[Virtualacorn-list] VRPC on Mac OS X10.5.7 and later

[David Pitt]

This wheeze is not the sort of thing that should pollute the official
Virtual Acorn forum, it does have a most 'unofficial' quality about it. It
also comes with a big disclaimer of the "don't blame me if ..." sort.

Virtual Acorn only rarely starts up on this iMac, most of the time it fails
to unlock itself. As I understand it VRPC battens on to the first interface
mac address it finds and its unlock code is based on that, and that may or
may not be entirely correct. I did eventually notice that the order the
interfaces as shown in 'ifconfig' varied, if en0, ethernet, was first then
VRPC would run, but if it was trumped by either, or both, of en1, airport,
and fw0, firewire, then VRPC failed to unlock.

The interfaces are always shown the correct priority, as set by the Network
configuration tool, by :-

 sudo  networksetup -listnetworkserviceorder

Guessing, I think the output shown by 'ifconfig' is set at bootup, and
goodness only knows why that order varies. I could not find how to force the
order required by VRPC. 

I did find out how to completely remove en1 and fw0 so that they do not
appear in 'ifconfig' at all. VRPC then starts up every time. (At least, so
far it has.) The obvious downside to this is if the airport or firewire
ports are actually required, here the iMac is wired to the router so en0
alone suffices.

The cowboy bit is removing IOFireWireIP.kext and IO80211Family.kext from
/System/Library/Extensions/

They can be reinstated by Time Machine.

Somewhat safer news is that a fix is being tested and could be released
soon, http://www.virtualacorn.co.uk/forum/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=578

This 'work around' might be more than a trifle dodgy but it may shed some
light on the problem.
-- 
David Pitt

MessengerPro on iMac