Linux-Hardware Digest #441, Volume #12 Thu, 9 Mar 00 08:13:07 EST
Contents:
Re: Cyrix and Linux ("Tjousk")
Re: VIA vs Intel chipsets - which is better? (George Macdonald)
Re: 3com network cards and 440BX (jef peeraer)
Re: aha152x not detected (Atle)
Hecules Terminator Beast (Savage 3d) (Robert Wilson)
Re: Hot Swapping a floppy drive? (Rolf Magnus)
Warning: Data corruption on Toshiba Satellite 4090 ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: SB Live Value (jonathan hunsberger)
cpu lists that linux can support... ("Ko Jong-Gook")
Re: IDE2 IRQ problem on MB ABIT BP6 (wayne rattz)
Re: not sloooow, but sluggish linux modem (Uwe Malzahn)
Re: Please advice: unable to create file/directory (Dirk Schenkewitz)
Numonics Accugrid Digitizer ("Ing. Stefan Gregor Weichinger")
Re: Linux vs Windows docs (was: Re: Linux sucks) (Duncan Simpson)
Re: udma66 abit bh6 HELP? (wayne rattz)
setting serial port timeouts ("Piotr Kuchta")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Tjousk" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Cyrix and Linux
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 18:53:40 +1000
Gerry East <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
>
> >I want to know if there are any comflicts with a Cyrix CPU and Linux. God
> >know it conflicts with almost anything else. :)
> >
>
>
> I have a Cyrix 233 MMX; no problems.
>
> Gerry
>
Hrmmm... I thought I was the only one...
I also have a Cyrix 233 MMX....
Not that it actually is a real 233....
But yeah, It runs linux fine.
Tjousk
------------------------------
From: fammacd=!SPAM^[EMAIL PROTECTED] (George Macdonald)
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems
Subject: Re: VIA vs Intel chipsets - which is better?
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 08:49:21 GMT
On Wed, 8 Mar 2000 19:14:08 -0500, "Neil Davis"
<[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
>I'm sorry to see this thread deteriorate so quickly into name-calling,
>because there are some legitimate chipset and driver questions I'd love to
>see addressed.
Yeah well that's what happens when anybody disagrees with Mr. Ron. His
one-liners really hit people on the funny bone and I believe they're
contrived to do so.
> I've put together a number of VIA-based systems, but
>recently I got fed up with them and have switched to the BX boards instead.
>One of the problems I've suffered with the VIA chipset is IRQ sharing. It's
>easy to end up with nicely configured systems that have more peripherals
>than available IRQ's, and my experience is that the VIA IRQ miniport driver
>doesn't allow IRQ sharing as well as the BX boards. I've seen VIA boards
>share IRQ's, but it's not the norm, and I haven't figured out how to get it
>to work as repeatably as the BX boards. For example, one of my machines has
>video, TV-tuner, video capture, SCSI, MODEM, and Soundblaster Live (requires
>2 IRQ's), USB, two IDE's, and they are all shared sociably on a BX board
>(one IRQ actually has 4 devices, and one IRQ is still listed as free). So
>question #1: is there something in the design of the IRQ hardware in the
>Intel chipset that allows it to work better with IRQ-sharing drivers, or is
>Intel just better at writing the IRQ-sharing driver, or is my experience
>with IRQ sharing not consistent with what others have seen?
Well there are plenty of references in the NGs where IRQ sharing does not
work well in BX boards - Soundblaster Live is probably the worst offender -
so I would disagree that it's always easy with an Intel chipset. I've had
my share of grief with Intel-based mbrds where I couldn't make sharing work
and couldn't budge the assignments easily. The problem is that the rules
are not well defined for what's supposed to work and what's not; then some
cards and/or their drivers are not designed to.
I think you're right though, that more people have trouble with VIA-based
mbrds in that respect but I'm sure it's been because the add-in card
vendors have not done sufficient/any testing with VIA chipsets before
releasing the product. This applies to the hardware and the drivers.
Things are much better now, because PnP is being implemented better in
general and these vendors have realized that if they ignore the VIA
controllers, someone else will have their lunch.
Add in the fact that Microsoft dragged their feet on support for VIA and it
made the installation complicated - too complicated for many of the people
who were trying to get in at the low end of the price range, which is where
VIA made its initial thrust. As for the VIA hardware being inferior I
don't think so - it's just different and the add-in card vendors were lazy;
they hoped nobody would notice. As an example, in the quest for the best
benchmark performance they'd write drivers to wring the best out of their
hardware on the Intel platform and in the process ignore any attempt at
compatibility with VIA.
>The second problem I've had with VIA boards is poor support for certain
>devices using their busmastering drivers. For example, the Nakamichi 5x16
>CD changer hangs up when you try to play audio CD's (using the drivers from
>VIA that were available last month). I also had problems with one of the
>Creative DVD players--lots of dropouts even when busmastering enabled,
>although the Hitachi G2500 DVD player worked perfectly on the same computer.
