Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Submitted 23-Jul-00 by John J. LeMay Jr.: Doesn't there come a point when using a machine as old as an XT clone actually costs more to run (heat/electric) than grabbing something like the BookPC machines (around $500 ready to roll) and tossing the "classic" into the antique rack? I'm not blasting anyone for still using old equipment, I would never do that. I'm just curious as to the trade off. I would assume their has been significant advances in power efficiency and in the physics involved in keeping machines cool in the past 10 years or so and that these features may make purchasing a new machine more cost effective than running an old one. Just curious! Yes, it probably does cost more to run it than say one of the everything on one board machines. I actually did it originally as an exercise in adapting old equipment into terminals. Bottom line is that I can get an XT with a monitor for around $50-100 while a real terminal will cost me at least twice that :/. Around here, I am more accountable for initial investment than cost of operation. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
That gets to my next question... While shopping, I ran across a lot of boxes with motherboards that have onboard sound video. What's your take on those? Do they tend to require funky device drivers that Linux may not have? Seve Original Message On 7/22/00, 10:34:17 PM, Anton Graham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote regarding Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?: Submitted 23-Jul-00 by John J. LeMay Jr.: Doesn't there come a point when using a machine as old as an XT clone actually costs more to run (heat/electric) than grabbing something like the BookPC machines (around $500 ready to roll) and tossing the "classic" into the antique rack? I'm not blasting anyone for still using old equipment, I would never do that. I'm just curious as to the trade off. I would assume their has been significant advances in power efficiency and in the physics involved in keeping machines cool in the past 10 years or so and that these features may make purchasing a new machine more cost effective than running an old one. Just curious! Yes, it probably does cost more to run it than say one of the everything on one board machines. I actually did it originally as an exercise in adapting old equipment into terminals. Bottom line is that I can get an XT with a monitor for around $50-100 while a real terminal will cost me at least twice that :/. Around here, I am more accountable for initial investment than cost of operation. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Sevatio Octavio: That gets to my next question... While shopping, I ran across a lot of boxes with motherboards that have onboard sound video. What's your take on those? Do they tend to require funky device drivers that Linux may not have? These have their pros and cons. In brief: Pro: 1) Generally less expensive than purchasing separate components 2) Only a handfull of different sound/video chipsets are available increasing the likelihood that drivers have been developed. Con: 1) Only a handfull of different sound/video chipsets are available reducing the likelihood that it's a "quality" chipset 2) upgrade-ability may be extremely limited, as most of those boards skimp on pci slots That said, if you choose to go with one with onboard sound and video, ensure that the chipsets are supported _before_ buying. I would tend to avoid SiS video chipsets (although they are extremely common) because of bad personal experiences with them and i810 chipsets all together. The video support for the i810 is shaky at this point. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Why do you say the i810 video support is shaky at this point? It works great and is packaged with LM 7.1. I'll admit you do have to do a little hand configuration. Support is also available for older releases of LM, but you have to manually install it yourself. It may not be the speediest video in the world, but if you are not doing heavy duty 3D graphics or gaming you'll never know the difference. I would be careful in the low-end PC's of the combined sound/modem setup. I have an HP with this and neither the modem (winmodem naturally) or sound is supported in Linux. Since the cheaper machines also don't come with many slots I can't replace the sound/modem with internal cards - its either one or the other. Fortunately, I don't need a modem in the PC as I use a separate firewall/IP masquerading server which has a supported modem. And I have a sound card I took out of the firewall box since it doesn't need it, but, at least in LM 7.0, I couldn't get that card working. Haven't tried in 7.1 yet. The bottom line is to find out what all the components in the machine you are interested in are and check the hardware compatibility list to be sure they are supported. It wouldn't hurt to post on the list too check how easy they are to get working as well. - Ralph - Original Message - From: "Anton Graham" [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Sent: Sunday, July 23, 2000 12:56 AM Subject: Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient? Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Sevatio Octavio: That gets to my next question... While shopping, I ran across a lot of boxes with motherboards that have onboard sound video. What's your take on those? Do they tend to require funky device drivers that Linux may not have? These have their pros and cons. In brief: Pro: 1) Generally less expensive than purchasing separate components 2) Only a handfull of different sound/video chipsets are available increasing the likelihood that drivers have been developed. Con: 1) Only a handfull of different sound/video chipsets are available reducing the likelihood that it's a "quality" chipset 2) upgrade-ability may be extremely limited, as most of those boards skimp on pci slots That said, if you choose to go with one with onboard sound and video, ensure that the chipsets are supported _before_ buying. I would tend to avoid SiS video chipsets (although they are extremely common) because of bad personal experiences with them and i810 chipsets all together. The video support for the i810 is shaky at this point. