Downtown Doug Brown🔒 SSL Verified

Table of Contents

• ↓ Thoughts from a combined Apple/Linux/Windows geek.
• ↓ Finding a broken trace on my old Mac with the help of its ROM diagnostics
• ↓ Debugging BeagleBoard USB boot with a sniffer: fixing omap_loader on modern PCs
• ↓ An update about the hidden Performa 550 recovery partition
• ↓ Finding a 27-year-old easter egg in the Power Mac G3 ROM
• ↓ Modifying an HDMI dummy plug’s EDID using a Raspberry Pi
• ↓ Top Alternatives to downtowndougbrown.com

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"Yesterday, for the first time in about a year, I tried powering on the Macintosh Performa 450 (LC III) from my past writeup about Apple’s backwards capacitor."

"It didn’t work. The screen was black, it played the startup sound, and then immediately followed up with the “Chimes of Death”. Nothing else happened from that point on. Here’s what it sounded like:"

"This was a little frustrating because last year I had already replaced all of the capacitors and cleaned where they had leaked, so I didn’t expect to encounter any problems with it so soon. The machine had worked fine the last time I’d tried it! But despite all that, something was failing during the power-on tests in Apple’s ROM, prompting it to play the chimes of death. I remembered that people have been working towards documenting the Mac ROM startup tests and using them to diagnose problems, so I decided to give it a shot and see if Apple’s Serial Test Manager could identify my Performa’s issue. Where was the fault on this complicated board? Sure, I could test a zillion traces by hand, but why bother when the computer already knows what is wrong?"

"This post is about the original OMAP3530 BeagleBoard from 2008. Yes, the one so old that it doesn’t even show up in the board list on BeagleBoard.org anymore. The BeagleBoard, not the BeagleBone. During my Chumby 8 kernel escapades, at one point I ran into a UART bug that affected multiple drivers, including the omap-serial driver. This led me to buy a BeagleBoard so I could verify the omap-serial bug on hardware."

Key Topics & Focus Areas for downtowndougbrown.com:

Thoughts from a combined Apple/Linux/Windows geek.

Finding a broken trace on my old Mac with the help of its ROM diagnostics

Debugging BeagleBoard USB boot with a sniffer: fixing omap_loader on modern PCs

An update about the hidden Performa 550 recovery partition

Finding a 27-year-old easter egg in the Power Mac G3 ROM

Modifying an HDMI dummy plug’s EDID using a Raspberry Pi