Linux-Hardware Digest #151, Volume #9 Mon, 11 Jan 99 02:13:30 EST
Contents:
Re: Good hardware vendor? (BRUCE FAUST)
Re: perfect Linux machine ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
HP Deskjet 890c and ghostscript ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Onboard SCSI problem (Tim Nimmo)
Re: Which CPU to upgrade to? (terry g)
Re: Linux on a Jaz disk? (Tim Nimmo)
Re: Linux FREEZES! (Tim Nimmo)
Re: Where to buy equipment? (Virtual)
Re: Software RAID on a Pentium 233? ("Michael Lee Yohe")
Re: Help with Tape Drive and ftape ("Michael Lee Yohe")
Re: Iomega Ditto and Ensoniq Soundscape ("Michael Lee Yohe")
Nokia cellphones under Linux ("Daniel Swarbrick")
Tosh. Sat.Pro 430 @ 16bpp or higher (Keith Blackwell)
Linux at Comdex'98 ("SV")
Re: hardware for new computer (David Fox)
Re: What is the festest video cards supported (David Fox)
Re: Logitech Cordless Wheel Mouse & RedHat 5.1 (David Fox)
Re: I'm not making this up (Henry Wong)
Re: wmppp problem. Can't give permissions so all users can use dial out. (Oded Arbel)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: BRUCE FAUST <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Good hardware vendor?
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 04:16:19 GMT
Harry P Bloomberg wrote:
>
> I'm involved with a project that requires a very reliable high-end
> server. I think we need RAID and the like.
>
> I'm not very experienced in Linux hardware configuration, and I have
> little experience in dealing with hardware problems, so I'm considering
> buying a preconfigured box from one of the hardware vendors who advertise
> in the Linux Journal. I'd like to hear from any of you who have done so.
>
> Which vendors do you like the most, and are there any you'd avoid? My
> major concerns are 1) quality of hardware components and 2)
> responsiveness of customer support, especially in dealing with hardware
> problems. I'm particularly interested in hearing about VA Research since
> they seem to be the biggest and most establised of these vendors.
>
> Thanks,
> Harry Bloomberg
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
By far the best, try DCG (http://www.dcginc.com). DCG was founded by
Steve Gaudet, whom has spent the last five years working with the Linux
(Alpha, Intel and SPARC) community.
I can't recommend anymore more highly that can help you business. If
you need a dependable solution, and it's Linux, then DCG is your
company. Period.
-Bruce Faust
President
DigitalScape Design, Inc.
http://www.digitalscape.com
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Re: perfect Linux machine
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 03:33:31 GMT
In article <772icq$hgn$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Rod Roark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>
> I know what wholesale prices are -- these aren't them.
>
> -- Rod
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
> Sunset Systems Preconfigured Linux Computers
> http://www.sunsetsystems.com/ Starting at $499
> ----------------------------------------------------------------------
>
Here is a quote from Rod's SunSystems:
Item Description Price
YP350 System with Pentium II 350, Asus P2B 655.00
RP064 64 Megabytes SDRAM 120.00
V2 ATI Rage IIc 4MB AGP 55.00
H2 4.3G UDMA Hard Drive 203.00
C1 32X IDE CD-ROM Reader 60.00
A2 Creative Labs Awe64 60.00
Packaging for shipment 17.00
Ship 33 lbs via UPS 3DS 68.00
Total 1238.00
TriQuet Price:
Total: 872.40 plus shipping (except ours would include a floppy, 56kmodem,
keyboard, and mouse)
Add a 15 inch monitor for 149.00 and We're still only at 1021.40!
Resellers may qualify for better pricing. Reseller Price for this full system
is only 937.20
Have a nice day,
Jeff
TriQuest Technologies
http://www.triquest.net
Jeff
TriQuest Technologi
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------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: HP Deskjet 890c and ghostscript
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 03:30:57 GMT
I have an HP Deskjet 890c connected to a PC running RedHat 5.0.
I've gotten the latest version of ghostscript as a precompiled
rpm, and it includes a driver called cdj550 which works slowly
and with poor output on the 890c. In the ghostscript HOWTO I
read that cdj850, a nonstandard driver, would be more appropriate.
I gave up my attempts to compile ghostscript with that driver after
a couple of hours of error messages. I recognize that this subject
has been treated before, but everyone suggests doing the compilation
I've had difficulties with. I have a few questions:
1. Is cdj850 (as opposed to hpdj or something else) really the best
driver for the 890c?
