Howto enable AHCI Mode MacBookPro1,2 and MacBookPro4,1

I added this after insmod ext2 in grub:

setpci -s 0:1f.2 90.b=40

This sets Intel ICH7 (page 509) or ICH8 (page 486) controller into AHCI mode.

A similar command will probably work for other ICHx devices.

I got my bus:slot.function from running lspci - take value from line that states SATA IDE mode

eg.

00:1f.2 SATA controller: Intel Corporation 82801GBM/GHM (ICH7-M Family) SATA Controller [IDE mode] (rev 02)

Both MBP1,2 and MBP4,1 have same bus:slot.function and use same value (40h) to put controller into AHCI mode.

UPDATE: Should be MacBookPro1,2 not MacBookPro2,1

Energy Consumption of a new Washing Machine

About 6 months ago we bought a new front-loading washing machine. It is an Electrolux EWF1282.

I have been measuring its power consumption for over a month and today I looked at the results.

I collected data over 43 days.
It used 1.7 kWh. This is about 30Wh per day.

A friend has suggested that this figure looks too good so I will measure it again. The cold-wash cycle has been tested to consume about 300Wh per wash for a 8kg load so a figure of 30Wh seems too good to be true.

It uses less than 70L/wash (varies depending on load). We wash, on average, at least one load per day in cold water.

The machine has run for nearly 48 hours over this 43 day period which means that it averages about 35.5W when it is running.

We think that the clothes wash just as well as our old top-loader and we hope that it is gentler on the clothes. Buy the amount of lint in the filter so far, this is probably right.

So the washing machine uses less energy when running than an Apple MacBook Pro 15"; 3 times as much as our Netgear DG834GV ADSL router; and about as much as our 2 kitchen compact fluros.

Our old washing machine consumed 240 Wh/day running at about 250W on average.
The old machine also used about 140L/wash.

So the new machine is much better: half the water consumption, and 12.5% of the energy consumption compared to the old one.

Ubuntu 8.10 (Intrepid) on a MacBook Pro (4,1)

As the title suggests, I decided to get Ubuntu 8.10 working on my MacBook Pro.

My aim, for a long time, has been to get linux running well on a Mac.

I think that the Ubuntu Team have packaged a brilliant distribution that supports the MacBook Pro very well, but a few tweaks are required.

These mods are documented here.

The process is long and not suitable for beginers. I thought that these changes could be turned into a script that would work for most users that are dual/multi-booting their Mac.

The scripts can be found on a Ubuntu post that I just posted.