Linux-Hardware Digest #673, Volume #12 Wed, 12 Apr 00 18:13:10 EDT
Contents:
Re: Driver for Yamaha DS-XG (Julian Rush)
Re: fdisk gurus pls (QuestionExchange)
Re: Linux on Athlon and K7V (Tellplace)
Re: keyboard error (Richard Brennan)
Red Hat 6.1/486 Hard Drive Question (David)
Re: Doh! 32-bit @1024x768 acts weird! HELP (Matan Ziv-Av)
Re: Guys,Guys BeOS For Linux Is Here !! (David C.)
Re: Palm pilot and serial port question (Paul Hughett)
Re: Guys,Guys BeOS For Linux Is Here !! (David C.)
Replacing harddrives ("Jon R. Grimshaw")
Re: Guys,Guys BeOS For Linux Is Here !! (David C.)
abit ka7 and linux: works great (Bryan)
Re: DHCP not working in kernel 2.2.x, was OK in 2.0.36 (Mark Bratcher)
Re: Where is my 128 MB RAM gone? (David C.)
Re: Guys,Guys BeOS For Linux Is Here !! (Pjtg0707)
Re: Speed of AMD K6-2 System (David C.)
MP3 and linux (Kai Michael Schramm)
Re: high altitude modern systems performance (David C.)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Julian Rush <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Driver for Yamaha DS-XG
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 20:27:36 +0100
Steve Maughan wrote:
>
> geoffrey wilfart wrote:
>
> > Hi all !
> >
> > I'm running Linux RH6.1. My computer has a Yamaha DS-XG sound card,
> > which is not supported by this distribution.
> >
<snip>
> I don't think it is supported openly in linux per se, but I believe that
> there is a way to get it working: Boot dos and load the dos yamaha
> drivers then use loadlin to boot linux, without rebooting.
<snip>
I have the same card, same problem. I have managed half a solution:
before I boot from Windoze with loadlin, I run the DOS setup program --
dssetup.exe, I think it is; it's on the CDROM that comes with the card
-- and then I used sndconfig to define it as a Soundblaster card. It
plays midi files OK but .wav files are hashy and noisy. It may be
because the card shares IRQ10 with another device on the PCI bus (the
USB controller - though I'm not using USB). It's the only IRQ dssetup
will allow me to use - it calls it #INTA, whatever that means. I still
need to fiddle a bit with the BIOS settings, I suspect, to finally get
there. Anyone any ideas?
--
Julian Rush
Spam protected: reverse xepip for e-mail address.
------------------------------
From: QuestionExchange <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: fdisk gurus pls
Date: 12 Apr 2000 19:28:35 GMT
gpart may be one of the few things that can save you,
if anything can..
It's a nifty little utility that scans a drive for filesystems
and tries to determine the partition table from that..
It's available as a package fot at least: Debian, FreeBSD
...
Try here for a suse x86 rpm:
http://theoryx8.uwinnipeg.ca/linux/rpm2html/suse/6.3/axp/suse/a
p1/gpart-0.1e-14.i386.html
or your favorite rp2html site..
--
This answer is courtesy of QuestionExchange.com
http://www.questionexchange.com/servlet3/qx.usenetGuest.showUsenetGuest?ans_id=12914&cus_id=USENET
------------------------------
From: Tellplace <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux on Athlon and K7V
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 19:54:20 +0200
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
choi daniel wrote:
> Has anybody installed Linux on an amd's ATHLON processor on Asus K7 V
> (via 133 chipset) motherboard ?
> (I plan to use IDE hard-disk and ATI 128 rage pro card)
I bought (a week ago) an Athlon 700 MHz on an Asus K7V motherboard with
VIA KX133 and have up to now no problems running Linux (ReadHat 6.0 and
Mandrake 7.0).
Have tried compiling kernel (was very fast) to 486 and running on it,
again with no problems.
In this newsgroup Ive read that a few have had problems with Athlon
motherboards and more than one memory stick (I only have one 256 Mb).
None of the boards with problems was Asus, though.
Remember to buy a good (read: quiet) CPU fan/cooler.
Regards
Tellplace
------------------------------
From: Richard Brennan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: keyboard error
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 20:59:56 +0100
Jim Jerzycke wrote:
>
>Wen you sat "My bios refuses to flash" what error message do you get?