2. Could anyone who's succeeded in getting ghostscript recompiled
with a similar setup provide me the binaries (forgive me if this
is a naive hope)?
3. What is an appropriate filter to use so that I can print directly
from Netscape (and print postscript files with a simple lpr command)?
Is it available in a form which doesn't require compilation (e.g. rpm)?
Thanks in advance for your help.
-David Goldhaber-Gordon
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
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------------------------------
From: Tim Nimmo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Onboard SCSI problem
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 21:30:52 -0700
If I remember correctly the newer AHA BIOS report the first bootable device
first, then is scsi id order. In the case of a cdrom marked as bootable and no
h/ds are present then the cdrom would show first. I see this behavior on my
2940UW too. It is the first controller to load the scsi bios has no h/ds and
has a cdrom (id 4) marked as bootable. When the BIOS prints the IDs out the
CDROM comes first then the rest in ID order.
Most s/w drivers just print out the ids in scsi id order.
Having fun?
Tim...
SaNdMaN FOREVER wrote:
> Hello.
>
> I have a ASUS P2L97-S mainboard with an onboard Adaptec AIC7880 SCSI chip.
> I have 2 SCSI hard drives attached to the 68-pin cable and a SONY CDU
> 948-S CD burner on the 50 pin cable. I'm running RedHat Linux 5.2 and I'm
> using the aic7xxx module for SCSI support.
>
> The problem is that every time there's intense SCSI activity (i.e. copying
> large files) the system freezes completely: no display, no keyboard, no
> network, nothing.
>
> There is another thing I should mention: the SCSI BIOS detects the devices
> in this order: HDD1 (id 4) - CD burner (id 0) - HDD2 (id 5), but the Linux
> SCSI module detects the CD burner first, then the 2 HDD's.
>
> Has anyone else run into this? Any ideas?
>
> Regards,
> SaNdMaN.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (terry g)
Subject: Re: Which CPU to upgrade to?
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 02:59:15 GMT
On 09 Jan 1999 15:10:02 +0000, Bruce Stephens
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>[EMAIL PROTECTED] (John Taylor) writes:
>
>> I have a Intel Pentium 90 on a Intel Neptune mb that I bought 3 or 4
>> years ago. I want to upgrade the CPU w/o swapping out the
>> motherboard. Which CPU should I upgrade to? I am interested in
>> hearing about Intel, AMD, and Cyrix (or any others) upgrades. Also,
>> I will be exclusively running Linux 2.0.36 and Linux 2.2 (when it
>> comes out).
>
>> Which is the most bang for the buck?
>
stay away from idt winchip if you are into linux...."win"
chip....trouble,trouble
------------------------------
From: Tim Nimmo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Linux on a Jaz disk?
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 22:04:47 -0700
Your friend is right. Perhaps your brother's friend is thinking you are
referring to a ZipDrive?
Tim...
Robotech_Master wrote:
> My brother has two Jaz drives (as well as a Zip, a Bernoulli, and I
> don't know what-all), and very little space on his hard drives. He's
> expressed a bit of a passing interest in Linux, and I'd offered to
> install a partition on a Jaz disk for him. However, one of his
> friends claims that Jaz disks are really unsuited for holding
> often-accessed information--they're too slow to read and write, and
> are really meant solely for making backups--something like a bootable
> OS and swap space would overtax the media and wear it out quickly.
>
> However, one of _my_ friends, whose computer expertise I tend to
> trust, claims that Jaz disks are as sturdy and as fast as your average
> SCSI hard drive, and that he keeps his MP3 collection on them.
>
> Who's right? Would a bootable Linux partition do well on a Jaz drive?
> Please give me the straight Jaz on this issue, if you would. :)
> --
> Chris Meadows aka | Co-moderator, rec.toys.transformers.moderated
> Robotech_Master | Homepage: <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~robotech/>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] | PGP: <URL:http://www.eyrie.org/~robotech/rm.key.txt>
> [EMAIL PROTECTED] | ICQ UIN: 5477383
------------------------------
From: Tim Nimmo <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux FREEZES!
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 22:07:36 -0700
Take the "simplify" approach. Start removing components and see if the
freeze goes away. Probably this is a video problem. If you have a way to
telnet into the machine probably everything is still running...
Tim...
Alessandro Ferioli wrote:
> I installed Linux Slackware 3.5 on a PII 333 Mhz, 96 Mb RAM, 8Gb HD EIDE
>
> (SOYO 6KBE motherboard, AWARD BIOS), Expertcolor 4 Mb S3 AGP graphic
> adapter (DV5357).
