Macintosh question!

[giza]

I've got something that really boggles me and I figured I'd post it here and see if anyone knows what it might be.

For those that read my LJ infrequently, about 6 weeks ago I purchased a 15" Powerbook from Apple. It's the higher-end model with a Superdrive (DVD-RW), 1x512 Megs of RAM, and an 80 GB hard drive.

Earlier tonight, I got home, took the machine out of sleep, and tried playing an MP3. The sound that I got was... garbled. Upon further examination, the right speaker had sound that was somewhat garbled, and the left speaker didn't have any sound. This was over the JBL Creature II speakers that I also got with the Powerbook.

I tried hooking up a cheap pair of computer speakers that I had, and got the opposite: somewhat garbled sound out the left speaker but not the right. I'm sure I didn't have any wires crossed, because I used the balance controls in the sound control panel to isolate each channel. Obviously, unplugging and plugging in any of the sound cables again did not resolve the problem. Nor did wiggling them, to rule out loose connections. I also checked the system logs, and there was nothing of interest.

By this point, I was cursing quite a bit (profanity: the language all programmers know best!) and rebooted the machine in a fit of frustration.

And suddenly the speakers worked again, and have continued to play music just fine for the last hour or so.

Has anyone else ever seen anything like this happen with a computer, Powerbook or otherwise? I'd sure be interested in knowing what went on.

Thanks...

Comments

Apples.

[lionman.livejournal.com]

Check your documentation, then reset the PMU chip. If you've got a Powerbook, it may be under the keyboard, in the upper righthand corner.

First you'll need to power down, take out the battery, go off power so there's Zero power in the unit. Press and hold the button for a 5-count. Release, count to 5, return the battery and the power cord and power up.

I think that's the proceedure for the 15" PB. See if that clears up the issue. Sleep mode on the iBook and PB can sometimes cause strange actions.

If that doesn't work, lemme know and I'll throw some other options at you.

Re: Apples.

[giza.livejournal.com]

>Sleep mode on the iBook and PB can sometimes cause strange actions.

I think you're right. I had a couple of weird things happening when coming out of sleep mode before.

I've just never heard... garbled audio because of a software issue before. It really gave me a scare that something was up with the hardware.

Re: Apples.

[cjthomas.livejournal.com]

I've just never heard... garbled audio because of a software issue before.

As someone who has written device drivers in the past, this is the point where I laugh evilly =^.^=.

What Points Said. Getting hardware into a consistent state is non-trivial, and sometimes even under _normal_ conditions drivers don't do it reliably.

It's even worse when you're a third-party driver developer and have to get the big company hiring you to wave a stick over the head of the hardware company before you get the specs you need, but that's a rant for another day };>.

Suffice to say that communication of the relevant hardware and control information to the people who need it works about as well as you'd expect, even if it's within the same company.

[brophey.livejournal.com]

My iBook had the A/V connector in the same place the stereo speaker jack was. In other words, if you had the right cable, the jack did more than just Left and Right speaker, it did Video.

I wasn't quite sure how it managed to do this with only having an extra lead on the minijack plug, but it seemed to be all hardware driven on how it was sending the data into the cable.

In other words, maybe the PBs do this now, and maybe your jack was accidentally sending video data down the cable?

I don't know. I'm just guessing. :)

[giza.livejournal.com]

Whoa, neat! :-)

Actually, the Powerbooks have the audio connectors on the left side of the machine, and the video connectors on the right side of the machine.

[brophey.livejournal.com]

I thought I remembered the PB's video being totally seperate.

[points.livejournal.com]

Sometimes on laptops, coming out of sleep mode doesn't properly send a reset to peripheral devices, leaving them in unknown states. Yay for edge timing issues. I've seen similar sorts of issues happen on lots of laptops.. sound, video, modem, ethernet.... As you noted, usually just a reboot fixes it all right up.

Audio problems? You're kidding, right?

[coyoteden.livejournal.com]

I have a PC with a SB Audigy. These sound cards and their older cousins are infamously known for putting themselves in an internal feedback state and causing a high pitched squeal to blast from the speakers at full volume.

It was the fault of buggy drivers and certain motherboards, now fixed (for most people anyway) and it usually happened when resuming from a standby state. Getting sleep to work right on a PC is one of the more frustrating things you can waste lots of time on.

I still have an issue with the video on this thing. After using remote desktop and leaving the local display in sleep for a while, the system will just hang on a black screen when I try to log back in locally. Eventually it will do a watchdog reboot, but man is it annoying. Actually, I haven't seen it happen since ATI released new drivers. Here's hoping they got it fixed.

[furahi.livejournal.com]

My laptop does a very weird thing (that BTW shenryyr already experienced)

Sometimes, out of the blue, the soundcard becomes annoyed or something and starts to play everything like 2X the speed it should, giving that Chipmunk effect we all know and love, until you listen to it for 2 hours ;P
Sometimes it happens right from booting, but others it happens at random times (when the sound card isn't being used, that is somewhere after a 'stop' and before a 'play'), and so far only in Windows.
It's annoying. Almost everytime I put it to sleep or hybernate it happens, but many times it happens without being related to that :P

Easy Fix

[randomzen.livejournal.com]

Whenever this happens, you should submerge the entire powerbook in the following solution:

• 6 parts water
• 2 parts salt
• 2 parts iron filings

Be sure to really agitate the mixture before submerging your powerbook and sealing it up. Keep it in there for at least 24 hours, shaking the sealed container 7-8 times every 6 hours. This is guaranteed to stop it from playing garbled sounds. Or any sounds, for that matter.

Re: Easy Fix

[giza.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure I fully understand your destructions instructions. Can you perform that procedure on one of your machines and send me some pics? Thanks...

Re: Easy Fix

[randomzen.livejournal.com]

Sure; I just ran next door with my cam phone and grabbed this:

Clearly, this beast will not be playing garbled sounds. It also fixed stopped the video card from displaying slightly blurred images, and the disk drive no longer spins out of control now and again.