Linux-Hardware Digest #360, Volume #10 Sat, 29 May 99 12:13:56 EDT
Contents:
Re: CD-ROM read speed slower than expected (Tim Moore)
Re: Linux on desktop Dells ("Walter Harms")
Still need Help getting Dell PowerEdge SP 5166-2 going (Leslie Smith)
Winmodem ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: CD-ROM read speed slower than expected (Aaron and Hifumi)
Re: ASUS P2BD vs. SuperMicro P6DBE (Swietanowski Artur)
Re: Dual Celeron's and SMP Performance Problems (Suran)
Re: Caldera 2.2 and Compaq 3200 RAID controller ("Tony Platt")
S3 86c362 AGP Videocard supported by X? ("Gijs")
Re: Hard Disk :Suicide is not an option :) (hac)
Re: HP Laserjet 3p (Rod Roark)
Re: Sound card IDE (Swietanowski Artur)
Re: Sony SDT9000 Compression ("Tony Platt")
Re: Tape Backup Question (Hugh Fader)
Slackware 3.6, PS2 M77 and 2.88 Floppy (Chuck Bland)
Re: Windows easy to install? BULLSHIT! ("Roberto Leibman")
Re: NeoMagic video chipset supported on linux?? (Dmitry)
Re: NeoMagic video chipset supported on linux?? (Michael Meissner)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 05:12:16 -0700
From: Tim Moore <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CD-ROM read speed slower than expected
ASUS 34x (34*300KB/s) should be about 10MB/s, basically UDMA disk speed.
# time dd if=/dev/hdb of=/dev/null bs=512 count=524288
524288+0 records in
524288+0 records out
0.580u 8.600s 1:08.56 13.3% 0+0k 0+0io 82pf+0w
# bc -q
scale=2
524288*512/68.56
3915336.28 # 3.9MB/s actual
524288*512/68.56/(300*1024)
12.74 # or about a "12x"
Apparently the x in 34x refers to theoretical speed, like 33MB/s for
UDMA. Reality may be different.
Dan Christensen wrote:
>
> I did some timings of the read speed of two CD drives I have attached
> to my Transmonde Vivante SE Celeron 300 laptop which runs linux
> (kernel version 2.0.36). The first drive is an internal IDE 24x
> CD-ROM and the second is an external SCSI Yamaha 4416S which is
> advertised as a 16x read drive and is attached through an Adaptec
> 1460B PCMCIA card.
>
> To do the timing on my internal 24x drive I did:
>
> time dd if=/dev/cdrom of=/dev/null bs=512 count=100000
>
> with a data CD-ROM in the drive. To read 50M it took 37.25 seconds.
> (I tried varying the block size, and 512 bytes was the fastest.) I
> figure that 50M is about 341 seconds out of the 650M = 74 minutes, so
> this works out to a read speed of 9.2x
>
> On my external scsi 16x drive I did:
>
> time dd if=/dev/scd0 of=/dev/null bs=5k count=10000
>
> To read 50M it took 48 seconds, which works out to 7.1x. (This
> block size seemed to be the fastest.)
>
> These timings don't seem consistent with the advertised ratings. Is
> this normal? Is there something I can do to speed them up?
>
> Thanks for any help,
>
> Dan
>
> --
> Dan Christensen
> [EMAIL PROTECTED]
--
direct replies substitute timothymoore for user name
"Everything is permitted. Nothing is forbidden."
WS Burroughs.
------------------------------
From: "Walter Harms" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.os.linux
Subject: Re: Linux on desktop Dells
Date: 29 May 1999 12:40:05 GMT
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Donovan Rebbechi) writes:
>On Wed, 26 May 1999 16:46:55 GMT, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>>Does Linux install on those desktop Dells with that cage for all the
>>plug in cards?
>Better: I believe Dell will preload RH6.0 for you.