> An ISA sound blaster, an ISA 3C503 and a PCI INTEL video camera card are
>
> also fitted in their slots.
> A 100 Mb swap partition is present.
>
> It works fine but it hangs when using some applications, like games,
> ghostview, textedit, ...
> Simply the system (keyboard, mouse, applications) stops responding and I
>
> must hardware reset.
>
> I defined 94 Mb RAM in LILO boot, to avoid possible top memory
> conflicts, but the problem persists.
>
> I have the same problem with Red Hat 5.0 installed in another hard drive
>
> partition.
>
> The crashes are much more frequent with 24 bit color X server instead of
>
> 8 bit color X server (XFree 3.3.2).
>
> Can anybody help me ? Do you have any idea how to solve it ?
>
> Thanks
>
> Alessandro
------------------------------
From: Virtual <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Where to buy equipment?
Crossposted-To:
alt.comp.hardware.pc-homebuilt,alt.comp.hardware.homebuilt,comp.periphs.scsi,comp.os.linux
Reply-To: lost-soul@heaven's.gate
Date: 10 Jan 1999 19:34:46 PST
In comp.periphs.scsi Bill Lahr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> first, then they bring it to you. I have found Fry's to be cheaper than
> CompUSA and other chains,
It's true on some items, not true on others. However, the big plus
of Fry's, as you have mentioned -- they have a really *HUGE* selection.
------------------------------
From: "Michael Lee Yohe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Software RAID on a Pentium 233?
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 22:32:23 -0600
>I am considering running software RAID 0 with 2 9GB UltraWide SCSI drives.
>Will a Pentium 233 MMX provide enough horsepower to make this a viable
setup?
>I'll probably be using a Mylex 958 card, if that matters.
>
>How about a dual Pentium 233 system? Better, worse, the same? And are the
>software RAID drivers SMP safe?
It really depends on what you have planned for the server. If you want it
to be a file server (and rarely log into the machine at the console) - then
a Pentium 233 is an excellent processor. A dual-processor configuration
wouldn't necessarily help because of modern UDMA chipsets and the fact that
the bottleneck is almost always at the ethernet card level. If you plan on
using the machine to do many different tasks, consider a faster processor:
K6-300 is an excellent inexpensive card that can do the job quite nicely.
***************************************************************************
* Michael Lee Yohe Office: TH N318 *
* UAH ASPIRE System Administrator Office: 256-890-6904 *
* UAH CS Assistant Administrator Home: 256-828-2667 *
* Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.aspire.cs.uah.edu/mlyohe *
***************************************************************************
------------------------------
From: "Michael Lee Yohe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Help with Tape Drive and ftape
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 22:29:30 -0600
>I have downloaded fersion 4.02 of ftape. The documents
>mentions that it is compatible with Tr-1m 2m and 3 tapes. Does anyone
>know if it works with my current tape drive?
Most of the time, problems lie within the fact that you have not properly
specified the IRQ and DMA settings of the ftape controller card in the ftape
Makefile - /usr/src/linux/drivers/char/ftape
***************************************************************************
* Michael Lee Yohe Office: TH N318 *
* UAH ASPIRE System Administrator Office: 256-890-6904 *
* UAH CS Assistant Administrator Home: 256-828-2667 *
* Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.aspire.cs.uah.edu/mlyohe *
***************************************************************************
------------------------------
From: "Michael Lee Yohe" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Iomega Ditto and Ensoniq Soundscape
Date: Sun, 10 Jan 1999 22:34:41 -0600
>I have recently bought a Ensoniq Soundscape card. I got it off e-bay,
>so it came in a box by itself. I downloaded Voyetra's sequencing
>software off the Ensoniq website and installed it, and the card is
>working okay. I've compiled ESS support into my kernel, but the
>Readme.cards file says I also need a program called ssinit, which loads
>the DOS drivers. It is supposedly in a package called snd-util*. I
>have looked on metalab.unc.edu, tsx11.mit.edu and ftp.funet and I can't
>find it. Does anyone know where it is? Also, is there any way to send
>midi info from ESS to an external midi device?
I'm not too sure if this is a misunderstanding, but there is an Ensoniq
Soundscape card _AND_ an ESS series card. ESS is not affliated with Ensoniq
(a common misconception).