>So question #2: is there something unique about the VIA IDE hardware that
>makes it difficult to get compatibility with more devices, or is this just a
>software maturity problem, and when will VIA finally get it right?
Again this happens on some Intel based mbrds with some drives mainly for
the same reasons as above - basically laziness... DMA? - let them eat PIO.
The standards for removable media writeable ATAPI drives are ill-defined
and many of the mfrs have cobbled an interface so that it works with
Intel's controllers. This is particularly true for the less common devices
and in general VIA is made responsible for a driver fix which was
unnecessary for Intel.
BTW if you're applying the VIA Bus mastering drivers as a matter of course,
I've found it's better to try the native Windows drivers first and only
resort to the VIA drivers if you have trouble with a particular device. Of
course this all old-hat for Intel fans - they went through the same grief
with MS or Intel drivers a few years ago, with the same results: removable
media drives were troublesome.
For CD-R/RW in particular this technology was rushed out - early drives,
SCSI & IDE are now failing all over the place - and in the early stages,
for IDE it was a nightmare even on Intel chipsets... a bad memory really.
I still think that IDE is best reserved for HDDs and maybe CD-ROMs -
anything else should be SCSI. The IDE interface was never intended or
designed to do what's now being asked of it and every new trick adds
another wrinkle of incompatibility between drives and other drives and
drives and controllers.
>My recommendation to potential motherboard buyers has been to go with the
>lower-cost VIA boards if they aren't going to have lots of devices that
>require IRQ's or if they are going to stick with IDE devices that are known
>to work with the VIA drivers. The VIA boards are great for people who don't
>experiment much with different peripherals--I believe this is exactly what
>Michael Dell was referring to when he recently said: "We found the AMD
>environment to be much more fragile ... than equivalent Intel systems." I'm
>not interested in starting a flame war--I'm curious whether others had the
>same negative experiences with the VIA chipset. Even more to the point, I
>am currently interested in buying an Athlon system, but I'm gun-shy about
>going with the KX-133 chipset. Any reports on how well it supports IRQ
>sharing?
I'd say your advice *was* good for people who didn't have the desire or
aptitude to tinker; now that major mfrs like Gateway, Compaq are selling
large quantities of AMD and VIA chipset based systems I think you'll see
the incompatibilities disappear as the add-in card vendors realize who's
paying the rent. As for Michael Dell's comment, it was pure PR, and I
think he may live to regret that one. He must have a lot on his mind right
now with the CPU shortages, broken chipsets, unavailable memory for his top
money makers etc. For the KX-133 chipset I'm going to give it a try next
but I won't be loading it up with goodies - just video, NIC and maybe
sound.
Rgds, George Macdonald
"Just because they're paranoid doesn't mean you're not psychotic" - Who, me??
------------------------------
From: jef peeraer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: 3com network cards and 440BX
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 09:59:15 +0100
Filippo wrote:
>
> Dances With Crows wrote:
> >
> > On Sun, 27 Feb 2000 22:25:02 +0000, Joel Phillips
> > <<[EMAIL PROTECTED]>>
> > shouted forth into the ether:
> > >I've been trying for a few days to get a P2 440BX chipset to work with 2
> > >different 3com network cards, one 3c509 and one 3c90x (both used as
> > >10BaseT). I've tried with RedHat 6.0 and Mandrake 6.1, both of which
> > >detect the card, but neither of which are able to use it - I can't ping
> > >other computers on the network etc.
> >
>
> I had similar problems with a ASUS p3BF motherboard, with two network
> cards installed. It went ok when I put all the cards next to each other
> in the slots...
>
> --
> The nice thing about egotists is that they don't talk about other
> people.
> -- Lucille S. Harper
Try to use the drivers from 3com self. We also had some weird problems
with this ethernet/motherboard combination, but the 3com drivers solved
the problem.
http://support.3com.com/infodeli/tools/nic/linux.htm
--
===============================================
Newtec Cy Jef Peeraer
Laarstraat 5 [EMAIL PROTECTED]
St-Niklaas 9100 +32 3 7806582
Belgium
===============================================
------------------------------
From: Atle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: aha152x not detected
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 12:32:56 +0100
Joe Ringer wrote:
>
> On Sun, 5 Mar 2000 08:57:27 -0600, Rebeccah H. Prastein wrote:
> >One major hurdle surmounted. I can find the card with modprobe. Now I
> >just need some help getting it detected at bootup. Any ideas?
>
> Pardon my butting in....
> Are you booting via lilo, if so add the following to lilo.conf:
>
> append = "aha152x=0x140,10,7,1"
But if you have the braindead adapter that came with the SnapScan 310,
called AVA-1505, then don't be surprised if it doesn't work.
