Blue tooth in Yellow Dog
 

Hello,

For a week or so, I got the opportunity to get an Ibook G3 (new) for a very decent price.

The reason I bought it is that it is light and small and just the size to take with me on a flight or so. I don't need much computer support on my way, but having the possibility to email or fax and making some notes is all I need.

The ibook 2x usb(1.1) - firewire - dvd/cdwr - lan and modem is just ideal for such a job.
There is only one minor problem, I want to use it with my portable phone (nokia 6310i). I have a cable for serial but the iBook doesn't have that. This Nokia does not have a USB cable but it has Blue tooth.

First I tried to get the ppc version of mandrake. unfortunately it does not recognize the display very well even in text mode it switches to some kind of graphics mode that is unreadable. Than I tried Debian. It installed but without X so I have only the console, good for the real freaks, but not enough for me. At the moment when I thought to sell the book, I found Yellow Dog (Red Hat). I downloaded 3 cd's , burnt them and without a problem, it recognized the hardware and installed. Unfortunately Blue Tooth is not supported or not enabled. Since this would be the best thing to use the phone, I have the next questions.

There is support for blue tooth, but it is not enabled for the g3.


It looks like I have to recompile the kernel is that right ?
As far as I have seen there are 2 possible ways to go ; Axis drivers or BlueZ.
Does anyone here have experience with this kind of operations ?
The usb/Bluetooth adapter I want to use is a Belkin F8t003
Please give me some hints.


CloudBuilder

It’s not really an answer to your question about YDL and reconfiguring the kernel, but if you need a stable Unix based OS with Bluetooth support then you probably already have it - OS X.

I just added Bluetooth to my G4 desktop in order to use the new Apple wireless keyboard. The only bluetooth adaptor Apple recommends is the D-Link DBT-120 adaptor. These are widely available for about £20 ($35). Plug it into a free USB port and configure your mobile using the Bluetooth Setup Assistant. It took me about 5 minutes to unpack the D-Link adaptor, wireless keyboard and configure them both as well as my Nokia mobile.

OK so it’s not Linux but it will get you working with your iBook.

Regards

dkpw

PS I think you need Mac OS 10.2 or higher for the adaptor to work. Have a look at
http://www.apple.com/support/downloa...bluetooth.html
for more info.

I know that's possible but this machine is a 500Mhz G3. From what I heard OS X needs a more powerfull machine.

As my knowledge of linux is better and I have more machines with linux and only one with OS9/X, staying with OS9/X is not practical.

I made some investigations in YDL and its obvious that Bluez is not enabled. YDL has the same problems as Red Hat, ( I had a version 9) it doesn't support what I need and kudzo works not always as good as it should (Suse is a lot better). So I'll give it a try and compile another kernel. I can first use the oldconfig and make some changes and if this works out i'll try the 2.6 kernel. I heard from some users that this function reasonable. Perhaps I'll try out Suse first, I saw that they also have a PPC version.

Thanks for your reply.

CloudBuilder

Hi CloudBuilder,

Yep a G3/500 iBook is not the world’s speediest machine, unless you’re in OS 9. I’ve run OS X 10.3 on one and it wasn’t responsive to say the least but everything did work.

Good luck with your SuSE experiments on the Mac. You can download Version 7.3 from ftp://ftp.plig.org/pub/suse/ppc/ which has a variety of kernels available up to 2.4.2. I do know that it’s been some time since this version was released and that since Novell’s acquisition of SuSE it’s a certainty that there will be no newer versions of SuSE for PPC.

Whether SuSE 7 has Bluetooth support I’m not sure but I share your view that SuSE is a more accomplished distro than Red Hat or YDL.

Regards,

dkpw

Have you tried Gentoo for PPC?
 

I have yet to install it on my iMac (350 mhz) but Gentoo is my distro of choice for x86.
It is more involved to install, but once up its the friendliest distro out there.
My recommendation would be to save the x configuration files created by YD and write down all the hardware specs before you start with Gentoo...
Let us know how it went!