***************************************************************************
* Michael Lee Yohe Office: TH N318 *
* UAH ASPIRE System Administrator Office: 256-890-6904 *
* UAH CS Assistant Administrator Home: 256-828-2667 *
* Email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Web: http://www.aspire.cs.uah.edu/mlyohe *
***************************************************************************
------------------------------
From: "Daniel Swarbrick" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Nokia cellphones under Linux
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 18:53:48 +1300
Does anybody have any experience kludging together software to run Nokia (or
other) GSM mobile phones under Linux?
Nokia make software for Windoze which allows you to send SMS messages, if
you plug your Nokia into a serial port using the cable provided.
I was wondering if there is an equivalent for Linux, or if anybody knows of
the specifics for writing such an animal.
I'm aware of dedicated GSM hardware available from Belgium, but this seems a
bit of an overkill.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Keith Blackwell)
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux.slackware
Subject: Tosh. Sat.Pro 430 @ 16bpp or higher
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 04:44:27 GMT
Howdy
Can someone provide a good, working XF86Config for a Toshiba Satellite
Pro 435CDS... uses chips 65550... 2mb. I'm specifically looking for
one that works @ 16bpp or higher.
Thanks!
Keith
------------------------------
From: "SV" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.os.linux.help
Subject: Linux at Comdex'98
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 00:58:08 -0500
was kinda modestly represented, wasn't it?
check it out
http://www.phystech.com/info/comdex98.html
Cordially,
S.V.
------------------------------
From: d s f o x @ c o g s c i . u c s d . e d u (David Fox)
Subject: Re: hardware for new computer
Date: 10 Jan 1999 21:53:54 -0800
sound card may be unsupported
--
David Fox http://hci.ucsd.edu/dsf xoF divaD
UCSD HCI Lab baL ICH DSCU
------------------------------
From: d s f o x @ c o g s c i . u c s d . e d u (David Fox)
Subject: Re: What is the festest video cards supported
Date: 10 Jan 1999 21:55:10 -0800
Matthew Hyne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I am buying a new machine that will run Linux and Win95.
>
> I need a fast video card under Win95 for doing Desk Top Publishing but
> would also like to use this card under linux (not ness at full speed).
>
> What is the best/fastest AGP video cards currently supported under Linux
> (Red Hat 5.2).
It may be the Matrox G200.
--
David Fox http://hci.ucsd.edu/dsf xoF divaD
UCSD HCI Lab baL ICH DSCU
------------------------------
From: d s f o x @ c o g s c i . u c s d . e d u (David Fox)
Subject: Re: Logitech Cordless Wheel Mouse & RedHat 5.1
Date: 10 Jan 1999 21:56:36 -0800
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Michael C. Brown) writes:
> Has anyone tried using a logitech cordless wheel mouse & RedHat 5.1? I
> was given one recently and while it will be difficult to put away my
> Kensington, I would like to at least try it.
Works fine. Keyboard works too. Wish it had a greater range, tho.
--
David Fox http://hci.ucsd.edu/dsf xoF divaD
UCSD HCI Lab baL ICH DSCU
------------------------------
From: Henry Wong <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: I'm not making this up
Date: Mon, 04 Jan 1999 09:57:57 -0500
My two cents worth:
It almost appears as if it is detecting something that isn't there and is
trying to figure out what it is.
Since the hangup appears to happen during or after the IDE initialization
I would look at the Master/Slave relationship on the IDE buses and all
the devices on the bus (which you appear to have/be in the process of =
doing already). I would then try to determine what gets looked at after
the IDE initialization as that may be the cause of the problem. On my
machine, it is the fd controller and then the scsi controller and then
does a partition check. You may want to compare the dmesg output
of the different boots to see if there're any differences.
You may also want to double check your IRQ setup for your devices to
make sure you don't have overlaps. Overlaps could cause a loss of an
interrupt and a timeout retry.
Good luck.
Henry
Robert J. Budzynski wrote:
> =
> My home pc has recently developed a rather strange condition... It's
> definitely some kind of h/w quirk, with a peculiar Linux twist (only
> happens under Linux), so I thought I'd share it.
> =
> First of all, there's nothing very special about my hardware setup --
> it's pretty much a run-of-the-mill pc clone, a bit on the "legacy"
> side, fortunately still under warranty. MB is an ATC w/VX chipset,
> Intel Triton BM-IDE, a Caviar IDE HDD, ATAPI CD-ROM, Tseng ET6000 VGA,
> 48 MB EDO RAM. CPU is a Cyrix 166+. Worked fine for me for many
> months, until it broke -- so here's the story.