I think at least my card is incapable of generating interrupts :-(
Atle
------------------------------
From: Robert Wilson <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Hecules Terminator Beast (Savage 3d)
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 10:00:13 +0000
Hi has anyone had any succes in getting a Hercules Taermiantor Beast AGP
card working with Red Hat 6.1. If So is there any chance that you could
post your XF86Config for me.
If there are some urls that anyone thinks might help me Id be really
gratefull.
Thanks
Rob Wilson
------------------------------
From: Rolf Magnus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hot Swapping a floppy drive?
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 11:05:38 +0100
Reply-To: "Rolf Magnus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Curtis wrote...
>After the system boots, there is no need for a floppy drive to be on that
system.
>If I could just remove it while the system is running and only put it back
to
>boot the system when I need to restart it, I'd have another floppy drive
around
>to use.
Sounds very uncomfortable to swap a disk drive between computers. Also, a
disk drive is fairly cheap. Why not buy one if you need another one? And as
I said, removing the drive while the computer is running may damage them
both. I would really not try this. Another question: Why is your computer
not able to boot from the hard disk?
Rolf Magnus
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Warning: Data corruption on Toshiba Satellite 4090
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 09:55:56 GMT
Hi !
I was currently trying to use a Toshiba Satellite
4090XCDT for an embedded application. What I do is:
- displaying some info under X11 (using the XFree 3.3.6
sever) on an external monitor.
- and receiving lots of data through the internal RS232 port.
The problem:
When the video chip (Trident Cyber 9525)
is heavily used (BITBLT operations), the data coming
from the serial port is corrupted !!! (whatever the
serial speed it set to !)
I have found a way to avoid data corruption:
- lower the video DOT CLOCK below 50Mhz, that is,
using a video mode below 800x600x72Hz !!!
So, 640x480x60Hz is OK (25Mhz), 800x600x60Hz is OK
(40Mhz), and 800x600x72Hz is BAD (50Mhz) and
1024x768x60Hz is BAD (65Mhz).
- or disable 2D hardware accel.
So, It seems that it is an EMC problem and that
Toshiba laptops are not really tested. (They
probably run some Ziff-Davis bench and say
the PC is ok :-)
Anyone had the same problem ?
Regards,
Ludovic Drolez.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: jonathan hunsberger <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: SB Live Value
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 05:48:56 -0500
Use the analog connection?
> I have a dual boot with win98 and it works just fine in that OS. It
> doesn't make too much sense to me. The CD player in Linux can read the CD
> and starts to play it but no sound comes out.
------------------------------
From: "Ko Jong-Gook" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: cpu lists that linux can support...
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 19:54:22 +0900
Reply-To: "Ko Jong-Gook" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Hi..
I would like to know the all cpu lists that linux can support,,,in detail..
Are there any one who know the CPU lists....?
thanks you in advance..
------------------------------
From: wayne rattz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: IDE2 IRQ problem on MB ABIT BP6
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 11:30:04 GMT
HELLO:You need to tell linux where to look for ide2.Have a look at my
howto for the promise ultra66 controller card to learn how to do this.My
direct howto page is http:www.geocities.com/wrattz/linux6.html My main
page is http:www.geocities.com/wrattz/linux1.html
andrej antusek wrote:
>
> I have dual celeron with MB ABIT BP6 and instaled RedHat6.0.
> Kernel (2.2.5-15smp) has problem to inicialize IDE2 during
> booting. This is part of dmesg file:
>
> PIIX4: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
> PIIX4: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
> ide0: BM-DMA at 0xf000-0xf007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:pio
> ide1: BM-DMA at 0xf008-0xf00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:pio
> hda: IBM-DPTA-372050, ATA DISK drive
> hdc: IRQ probe failed (0)
> hdc: IRQ probe failed (0)
> ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
> hda: IBM-DPTA-372050, 19574MB w/1961kB Cache, CHS=2495/255/63
>
> As IDE2/Master I have conected CDROM. This configuration works
> without any problems under win98 where IDE1 controler has IRQ14 and
> IDE2 controler has IRQ15.
> Can anybody help how to solve this problem?
>
> Thanks
> A.
>
--
Posted via CNET Help.com
http://www.help.com/
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Uwe Malzahn)
Subject: Re: not sloooow, but sluggish linux modem
Date: Wed, 8 Mar 2000 23:29:10 +0100
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Atle <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> Ellen Koinz wrote:
>
>> Nope. _Because_ Windows is doing OK I'm confident that it's the serial port
>> isn't set up properly. It's a matter of initializing the 16550A at boot
>> time. Put something like
>>
> I just came to wonder: Isn't there one of these that has a hardware
> buffer and the other doesn't - or they both have, but one is bigger than
> the other?
