First, a little background. I am a native Mac user (what is a BIOS anyway?!
command prompt?!) who intended to install LinuxPPC about this time last
year. I never got around to it. About three weeks ago I bought a PC and
decided to make some use of it by getting a second hard drive and installing
Mandrake on it. Call me crazy, but the idea of partitioning something I use
every day scares me. I have heard too many stories about partitons breaking
down, I suppose.
After much gnashing of teeth and general hassle, I got the thing mounted
(damn these cheap micro ATX cases!) and just finally got Mandrake installed,
after trying four times. It is a 10GB Western Digital, if that matters. My
Windows 98 hard drive is primary master. My Mandrake hard drive is primary
slave. I have nothing for a secondary master. My CD-ROM is the secondary
slave.
First problem: LILO. Right now, I have to disable the primary hard drive
in BIOS to boot my Linux drive. When I boot the Linux drive, LILO asks me
if I want to boot to Linux or my floppy drive. I'd love to be able to make
a choice between Windows and Linux as everything boots up. I attempted to
reconfigure LILO, at the command prompt, but obviously I am not getting
something. I have the feeling that I need to somehow configure LILO on my
Windows hard drive, since that is my primary master and what boots first.
Any ideas/suggestions?
Second, I thought my modem was configured properly during the Mandrake
install. Whenever I try to use it in Linux, it says the modem is busy.
It's definitely not. I bought the confounded modem expressly because I was
under the impression that it was supported by Linux. It is a Rockwell ACF
II 56k data fax modem, on COM port 2 (in windows language). Today I read
something somewhere that suggested Rockwells aren't usually supported by
Linux. Was I misled? Can anyone point me in the direction of a Linux-modem
webpage?
Sheesh. I realize I sound like a babe in the woods here. Bear with me.
Thank goodness this list is labeled "newbie"!
Thanks,
Kathleen