> =
> It started with a CPU cooler failure, and the heat killed one of the
> mainboard chips (so the technician said). So the mainboard was
> replaced with another one of the same kind. That's when the funny
> stuff starts.
> =
> Now everything works fine under DOS or W95 (well, as fine as that can
> ever be...). But when I boot into linux, what first happens is
> there's a strange pause (10 or 15 secs.) when the ide driver is
> initialized. Then it goes on booting, and completes the boot sequence
> with no errors or anything unusual. But when the login prompt is up
> (no matter whether it's text console or xdm), I can't login -- the
> keyboard is dead. That's right, no reaction at all to any kbd events
> (including CapsLock, NumLock, whatever -- leds don't light up
> either). I must repeat that the kbd shows no strange behavior
> whatsoever under DOS, Windows, or BIOS setup.
> =
> It gets even funnier than that. Once about every 10 bootups (have no
> idea what this depends on), there is no pause at ide initialization,
> and the system seems to be working correctly. Nothing unusual in the
> logfiles, either. Well, it does work correctly until I press either
> CapsLock or NumLock -- ten the keyboard is dead again. The system as
> such is working, though -- anything I can do with the mouse works
> fine, and nothing is reported in the logfiles (it's a home box with no
> facilities for remote access).
> =
> Bear with me, this isn't all yet... I again managed to boot up to a
> (semi)working keyboard, brought up a text console, and figured I might
> get some clue by running showkey(1) as 'showkey -s' to see what
> happens when I press CapsLock or NumLock. And guess what: as long as
> keycode is active, the kbd doesn't lock up, and the emitted scancodes
> seem to be correct (to be sure, I didn't have a table of scancodes
> handy...). But after keycode has exited, pressing either of the
> "broken" keys locks up the kbd again.
> =
> OK, this is far too long already, and in any case I'm going to get the
> mainboard replaced again. I guess I'm lucky with my repair shop, I
> might have expected to hear "if it works under Windows, it must be
> fine". But still I'm pretty curious about what may be causing this
> condition, and I have no clue about tracing the problem any further.
> There's nothing wrong with my init files/scripts, and anyway the kbd
> locks up under Linux before the root fs is accessed. My kernel isn't
> screwed either -- exactly the same thing happens if I boot from an
> original install floppy, attempting to mount ramdisk as root. The RAM
> is OK, I ran memtest86 over it several times, with no errors reported.
> I also ran several diagnostic progs under DOS, no errors were found.
> Fiddling with the BIOS setup parameters didn't make any difference,
> nor did reconnecting the IDE devices in a different order, switching
> off the second IDE channel, whatever.
> =
> If you have any hint, _please_ cc to my mailbox -- it would be nice if
> I could satisfy my curiosity before handing the box back to the repair
> shop (I have to get some Real Work (TM) done, too).
> =
> TIA
> --
> Robert J. Budzy=F1ski
> Computer Center, Dept. of Physics, Warsaw University, Poland
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> http://Budzynski.ddns.org/
------------------------------
From: Oded Arbel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: wmppp problem. Can't give permissions so all users can use dial out.
Date: Mon, 11 Jan 1999 09:01:33 +0200
Gary J Sanderson wrote:
> I simply copied the files from ~./wmppp.app/wmppp/example-scripts into my
> /etc/ppp directory and edited the ATDT, ogin: & sword: parts so that it
> dialed and logged into my ISP. You may also need to edit the options file
> depending on your setup.
I don't want to mess with the dialing scripts, as everytime I try to
mess around I end up disabling my (working) dial up connection.
>
> Have you got your Linux install dialing out and logging in using usernet or
> the test connect from within linuxconf? If not, I'd try and get those
> working first to make sure your modem's set up aok.
it's working ok, I can dial and disconnect using netcfg or usernet, and
everything work fine, I can even dial from the command line. I used
RedHat's control panel network thingy (netcfg) to set it up, it was a
piece of cake, but I don't know what he did , and I still can't trace
the things it does to the config files.
>
> I don't know about the AfterStep wharf thing (I'm using WindowMaker),
> although I <think> there was mention of adding it to the AfterStep wharf in
> one of the readme files (INSTALL, README or HINTS).
I read that. not much help. the Wharf documentatio says to use the
MaxSwallow option if things don't look good, which I do - it makes it
from 'awful' to just 'doesn't look right'.
Oded
------------------------------
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