>Many motherboards have jumpers that must be reset to ALLOW the bios to
>be flashed. Kind of a pain, but it protects you from getting a bios
>virus (yes, they DO exist!).
>Regards, Jim
>
I first change the setting for jumper J7 from 2-3 to 1-2 and then run
the supermicro flash program. No matter what version of flasher or
image I try, it asks for the name of the rom image, reads it from the
diskette, then displays a "please wait" message... ad infinitum.
Supermicro suggest that it could be a device problem, therefore to strip
everything non-essential out and try again. If that fails, they say
replace the chip. Since I've no experience of dismembering computers
and would probably mess something up, also it's in daily use, I suppose
I'll have to replace the bios chip. I did wonder about one of these
general flash programs (Mr Bios?) but I'm not confident it wouldn't
leave me with an non-bootable machine.
--
Richard Brennan
------------------------------
From: David <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Red Hat 6.1/486 Hard Drive Question
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 20:30:10 GMT
In advance, thanks for reading.
I have an old ACER 486 DX2-66 with a 810mb hard drive. Under DOS/Windows,
the computer's bios only "saw" about 600mb of this drive. Under Red Hat
6.1, it sees it all.
The hard drive is not large enough to meet my needs. I don't have the bucks
for a new-to-me computer with a larger hard drive, but new 4.3 gig IDE hard
drives are selling in my area for $99. This I can afford.
If I install one of these, will Red Hat 6.1 "see" and be able to use all of
it?
David (a Linux newbie)
--
Posted via CNET Help.com
http://www.help.com/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Matan Ziv-Av)
Subject: Re: Doh! 32-bit @1024x768 acts weird! HELP
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 10:51:38 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
On 7 Apr 2000 21:13:14 GMT, Peter T. Breuer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Mark Bratcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> : Gene Heskett wrote:
> :> Hummm, 4 megs you say. Do the math, Mark. 32 bits is a 4 byte
> :> broadside read, so 1024x768x4 is 3.145728 megabytes of just the visible
> :> raster screen data. And the cards processor needs room to do its thing.
>
> : Actually, I _did_ do the math (as you say) and came up with the 3.14..MB
> : which I thought would work with my 4MB card. I have no idea how much
> : "extra" the video card needs to really do the work, so I concluded that
> : it _may_ work. I just wasn't sure. Is there a commonly known guideline
> : as to what percentage (or perhaps integer multiple) of the cards video
> : RAM is needed for the video card just to "do it's thing"?
>
> Sure. Just look at your modeline. But you might as well just guess
> 25% more.
That's wrong. The card does not need any more memory. There used to be cards
with 2.25MB of video ram - exactly 1024x768x24bit, which was the maximum
resolution.
If you want some accelerations (hardware cursor, font caching) you need extra
video ram for that, but with XFree86 those can be disabled if you want all
video ram for frame buffer.
BTW, 1024x768x4bytes is _exactly_ 3MB. Not 3.145...
--
Matan Ziv-Av. [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David C.)
Subject: Re: Guys,Guys BeOS For Linux Is Here !!
Date: 12 Apr 2000 17:22:40 -0400
Prasanth Kumar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> BeOS is whole new operating system from a company Be formed by an X
> Apple person. They targeted it as a multimedia OS had hoped to get
> Apple to replace the MacOS with it. That didn't work out so they
> recast it to work on the Intel platform primarly.
Is that the official version of history now? Too bad it's not true.
Be originally set out to build and sell stand-alone computers with dual
processors. Their system - known as the "Be Box" - was equipped with
two PowerPC 601 processors. The BeBox was a very interesting piece of
hardware. It used PC-compatible interfaces for common hardware (like
keyboard and mouse), and PCI slots. It also included MIDI ports,
several audio ports, and their "Geek Port".
The Geek Port was, IMO, the coolest feature of the BeBox. It is a
37-pin D-shell connector on the back with all kinds of I/O pins on it.
There are power supplies at three different voltages, analog inputs and
outputs, and digital inputs and outputs (which can be used individually as
serial ports or together as a parallel port). There was no defined
purpose for the port, but they provided a full set of APIs for programs
to take direct control of all the port's features. The idea being that
you could design custom hardware projects and have the computer control
them though this port.
Anyway, BeOS was their operating system. They designed it from the
ground up to support multiple processors (since their hardware came with
two), really good multithreading, and multimedia. They borrowed bits
and pieces from UNIX, MacOS, Windows, and their own imagination. The
result was a really cool OS that is very easy to use and very
programmer-friendly.
