Apple 17-INCH manual Peripheral Devices, System Software, Open Firmware, Computer Identification

CHAPTER 1

Overview of PowerBook G4 17-inch

Peripheral Devices

Included with the computer are a 65 W Apple Portable Power Adapter, an S-video-to-composite cable, and a DVI-to-VGA cable. In addition to these devices, the following peripheral devices are available separately:

●The PowerBook G4 Rechargeable Battery is available as an additional or replacement battery.

●The 65 W Apple Portable Power Adapter, which comes with the computer, is also available separately. The adapter can fully recharge a completely depleted battery in three hours or less while the computer is shut down or in sleep mode.

●The Apple DVI to ADC Adapter, which enables the PowerBook G4 17-inch computer to support Apple’s ADC displays.

●The Apple Pro Keyboard, a full-featured USB keyboard.

●The Apple Pro Mouse, an optical USB mouse.

●The AirPort Extreme Base Station.

●A power cable for use on airliners is also available. The airline power cable should have a sense resistor of 24.3 K ohms +/-5% connected between the power plug's shell and ground. For more information, see “Power Controller” (page 23).

System Software

The PowerBook G4 17-inch computer comes with Mac OS X version 10.2. For the latest information, see the references listed in “Mac OS X” (page 60).

Here are a few items of interest about the system software on the PowerBook G4 17-inch computer.

Open Firmware

System software on all current Macintosh models uses a design based on Open Firmware. With this approach, the ROM on the main logic board contains only the Open Firmware code needed to initialize the hardware and load an operating system. The rest of the system code is loaded into RAM from disk or from the network. For more information, see the references listed in “Open Firmware” (page 60).

Computer Identification

Rather than reading the box flag or the model string and then making assumptions about the computer’s features, applications that need to find out the features of the computer should use IORegistry calls to test for the features they require. IORegistry calls are part of the I/O Kit API. For more information, see the references listed at “I/O Kit” (page 60).

14Peripheral Devices

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