>Check out http://www.dell.com/linux
i run linux on optiplex dells since 2.0.34 (suse 5.2) no problems with that.
walter
--
=====
"When you travel around as much as *I* do, it's almost inevitable
that you'll run into yourself at some point!"
=====
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Leslie Smith)
Subject: Still need Help getting Dell PowerEdge SP 5166-2 going
Date: 29 May 1999 13:14:37 +0100
Can help me out here, I have got a Dell PowerEdge server
SP 5166-2 Dual CPU.
I'm using Red Hat 5.2, when I am using the boot disk to boot
the machine. It seems to load the boot.img OK, but when it
tries to load initrd.img the system seems to hang at ... .
This also happens with Red Hat 5.1 too. I am able to load Red
Hat 5.0 OK.
Machine Spec:
CPU = 2 x 166
SCSI Controller = NCR 53c810
SCSI HD = 4 x 2GB
SCSI CD = x32
MEM = 128MB
Display = 1 x Vodoo 4MB
REgards
Leslie...UK:-)
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Winmodem
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 09:34:53 GMT
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
I've got Zoltrix 56k V.90 (internal) modem. It's a Winmodem.
Does it works under Linux (RedHat 5.2) ?
Thanks,
------------------------------
From: Aaron and Hifumi <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CD-ROM read speed slower than expected
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 08:05:56 -0400
Don't worry, these speeds are entirely normal. The speed that you see on
the specs for the drives is an absolute best possible case. Likely only
see it on the outer most tracks on a CD. The rest of the time (read ->
practically all of the time) you will see significantly slower read
speeds.
Aaron
Dan Christensen wrote:
> These timings don't seem consistent with the advertised ratings. Is
> this normal? Is there something I can do to speed them up?
------------------------------
From: Swietanowski Artur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ASUS P2BD vs. SuperMicro P6DBE
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 15:23:42 +0200
Maxim Bazhenov wrote:
>
> I am planing to buy a dual P-III system to use with Linux (RedHat)
Not what you ask about, but IMO for all practical purposes P-III is
money poorly spent. Double P-II 400, or even double Celeron in the
300-400 MHz range is perfectly fine. (The Celerons will need PPGA-Slot1
adapters with SMP enabled).
The price difference will buy you another SCSI-LVD disk or two.
And having more disks (not necessarily more space) and more RAM
are more likely to improve performance when you have 2x 400MHz.
>From my recent experience with 2x PII 400MHz + 768 MB RAM:
kernel compilation would not fill up more than 70% of my horse
power, because the disk I/O become a bottleneck. I could still
work in GNOME as well as if the computer was completely idle.
> I am deciding now
> between two motherboards: ASUS P2BD and SuperMicro P6DBE.
Whatever you compare to, ASUS is more expensive, but I've had mixed
experience with many other boards (not the one you listed) while
all my ASUS boards, incl. P2B and P2B-DS are a pleasure to work with.
The plain P2B works with everything, incl. Solaris/86 and, of course,
Linux. P2B-DS is the core of a cluster I'm setting up now.
Regards,
=====================================================================
Artur Swietanowski mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Institut f�r Statistik, Operations Research und Computerverfahren,
Universit�t Wien, Universit�tsstr. 5, A-1010 Wien, Austria
tel. +43 (1) 427 738 620 fax +43 (1) 427 738 629
=====================================================================
------------------------------
From: Suran <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: alt.comp.hardware.overclocking,csu.unix.linux
Subject: Re: Dual Celeron's and SMP Performance Problems
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 15:50:24 +0200
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Totally Lost wrote:
>
> Good Post Suran. But I think your final assertion needs to be
> qualified:
>
> > ...someone who is running a dual PII, optimizing and writing parallel
> > and distributed software scince some time and will definately UPGRADE
> > to a newer dual celeron.
>
> IF, AND ONLY IF, the working set is less than 128K, which could be a
> difficult problem if they worked hard tuning the application just
> to get it's working set below the 512K point on their PII system.
>
For me that's the case and other stuff will not perfom any worse.