A year or two later, it became ineconomical to keep on selling the Be
Box hardware. They found that others were shipping dual-processor boxes
for lower cost than they could make theirs. So they dropped out of the
hardware business and focussed on the OS - initially releasing it for
PowerPC-based Macs, and later porting it to Intel.
Then, when Apple shipped their G3 boxes, BeOS broke. And Apple wouldn't
give them the specs they needed to make it work (or so the official
story goes.) So today, BeOS is primarily an Intel/PC-based operating
system. The version for Mac hardware still exists, but it can only run
on the older pre-G3 Macs.
There was a rumor about them trying to get Apple to adopt BeOS to be the
next generation MacOS, but it never went anywhere. BeOS was definitely
NOT designed to be a MacOS replacement.
> Recently Be made their OS available with a free license to
> non-commercial users which is why there is a hubub about it right
> now. Like I said earlier, after trying it, it looks like a great OS
> but it still lacks drivers for much common hardware.
It's in the same position that OS/2 was in when version 3 shipped. A
great OS, but very little commercial applications and very little
third-party hardware support. OS/2 eventually got better hardware
support, but the apps never materialized.
Maybe BeOS will do better. I have no clue. It would be nice, though.
Their OS _IS_ does have a very good design.
-- David
------------------------------
From: Paul Hughett <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Palm pilot and serial port question
Date: 12 Apr 2000 21:23:18 GMT
Thaddeus Selden <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
: Could someone please explain to me what the difference is between
: /dev/ttys* and /dev/cua*? I use /dev/cua0 for my Wacom graphics tablet and
: it works fine. On my old machine, I only had one serial port and used
: /dev/cua0 for both the cradle and the tablet and just switched between
: them. But now all of the documentation says to use /dev/ttyS*. Also, any
: ideas how to fix the problem? I've already made sure to use the /dev/pilot
: link to whichever serial port I'm trying and made sure that permissions are
: correct. TIA
As far as I know, /dev/ttyS* refers to a plain serial port; /dev/cua*
refers to the exact same hardware but assumes there is a modem
attached to it and add functionality to support dial-out using that
modem. In my experience, the pilot-link command (and presumably all
the other palm software) will work fine with either, but /dev/ttyS0
probably captures the semantics more precisely.
I can't help you with your other problem, however; I haven't experienced
that one personally yet.
Paul Hughett
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David C.)
Subject: Re: Guys,Guys BeOS For Linux Is Here !!
Date: 12 Apr 2000 17:26:16 -0400
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Rod Smith) writes:
>
> BeOS was originally designed for the little-known AT&T Hobbit CPU, but
> that CPU was discontinued before Be could bring a computer to market.
I didn't know that. Thanks for the info.
> The original BeBox computers that Be sold all used multiple CPUs,
> IIRC.
They were all dual-processor PPC boxes at various clock speeds. A
friend of mine has a BeBox with two 66MHz PPC-601 processors.
Interestingly enough, it's quite a performer, even in today's market of
PCs running at 400-800MHz.
> (Be no longer sells computers, though, just the OS, which is now free
> for personal use.)
Unfortunately, they found that they couldn't compete when PC
manufacturers started shipping (relatively) inexpensive dual-CPU boxes.
-- David
------------------------------
From: "Jon R. Grimshaw" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Replacing harddrives
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 21:29:08 GMT
I currently have a 1GB hard drive and a 640MB HD running linux. (Mandrake
7). I recently stripped a 3.2GB drive from an old computer and would like
to replace the two in my machine. It is currently running as a router for
three other machines and would like to transfer all information without
having to start from scratch. Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Jon
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David C.)
Subject: Re: Guys,Guys BeOS For Linux Is Here !!
Date: 12 Apr 2000 17:33:35 -0400
Ronald Bruck <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> I've tried BeOS on both the PowerPC and x86 platforms since the
> beginning. It's a very well-built OS, and it's interesting to
> speculate on what it would be like now had Apple bought IT instead of
> NeXT, ...
We can thank/blame Steve Jobs for that. Apple didn't buy NeXT. Jobs
(who still owns NeXT, I think) became Apple's CEO and brought the tech
with him.