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Sevatio Octavio wrote: Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 07:38:51 GMT From: Sevatio Octavio [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient? That gets to my next question... While shopping, I ran across a lot of boxes with motherboards that have onboard sound video. What's your take on those? Do they tend to require funky device drivers that Linux may not have? So far, I haven't found too many things to be incompatible. Most of them probably come with an SiS video/audio or the VIAgra style chipset. It used to be an issue for me about 8 months ago, but since then, drivers have either been made for them, or you can pay $20 for OSS, www.opensound.com. For the most part, XFree86 works, although some of the drivers may have certain artifacts when using memcopy stuff, like moving windows, it may produce some garbage. One of my older SiS motherboards had snow on the screen when X was started, but that was because the motherboard tried to share mem between the VGA and slow system mem. But since then, RAM has improved in speed, and this no longer is much of an issue on the newer built-ins I have tried. In the worst case, most of these motherboards come with a jumper to disable the onboard Video/Audio. Just in case you have problems, make sure you buy a motherboard that can disable those. If you do end up disabling, you can get some more compatible pci cards, like a voodoo3 and perhaps a soundblaster. I recommend a Yamaha XG card, but that will cost you about $30 of OSS drivers. Seve Original Message On 7/22/00, 10:34:17 PM, Anton Graham [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote regarding Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?: Submitted 23-Jul-00 by John J. LeMay Jr.: Doesn't there come a point when using a machine as old as an XT clone actually costs more to run (heat/electric) than grabbing something like the BookPC machines (around $500 ready to roll) and tossing the "classic" into the antique rack? I'm not blasting anyone for still using old equipment, I would never do that. I'm just curious as to the trade off. I would assume their has been significant advances in power efficiency and in the physics involved in keeping machines cool in the past 10 years or so and that these features may make purchasing a new machine more cost effective than running an old one. Just curious! Yes, it probably does cost more to run it than say one of the everything on one board machines. I actually did it originally as an exercise in adapting old equipment into terminals. Bottom line is that I can get an XT with a monitor for around $50-100 while a real terminal will cost me at least twice that :/. Around here, I am more accountable for initial investment than cost of operation. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered! -- Regards, Ellick Chan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jul 23
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ellick Chan: I recommend a Yamaha XG card, but that will cost you about $30 of OSS drivers. No longer :)! I run my Yamaha YMF-724F (DS-XG) with ALSA drivers. Believe it or not, the sound quality is actually better than what I got with the commercial drivers from OSS. You need the latest ALSA (0.58) for this support. There is also now support in the kernel (OSS-Free) for the SBPro "legacy mode" of the card, but it is poorly documented and I have been unable to make that work. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ralph Day: Why do you say the i810 video support is shaky at this point? It works great and is packaged with LM 7.1. I'll admit you do have to do a little hand configuration. That's why :/ The i810's are marketted to entry level consumers, who would be more than a little miffed at not having it work "out-of-the-box." Remember that as Linux becomes more mainstream, we are going to be getting more (and more) people who: 1) Have never used anything but Windows/MacOS (when the LM PPC port becomes available) 2) Never had to manually configure anything 3) Don't know that X isn't the OS, just an interface. 4) Refuse to accept answers/solutions because they don't like them. (Witness the gentleman who complained numerous times about being unable to install X on his unsupported video card). 5) Are more than willing to blame the OS for their own lack of knowledge. I can't count the times I have had to tell somebody to edit such-and-such file instead of using a (rather limited) GUI front-end to a program. Our Windows converts are coming from a point and click world in which all of the thinking has been done for them. If we want to keep these people, we need to steer them away from hardware that may pose difficulties for them until they are comfortable enough to do the tweaking that makes it work. In the meantime, hardware support improves constanty. The i810 is considered by many to be a priority project, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was Linux-newbie friendly by the time 7.2 becomes available. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
alsa drivers are coool.. the sound quality is the best! -sarang
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Thus spake Anton Graham ([EMAIL PROTECTED]): [...] I can't count the times I have had to tell somebody to edit such-and-such file instead of using a (rather limited) GUI front-end to a program. Our Windows converts are coming from a point and click world in which all of the thinking has been done for them. How true. For a well-reasoned counterblast to the all-pervasive GUI, Neil Stephenson's "In the beginning was the command line" is an excellent read. One small analogy he makes: a car would be much easier to drive using a GUI. But a *lot* more dangerous. -- |Deryk Barker, Computer Science Dept. | Music does not have to be understood| |Camosun College, Victoria, BC, Canada| It has to be listened to. | |email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] | | |phone: +1 250 370 4452 | Hermann Scherchen. |
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Anton Graham wrote: In the meantime, hardware support improves constanty. The i810 is considered by many to be a priority project, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was Linux-newbie friendly by the time 7.2 becomes available. I run i810 on many machines, and it works right out of the box... Some combination of motherboard/monitor/ram have some problems though. i810 support is one of my priorities, but unfortunately I don't have access to all different motherboards on the planet =( Jean-Michel Dault [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