I just added the line to show that there are people thinking about
what hardware their softs are running on for whom celerons are at least
an option to calculate with.
---
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "Tony Platt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Caldera 2.2 and Compaq 3200 RAID controller
Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 00:26:39 +1000
No problems,
have fun with your new toy <grin>
Tony
Laith Suheimat wrote in message <7ik65m$r77$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>Thanks for the excellent link, from which I gleaned much info, as well as
>from a link there to http://www.yps.org/~whorfin/compaqarray/install.html
>
>Downloaded drivers and formatted the partitions no problem, can also boot
>off Lilo fine, having configured RAID as two three-disk groups.
>
>I am now going to get hold of RH 6 and upgrade, as it seems the
RH5.2+compaq
>smart array only works with 2.0.x of the kernel, not 2.2.x.
>
>Ideally I would have liked to install Caldera 2.2, but tried this and
>couldn't get it to see the RAID (and Caldera claim they are Linux distrib
of
>choice with businesses - not without RAID support they're not!).
>
>Thanks again,
>
>Laith Suheimat
>
>Tony Platt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
>news:PFU23.939$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>> I would suggest raid 5 across all 5
>>
>> as
>>
>> with 3 drives you lose 33% space
>> 4 drives 25%
>> 5 drives 20%
>> etc
>>
>> more space using the 6 drives
>>
>> look at
>>
>> http://www.insync.net/~frantzc/cpqarray.html
>>
>> for the kernel patch
>>
>> and related info
>>
>> Tony Platt
>
>
>
------------------------------
From: "Gijs" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: S3 86c362 AGP Videocard supported by X?
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 09:57:18 +0200
Does anyone know how to get the S3 86c362 AGP Video Card run with Xwindow.
Sax doesn't recognize this Card under SuSe? I can't even get it to run in
the simplest VGA mode.
Thanks,
Gijs
------------------------------
From: hac <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hard Disk :Suicide is not an option :)
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 14:31:00 GMT
trefor wrote:
>
>
> Are these disks prone to failure ?
> Is the disposal of hard drives formally known
> as "IBM-DTTA-351010, 9671MB w/466kB Cache"
> likely to become an enviromental problem :)
> Cos I got another one.
>
I sure hope not. I have one.
It should be under warrantee. Call IBM and arrange to send it back.
--
Howard Christeller Irvine, CA [EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Rod Roark <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: HP Laserjet 3p
Date: 18 May 1999 14:03:52 GMT
Rich Cox <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I got a used HP Laserjet 3p, and have a few questions. I assume the 'p'
>means its postscript capable, right?
No, it's a PCL printer but there's a suitable filter for it.
>Secondly, when I print to it under linux the text comes out in landscape
>mode. How can I fix that? It prints in portrait under dos.
I guess this is determined by the filter program. Check the docs for
whatever printer setup facility you're using.
-- Rod
======================================================================
Sunset Systems Preconfigured Linux Computers
http://www.sunsetsystems.com/ and Custom Software
======================================================================
------------------------------
From: Swietanowski Artur <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sound card IDE
Date: Tue, 18 May 1999 16:08:54 +0200
This gets off-topic now, as the original poster said he does need
more than 4 IDE devices, and thus has no choice.
"C. E. Scheetz" wrote:
>
> > The on-board IDE's (which allow you to connect up to 2 devices each)
>
> Are you saying that the soundcard's IDE will only allow 1 device?
No, I'm not saying that anywhere in the text. You could verify that
by reading it (which you obviously did). So why ask this question?
> > exist on the PCI bus, I think, while the one on the sound card
> > communicates through the slow 16 bit ISA bus.
>
> Doesn't matter, you only get a 16 bit connection through the cable
It's not about the bits, but the bus clock. The ISA bus is 8MHz,
I think (i.e. I used to remember the exact numbers, but not any more)
while PCI is 32/33 MHz. So the transfer over the PCIor ISA bus (which
takes place before ever reaching the IDE cable) is much faster with
a PCI card. Again, I don't know the exact timing of the IDE cable
(really, the EIDE bus which takes the form of a cable with the
attached interfaces) but it is much faster than ISA can handle.