And it wasn't a bad choice, either. NeXTStep is also a well-built OS
with a lot of interesting features. I'm hoping to try my hand at
programming some of them when Apple ships MacOS-X (the one that will
have the NeXT-like API layer in it.)
> but--it just doesn't have enough productive applications to DO
> anything. I put it on, play with it awhile, then recover the disk
> space for something more useful.
Gee, that sounds familiar. As a former OS/2 programmer, I can
sympathize. It (like OS/2) is great to use and program for, but without
mainstream apps, it can never be more than a fun toy. You end up using
what comes with it, maybe some freeware you download, and what you can
write yourself. This is good enough for a second (or third, or
fourth...) computer, but definitely not as your primary system.
> With Linux, out-of-the-box you get an enormous collection of
> utilities, games, word processors, spreadsheets, compilers,
> multimedia, etc. etc.
You also get over 30 years of UNIX source code development to draw off
of. Linux never had to scramble to get apps, because it was (more or
less) compatible with POSIX-standard UNIX from the get-go.
> Supposedly BeOS scales VERY well with multiple processors.
Yep. It was originally designed for their dual-CPU BeBox systems. So
the entire core of the OS was designed for good performance on SMP
systems. Unfortunately, I haven't yet tried it on a dual-processor PC,
just on a BeBox.
-- David
------------------------------
From: Bryan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: abit ka7 and linux: works great
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 21:39:41 GMT
note that I didn't even try IDE. on a fast system like this, scsi is
highly suggested ;-)
but the kx133 chipset was transparent to linux; meaning, it didn't
present any special issues to linux. I wouldn't expect any, either.
just reporting a successful linux 6.2 install.
(my 2.2.14 kernel took just under 3 minutes to build on a k7-600)
--
Bryan, http://Grateful.Net (ANTISPAM: email is my name at my web's domain)
(c) 2000. Publishing and/or relaying of this material on all forums other than
USENET implies agreeing to a consultancy fee of US$150 per posting. You must
obtain a written permit before you publish. Violators are subject to civil
prosecution for Copyright Infringement as applicable. Publication by C|NET
and Microsoft Networks expressly prohibited.
------------------------------
From: Mark Bratcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: DHCP not working in kernel 2.2.x, was OK in 2.0.36
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 17:42:03 -0400
OK, I fixed the problem.
I replaced /sbin/pump in the ifup script with dhcpcp and the network
came right up.
I've read that pump has some problems in Redhat 6.x distributions, which
prompted me to try this.
Seems like an onerous problem in the RedHat distribution...
Mark
The Bard wrote:
>
> On Tue, 11 Apr 2000 14:39:58 -0400, Mark Bratcher <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
>
> >Hi All,
> >
> >WHen I upgraded my Linux kernel to 2.2.x from 2.0.36 my DHCP stopped
> >working.
> >
> >My PC recognizes the network card, and it works if I set a fixed IP for
> >my workstation. But when I try to connect via DHCP, it fails. During
> >boot, the initialization of eth0 service fails.
> >
> >The initialization of the service is a call to
> >/etc/sysconfig/network-scripts/ifup. I tried running it by hand and
> >watching what's going on, but I can't spot any obvious clues. It fails
> >on the call to 'pump'.
> >
> >Any help appreciated.
> >
> >Mark
> Make sure that in linuxconf, the correct module is being loaded by
> eth0...
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David C.)
Subject: Re: Where is my 128 MB RAM gone?
Date: 12 Apr 2000 17:43:10 -0400
"Bobby Hitt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> I'm running Slackware 7.0 with 128 MB of RAM, and didn't have to add the
> "mem=128M" line to lilo. A while back I installed RedHat 6.0 on a system
> with 128 MB, and it only showed 64MB. This appears to be associated with the
> distribution, not with the kernel.
Support for auto-detecting more than 64M is in the 2.2.x kernel.
The problem is that it also requires BIOS support. The original BIOS
calls for detecting memory size won't return more than 64M. The 2.2.x
kernel will use the newer call, if it exists, but it doesn't always
exist.
Adding append="mem=128M" to lilo tells the kernel to use the
value you specify and don't bother checking the BIOS.
(Oh, one more thing - don't forget the "M". If you accidentally say
"mem=128", then the kernel tries to run with only 128 _bytes_ of RAM,
and panics as soon as it tries to boot. Recovering can be a royal pain
in the neck.
-- David
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Pjtg0707)
Subject: Re: Guys,Guys BeOS For Linux Is Here !!
