac and Boot Camp. Apple doesn't licence
Windows from Microsoft, and therefore doesn't supply it to you as an OEM
version (with drivers pre-installed). They instead tell you to use a
standard version of Windows and then install the Mac hardware drivers
which are included on the Leopard DVD (when you access the DVD from
Windows).

BINGO - you have solved a very gnarly problem, congratulations!

...and here I thought you were just another hypercritical person
like Jolly Roger, you who delights in putting people down with snide
remarks like "That question doesn't even make sense."

You misunderstood my intention with that posting, and I'm sorry if my
wording came out in a way which gave you the impression I was trying to
put you down.

Your question quite literally didn't make sense (you were talking about
concepts which were mutually exclusive or had nothing to do with each
other), so I explained why it didn't make sense and tried to make an
educated guess at the real problem you were encountering.

I was on the right track - I thought it was a Windows driver problem,
but your mention of partitioning methods had me sufficiently confused
that I thought you were getting different behaviour from two methods of
installing Windows, rather than Mac OS X vs Windows.

The key issue is that you didn't provide enough information about your
problem in the original post. You had jumped to the wrong conclusion
about where the problem lay. You then asked a question based on your
conclusion rather than describing the circumstances in which you
encountered the problem.

If you had explained in your original post that you couldn't access your
DSL modem from Windows but it worked fine in Mac OS X, I would have been
able to give the correct answer in my first post on this thread.

As is always the case, asking a better or more accurate question will
hopefully give you a better answer. :-)

You would not post a mean-spirited remark like that, would you ;-)

No, I wouldn't. I try to refrain from attacking people.

Glad to hear you have it working now.
--
David Empson
dempson@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
.

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