So having fast EIDE disks on an ISA controller means less throughput,
than on a PCI controller. Not to mention the fact, that even if the
speed of ISA is sufficient to saturate some (old) disk, the processor
and/or DMA will spend more time communicating with it, while they
could do other, more useful things in a multitasking OS.
Regards,
=====================================================================
Artur Swietanowski mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Institut f�r Statistik, Operations Research und Computerverfahren,
Universit�t Wien, Universit�tsstr. 5, A-1010 Wien, Austria
tel. +43 (1) 427 738 620 fax +43 (1) 427 738 629
=====================================================================
------------------------------
From: "Tony Platt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Sony SDT9000 Compression
Date: Sun, 30 May 1999 00:40:48 +1000
Might be a stupid question, but are you using DDS2 120mtr tapes and DDS3
125Mtr tapes ???
or the older DDS1 90Mtr tapes ???
Tony
Ken Miller wrote in message <7im9oe$keu$[EMAIL PROTECTED]>...
>I've recently installed a Sony SDT9000 DDS3 Tape drive, but have been
>unable to get compression to work. Effectively, the tape drive is
>acting like a DDS drive.
>
>'mt status' returns this:
>
>SCSI 2 tape drive:
>File number=0, block number=0, partition=0.
>Tape block size 512 bytes. Density code 0x13 (DDS (61000 bpi)).
>Soft error count since last status=0
>General status bits on (41010000):
> BOT ONLINE IM_REP_EN
>
>However, if I try to force the density to 0x25 (DDS3) or 0x24 (DDS2) I
>get this:
>
>/dev/tape: Input/output error
>
>I've also tried 'mt compression' but this didn't work either. No error
>was returned, but 'mt status' returned the same as above. I've tried
>partitioning tapes, erasing them, but nothing I've done get get the
>drive to switch to DDS3 mode.
>
>The jumper on the back that disables compression has been removed, so
>that's not the problem.
>
>I'm not real thrilled having spent over $1000 Cdn for this drive and a
>SCSI card to be able to place 1GIG on a tape.
>
>Help!
>
> -klm.
>
>
>Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
>Share what you know. Learn what you don't.
------------------------------
From: Hugh Fader <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Tape Backup Question
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 14:45:40 GMT
Gary,
Which IDE drive to you use? I am thinking of getting an Aiwa Bolt drive, but
want to be sure it runs under Linux.
Thanks.
Gary Huckabay wrote:
> Phil Buckley wrote:
> >
> > My boss just ordered our first server for our small office (6 users).
> > When it arrives we will be adding a tape drive to it. The box itself is
> > a Dell (10GB HD) with RH 6.0 loaded. Could someone offer up suggestions
> > on what would be our best bet as far as particular brand (so as to make
> > installation easier on me - a linux newbie) and also backup software (I
> > am leaning towards BRU).
> >
> > TIA,
> > Phil Buckley
>
> Phil, I use one of the IDE tape drives. Each tape holds 8g compressed
> and the software I use is "tob." Tob is free.
>
> Gary
------------------------------
From: Chuck Bland <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Slackware 3.6, PS2 M77 and 2.88 Floppy
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 08:35:17 -0700
I have a system up on Slackware 3.6 on a PS2 M77 and it has its 2.88
Floppy.
I can boot the machine from floppy into LINUX or DOS. I can access the
floppy from DOS, but not from LINUX. When I try to mount it, LINUX
complains of a segment error. MTOOLs won't talk to it either.
I also notices the file size of /dev/fd0 is 0 bytes.
Where do I start to fix this?
Chuck
------------------------------
From: "Roberto Leibman" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.ms-windows.advocacy,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Windows easy to install? BULLSHIT!