That's why we must give as much help as possible. That learning curve is steep but once you're there, you will not go back. No more annual ransoms to Microsoft. No more buying the best and latest hardware and then be defeated by Window's bloatness. All this money I'm saving is going into more boxes throughout the house. Three years ago I could not have dreamed of this incredible scenario that we're enjoying. A lot of my non-techy friends are also starting to see the light. Although they're nervous about abandoning their winbox, they are buying new boxes with just Linux installed. Seve Original Message On 7/23/00, 1:27:07 PM, Pj [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote regarding Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?: Amen! You might also add that many of the Windows converts won't have the patience or don't want to take the time to work thru the little problems. I've been trying for several months to install a stable Mdk. Every time I get close I find another hardware problem. At the rate I'm going I won't live long enough to learn what Linux is..but in the meantime I sure am learing what it ain't! Pj [EMAIL PROTECTED] At 12:47 PM 7/23/00 -0700, you wrote: Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ralph Day: Why do you say the i810 video support is shaky at this point? It works great and is packaged with LM 7.1. I'll admit you do have to do a little hand configuration. That's why :/ The i810's are marketted to entry level consumers, who would be more than a little miffed at not having it work "out-of-the-box." Remember that as Linux becomes more mainstream, we are going to be getting more (and more) people who: 1) Have never used anything but Windows/MacOS (when the LM PPC port becomes available) 2) Never had to manually configure anything 3) Don't know that X isn't the OS, just an interface. 4) Refuse to accept answers/solutions because they don't like them. (Witness the gentleman who complained numerous times about being unable to install X on his unsupported video card). 5) Are more than willing to blame the OS for their own lack of knowledge. I can't count the times I have had to tell somebody to edit such-and-such file instead of using a (rather limited) GUI front-end to a program. Our Windows converts are coming from a point and click world in which all of the thinking has been done for them. If we want to keep these people, we need to steer them away from hardware that may pose difficulties for them until they are comfortable enough to do the tweaking that makes it work. In the meantime, hardware support improves constanty. The i810 is considered by many to be a priority project, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was Linux-newbie friendly by the time 7.2 becomes available. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Does Mandrake 7 or 7.1 come with alsa drivers or just the oss design? On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, you wrote: Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ellick Chan: I recommend a Yamaha XG card, but that will cost you about $30 of OSS drivers. No longer :)! I run my Yamaha YMF-724F (DS-XG) with ALSA drivers. Believe it or not, the sound quality is actually better than what I got with the commercial drivers from OSS. You need the latest ALSA (0.58) for this support. There is also now support in the kernel (OSS-Free) for the SBPro "legacy mode" of the card, but it is poorly documented and I have been unable to make that work. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Vic: Does Mandrake 7 or 7.1 come with alsa drivers or just the oss design? 7.1 comes with ALSA standard, but 0.5.7 was the latest as of the release date. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Anton Graham wrote: Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 11:48:13 -0700 From: Anton Graham [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient? Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ellick Chan: I recommend a Yamaha XG card, but that will cost you about $30 of OSS drivers. No longer :)! I run my Yamaha YMF-724F (DS-XG) with ALSA drivers. Believe it or not, the sound quality is actually better than what I got with the commercial drivers from OSS. You need the latest ALSA (0.58) for this support. Your're correct, but I never got that to work on my Sony VAIO N505VX laptop which has the YMF744b chip. There is also now support in the kernel (OSS-Free) for the SBPro "legacy mode" of the card, but it is poorly documented and I have been unable to make that work. Somehow after the Win2k bios upgrade (which I thought would make it more compatible) the SB emulation somehow got broken... -- Regards, Ellick Chan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jul 23
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
on 7/23/00 12:47 PM, Anton Graham wrote: Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ralph Day: Why do you say the i810 video support is shaky at this point? It works great and is packaged with LM 7.1. I'll admit you do have to do a little hand configuration. That's why :/ The i810's are marketted to entry level consumers, who would be more than a little miffed at not having it work "out-of-the-box." Remember that as Linux becomes more mainstream, we are going to be getting more (and more) people who: 1) Have never used anything but Windows/MacOS (when the LM PPC port becomes available) 2) Never had to manually configure anything 3) Don't know that X isn't the OS, just an interface. 4) Refuse to accept answers/solutions because they don't like them. (Witness the gentleman who complained numerous times about being unable to install X on his unsupported video card). 5) Are more than willing to blame the OS for their own lack of knowledge. I can't count the times I have had to tell somebody to edit such-and-such file instead of using a (rather limited) GUI front-end to a program. Our Windows converts are coming from a point and click world in which all of the thinking has been done for them. I don't hink this is a bad thing a big problem with linux is that the GUI interface to settings are very bad the reason I think is that most linux users to date are computer guys who don't mind tweeking the text file. so the GUI control panel If we want to keep these people, we need to steer them away from hardware that may pose difficulties for them until they are comfortable enough to do the tweaking that makes it work. In the meantime, hardware support improves constanty. The i810 is considered by many to be a priority project, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was Linux-newbie friendly by the time 7.2 becomes available.