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 21:44:43 GMT
On 12 Apr 2000 17:22:40 -0400, David C. <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>Prasanth Kumar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
========================snipped==============================
Does this BeOSi (or NextStep) run on 68k systems?
I have a couple of MacIIci that I'd
like to at least turn them into something useful besides taking up space
as doorstops.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David C.)
Subject: Re: Speed of AMD K6-2 System
Date: 12 Apr 2000 17:51:13 -0400
Julian Lee <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> I need some help! I just bought one of the new AMD 'EasyNow' PCs. It's
> one of those 'non-legacy' PCs running on an AMD K6-2 450 and it's
> soooooo slow! Let me give you some specs first:
>
> AMD K6-2 450
> 512k cache
> 128MB PC100 SDRAM
> SiS530 sharing 8MB ram
> 4.3GB Seagate HD on an SiS5513 controller
> SiS900 10/100 ethernet card
> SiS7018 sound card
> USB Keyboard & Mouse
>
> I'm running SuSE 6.3 on it (kernel 2.2.13 and Xfree86 3.3.5)and it's
> unbelievably slow! It takes about 12 seconds to get from the login
> manager into X with KDE! In comparison, my PII 450 only takes about
> 2-3 seconds!
It's not the K6-2. A friend of mine runs a K6-2/400 system with a
Savage-3 AGP video card and it's plenty fast.
> Does anyone have any idea what it could be? I know that it could be the
> crap SiS530 video chipset but when I'm running ktop, I find that syslogd
> and X are taing up the most resources (up to 45% each!).
Could be the video card. Especially if it's one built-in to the
motherboard, using system RAM for the screen buffer.
> Could it be the effect of the USB mouse? Every time the mouse is moved
> or a key/button clicked, a message is written to the console. Could
> that be what's eating all the resources?
Yeow!!!!
Turn off that system logging! Even if you have to recompile the driver
to do it, do it!
This is definitely eating up tons of CPU time. Think about it. You
move the mouse halfway across the screen - that's 512 pixels. You've
just written 512 messages to the system log. If each message is 40
bytes long, you've just written 20KB to the system log (which gets
written to a disk file, and possibly elsewhere as well) for a single
flick of the wrist.
I don't know if this is the cause of your speed problems, but that's one
of the first places I'd look.
Another place to look is at your BIOS cache settings. Make sure all
128M of your RAM is cached. Some motherboards (especially older ones)
can only cache the first 64M, and some may require BIOS setting changes
in order to cache more. If the OS is running out of non-cached RAM, you
will notice a tremendous slowdown.
-- David
------------------------------
From: Kai Michael Schramm <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: MP3 and linux
Date: Wed, 12 Apr 2000 16:54:45 -0500
Hi!
I am using RH 6.1 on my Pentium 100 notebook. The built-in ESS1788
soundcard works fine.
I am trying to listen to MP3's with mpg123 and xmms, but both programs
play the mp3's too
slow. Using top I found out that mpg123 only needs about 20% of the cpu
power.
I tried all mpg123 switches and none worked.
Using mpg123 -v I noticed that the time is running too slow.
What can I do?
Kai Schramm
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (David C.)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems
Subject: Re: high altitude modern systems performance
Date: 12 Apr 2000 18:06:33 -0400
Robert Redelmeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>
> Excuse me, but I have alot of trouble with the "cosmic radiation"
> hypothesis. At 10,000 ft altitude, you might have lost 20% of the
> atmospheric shielding, and much more of any shielding due to water
> vapor. But that is a small loss compared to the 77% loss at 35,000 ft
> where commercial airliners cruise.
Ah yes, but the flight circuitry in commercial airliners is designed for
operation at those altitudes. Which means they provide enough shielding
and/or redundancy.
It would be interesting to see how laptop PCs perform in airline
cabins. Unfortunately, they're rarely on for more than a few hours
while in flight, so it would probably be hard to get any useful stats
without running an expensive set of testing trials.
> IMHO, the most likely culprit is your power source. At 10kft, you are
> probably on an isolated generator supply. It will be noisy, and worse
> if there are big motor drains. The spikes could kill electronics.
> Your older 486 and 286 might survive because in those days transformer
> power supplies were common and they can absorb alot of spikes.
Getting a UPS and/or a good surge suppressor/power filter is always a
good idea. At any altitude.
-- David
------------------------------
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