Date: Fri, 28 May 1999 09:57:21 -0700
Daniele,
Are you more familiar with Linux or Windows? I've been working with Windows
for many years now and have installed it in many strange hardware, it's just
a matter of knowing what its tricks are, as I'm sure its true of linux and
any os. If you have access to another computer, I suggest you get the latest
drivers for your laptop directly from compaq BEFORE you install anything
else, so that you have them ready when required, remember that manufacturers
seem to put a lot more custom stuff on their laptops than on other
computers, and that NO OS testing team can test every possible combination.
--
Roberto Leibman
Talaria Research, Inc.
http://www.talaria.com
Cxi tioj opinioj ne necese estas la opinioj de la administrantaro
Daniele Bernardini <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in
message news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> Let ma tell you my adventures with a compaq laptop
> and the inatallation of Windows 95/98 and Suse Linux 6.0
> I'm right now using a dual boot system with 1Gb for Windows
> (just the necessary space for Diablo, Dune2000 and Baldur's gate),
> and 2.3 Gb for Linux which I use for work.
> As you know laptops come with preinstalled os (guess which).
> Since I needed two oss I repartitioned my harddrive and I started
> to install windows 98 ( I know could have used partition magic
> or fips my I like to build thing right from the ground).
> Everything was fine with w98 installation till the first boot,
> at that point the computer started to hang and the only thing I
> could do was to reboot it. After some hours of messing around
> with log files I realized that the 32bit ide driver had problems
> with my harddrive. I then decided to try with W95osr2, this time
> all went in the right way and after having downloaded a couple of
> megabites of driver from the net I could also use a 800x600 screen
> and hear sound, have my pcmcia slots recognized and so on.
> After that I installed SuSE Linux and it worked right away out
> of the box I needed just to recompile the kernel with specific
> settings for my machine and setup Xwindows (40 mins in all) et voila'.
> But the story is not over: after some time having succesfully configured
> my harddrive with DMA access under Linux I tried to do the same with
> windows. result, windows did not boot anymore. Again I examined the
> problem and try to figure out, and the problem was the same of
> windows98. I tried to change the configuration back but to no avail.
> I tried to remove the drive and the controller from the system
> configuration but still no result. The only thing I could do was
> format and reinstall!
> Now tell me why somebody keeps on saying that windows is easy to
> install?
> I say it is just bullshit. Who says this, has never installed windows
> on a non standard hardware.
>
> Regards,
>
> Daniele
------------------------------
From: Dmitry <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: NeoMagic video chipset supported on linux??
Date: Sat, 29 May 1999 10:18:02 -0700
For me RedHat6.0 is working with NeoMagic on Dell Latitute.
I had a problem with Redhat5.0/5.1/5.2.
Dmitry.
Phil Jones wrote:
>
> I'm thinking of buying a Sony PCG-F150 notebook that uses
> a NeoMagic video chipset (or so I've been told). Does anyone
> know if that chipset is supported under linux at this time?
> Thanks for any feedback.
> Phil Jones
> Ottawa, Canada
>
> --
> It is enough if one tries
> every day to comprehend a
> little of this mystery.
> - Albert Einstein
------------------------------
Subject: Re: NeoMagic video chipset supported on linux??
From: Michael Meissner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Date: 29 May 1999 12:11:37 -0400
[EMAIL PROTECTED] (Phil Jones) writes:
> I'm thinking of buying a Sony PCG-F150 notebook that uses
> a NeoMagic video chipset (or so I've been told). Does anyone
> know if that chipset is supported under linux at this time?
> Thanks for any feedback.
My Toshiba Tecra 8000 also has a Neomagic chipset in it. The 3.3.3.1 X drivers
support it via the SVGA server.
--
Michael Meissner, Cygnus Solutions
PMB 198, 174 Littleton Road #3, Westford, Massachusetts 01886
email: [EMAIL PROTECTED] phone: 978-486-9304 fax: 978-692-4482
------------------------------
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