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ellick Chan: On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Anton Graham wrote: Your're correct, but I never got that to work on my Sony VAIO N505VX laptop which has the YMF744b chip. The most frequent cause of people believing that ALSA doesn't work for them is the fact that it mutes all audio channels by default and you need to use a mixer capable of unmuting them (I recommend alsamixer, simply because I'm used to it. You only need to do this once, anyhoo.) There were some problems with the Yamaha support in 0.5.8 that were subsequntly fixed in the a and b releases (I use the 'a' release here). If you are interested, I can send you a copy of the relevent portion of /etc/modules.conf so you can compare it against what you did originally. One other important consideration when compiling ALSA is to ensure that you build it with OSS compatibility, because there are just too many apps that expect that you have OSS. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered!
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Anton Graham wrote: Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2000 17:38:22 -0700 From: Anton Graham [EMAIL PROTECTED] Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Subject: Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient? Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ellick Chan: On Sun, 23 Jul 2000, Anton Graham wrote: Your're correct, but I never got that to work on my Sony VAIO N505VX laptop which has the YMF744b chip. The most frequent cause of people believing that ALSA doesn't work for them is the fact that it mutes all audio channels by default and you need to use a mixer capable of unmuting them (I recommend alsamixer, simply because I'm used to it. You only need to do this once, anyhoo.) Maybe, but I ws playing with cooker at the time, and enough things were broken as-is. Also, the Yamaha support was just recently added, so things were still a bit buggy. There were some problems with the Yamaha support in 0.5.8 that were subsequntly fixed in the a and b releases (I use the 'a' release here). If you are interested, I can send you a copy of the relevent portion of /etc/modules.conf so you can compare it against what you did originally. Yes please, I would like to see it. One other important consideration when compiling ALSA is to ensure that you build it with OSS compatibility, because there are just too many apps that expect that you have OSS. Should I just use the Mandrake RPM for alsa, or compile it myself. The RPM would require me to change a kernel. Changing a kernel is not too bad, but my laptop is really painful to get working perfectly. I'm sorta hesitant to change things, as they tend to break reiserfs here, but I can try to compile the latest alsa stuff. -- Regards, Ellick Chan [EMAIL PROTECTED] Jul 23
Re: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
Submitted 23-Jul-00 by Ellick Chan: If you are interested, I can send you a copy of the relevent portion of /etc/modules.conf so you can compare it against what you did originally. Yes please, I would like to see it. No problem, attached. Should I just use the Mandrake RPM for alsa, or compile it myself. The RPM would require me to change a kernel. I would compile it. You can go ahead and use the alsa-libs and alsa-utils RPM's, as they are not dependant on kernel version, but no sense in going from a working, stable kernel to 2.2.17pre on a finicky system. -- _ _|_|_ ( ) *Anton Graham /v\ / [EMAIL PROTECTED] /( )X (m_m) GPG ID: 18F78541 Penguin Powered! # ALSA portion alias char-major-116 snd options snd snd_major=116 snd_cards_limit=1 alias snd-card-0 snd-card-ymfpci options snd-card-ymfpci snd_index=0 snd_id="YMFPCI" # ALSA OSS/Free support portion alias char-major-14 soundcore alias sound-slot-0 snd-card-0 alias sound-service-0-0 snd-mixer-oss alias sound-service-0-1 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-3 snd-pcm-oss alias sound-service-0-8 snd-seq-oss alias sound-service-0-12 snd-pcm-oss # This is here for the sound initscript alias sound snd-card-0
RE: [expert] Pentium 200Mhz/MMX and Mandrake - Resource Efficient?
The real question is what you want the machine to do :) For example, I have an old PC/XT clone I still use as a terminal for an AMD K6-2/350 system and a 386sx/25 (ex-doorstop) running as a firewall/router. Doesn't there come a point when using a machine as old as an XT clone actually costs more to run (heat/electric) than grabbing something like the BookPC machines (around $500 ready to roll) and tossing the "classic" into the antique rack? I'm not blasting anyone for still using old equipment, I would never do that. I'm just curious as to the trade off. I would assume their has been significant advances in power efficiency and in the physics involved in keeping machines cool in the past 10 years or so and that these features may make purchasing a new machine more cost effective than running an old one. Just curious!