> Or does this date back to the 8250?
>
The 16550A has, the 16450 hasn't. So you can't get hi speed with the 16450.
Cheers
Uwe
> Atle
------------------------------
From: Dirk Schenkewitz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Please advice: unable to create file/directory
Date: Wed, 08 Mar 2000 19:47:17 +0100
H K Chan wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> I am running RedHat Linux release 6.1, I have encountered a wierd
> problem that is I, as root, unable to create file or directory in a
> partition which has plentiful of disk space. Below is the situation:
>
> [root@it /home1]# touch temp
> touch: temp: No space left on device
> [root@it /home1]# mkdir temp
> mkdir: cannot make directory `temp': No space left on device
> [root@it /home1]# df
> Filesystem 1k-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
> /dev/sda1 5447436 913304 4257416 18% /
> /dev/sdb1 6048500 513904 5227348 9% /home
> /dev/sda5 3099260 300176 2767600 10% /home1
> [root@it /home1]#
>
> Thanks in advance.
> Gerald
I hardly dare to ask, but what reports 'df -i' ?
And: Are you still able to 'rm' files ?
(perhaps you ran out of inodes, although that is quite unlikely
at 18% used space.)
dirk
--
Dirk Schenkewitz
http://www.InterFace-AG.com mailto:dirk.schenkewitz (a t)
InterFace-AG.com
------------------------------
From: "Ing. Stefan Gregor Weichinger" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Numonics Accugrid Digitizer
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 13:10:31 +0100
Hi there,
I have a linux-box running Suse 6.3 and I would like to use my Numonics
tablet for digitizing.
Can someone tell me how to set it up ?
Thank you, Stefan.
------------------------------
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.networking,comp.os.linux.portable
Subject: Re: Linux vs Windows docs (was: Re: Linux sucks)
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Duncan Simpson)
Date: 9 Mar 2000 12:14:28 GMT
In <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sniper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
>Sorry dave but that doesn't wash, With TechNet and Microsoft KB, I
>have access to the information now, and in detail. With Usenet, I may
>or may not get the information, and when is a completely different
>question, one thing you can't knock about Windows and MS is
>_THE_DOCUMENTATION_ unfortunately, as with most things MS, you pay for
>it.
I have experience of this "documentation" and found it wanting (and
M$ "tech support" clueless too). I wanted to read the contents of a
directory, so search for directory and find nothing. Ask tech support
and they do not have a clue. OK, may be I should have tired folder but
surely someone with a clue could have put a hint in under directory.
As for the KB articles I have yet to find any useful information in
*any* of them, since if they explain anything at all they only cover
the way things are supposed to work. Every time so far I have already
tried that and am looking for a clue as to how it works so I can
figure out why it fails for me and how to fix it. No M$ document I
have seen provides this information. In short M$ documentation has
always failed to answer my question.
Due to the above IMHO one of the biggest security problem and *worst*
aspect of M$ software *is* the documentation. Given proper
documentation NT might be defensible as a server paltform, but
unfortunately this does not exist outside M$ (and as far as anybody
knows M$ does not have it either).
--
Duncan (-:
"software industry, the: unique industry where selling substandard goods is
legal and you can charge extra for fixing the problems."
------------------------------
From: wayne rattz <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: udma66 abit bh6 HELP?
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 12:30:03 GMT
HELLO:If youre refering to a controller card like the promise ultra66 pci
then read my howto for the card at my site The howto direct page is
http://www.geocities.com/wrattz/linux6.html My main page is
http://www.geocities.com/wrattz/linux1.html Theres everything from iso
links to bookstore links about linux.GOOD LUCK WAYNE!
bbeck4x4 wrote:
>
>
> I installed linux before upgrading to this motherboard and now cannot
boot
> the computer past "li" with a udma 33 cable plugged into the udma 33
slot,
> and the hard drive set to udma33
>
> Now with the udma66 cable in the udma66 slot, and the hard drive set to
> udma66. I can load lilo
> and if I choose linux then linux cannot find the hard drive, and I get a
> kernal panic.
> if I choose win then I can boot into win like nothing was ever wrong -
>
>
> How do I get Linux back, or (I hope not) remove the Linux partition and
wait
> for udma66 support.
>
>
>
>
>
>
--
Posted via CNET Help.com
http://www.help.com/
------------------------------
From: "Piotr Kuchta" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: setting serial port timeouts
Date: Thu, 9 Mar 2000 13:59:27 +0100
hello!
I am porting a program from windows to Linux and I need a replacement for
SetCommTimeouts.
BOOL SetCommTimeouts(
HANDLE hFile, // handle to comm device
LPCOMMTIMEOUTS lpCommTimeouts // pointer to comm time-out structure
);
Thank you in advance for any help!
Piotr
------------------------------
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