Linux-Hardware Digest #448, Volume #12 Fri, 10 Mar 00 04:13:10 EST
Contents:
Re: Maxtor 40G IDE w/o BIOS support (Keith Rohrer)
Re: software RAID5 (Greg Leblanc)
Re: AMD K6-2 or K6-3 (Greg Leblanc)
Re: VIA vs Intel chipsets - which is better? (Anthony Hill)
Re: PIII vs PIII E - which is faster? (Anthony Hill)
Can't Get SMP to Boot on BP6 (John Peel)
Linux Laptop setup... (raman_narayan)
IDE controllers for software RAID (David Abbott)
is it true that all external modems are not winmodems? ("plato")
Re: Req. for info on rev. engineering an ISA (Backer) card (Kipp Cannon)
/dev/sequencer: not found? (Chaotic Thought)
CDROM problem that wont go away.....HELP!!!! ("Kellyboy")
Re: CDROM problem that wont go away.....HELP!!!! ("Kellyboy")
Re: Hot Swapping a floppy drive? (Rolf Magnus)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Keith Rohrer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage,comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Maxtor 40G IDE w/o BIOS support
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 16:57:13 -0600
Ian Molton wrote:
>
> Keith Rohrer wrote:
> > I know what you said, but that doesn't work with my motherboard. "None" is
> > not sufficient to keep my motherboards from hanging when they see the full
> > size of the drive. I think it's probably when they go scanning for CD-ROMs
> > and such, but even setting a geometry manually didn't avoid the hang. My
> > only choices are to use the jumper, or to buy a new motherboard. Thus, I
> > concentrated on a solution when the jumper is installed, not removed.
>
> why not boot from another drive and tell the bios the big one doesnt
> exist?
When I say "None", I mean "None" on that first BIOS configuration screen
where you tell the BIOS what kind of hard disks you have. "None" as
opposed to "auto" or a particular geometry (which didn't work for me
either). The only stronger way to tell the BIOS "no disk here" would be to
turn off the whole controller channel on the peripherals page (which would
*really* keep anything from accessing it...).
Keith (booting SCSI anyway...)
------------------------------
From: Greg Leblanc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: software RAID5
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 04:39:44 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
Adam Stouffer <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Can anyone share their experiances with using software RAID in linux?
I
> am going to be setting up 5 old scsi drives in a RAID5 configuration
for
> testing purposes. How difficult is it? Thanks.
It's pretty easy, if you look in the right places for documentation.
There are a couple of places to get it, I think that the official
homepage is at:
"http://ostenfeld.dk/~jakob/Software-RAID.HOWTO/"
Greg
--
It's pronounced "sexy" not "scuzzy"!
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Greg Leblanc <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: AMD K6-2 or K6-3
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 04:43:00 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I need some advice.
>
> I am considering upgrading my current K6-2 300 to K6-2 500 or K6-3
450.
> I am not sure which one would give me a better performance...
I'd go for the K6-3. It has 256K of full speed, on-die cache, and will
be able to use whatever is on the motherboard. Should be a fair order
of magnitude faster than the K6-2.
> One other thing.. How can I check if the build in cache (CPU and
> motherboard) being used?
Look in your BIOS setup for an option that says something about Enable
external CPU cache, or something like that. It should be enabled.
Greg
--
It's pronounced "sexy" not "scuzzy"!
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Anthony Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems
Subject: Re: VIA vs Intel chipsets - which is better?
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:55:58 -0500
On 7 Mar 2000 21:33:06 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Cochrane)
wrote:
>While calling a couple computer shops today to look into upgrading my
>current system to a PIII motherboard, I came across an interesting
>dilemna - essentially, two shops I talked to gave two different
>opinions on chipsets available for Pentium III motherboards.
>
>I'm posting here to get y'all's opinions on these issues, but I think
>it may also serve as an interesting (and possibly controversial) topic
>of discussion. (Perhaps it has already been covered here and is old
>hat; but unfortunately, my main machine is in the shop and I can't
>access the web to look at dejanews with my 486.)
>
>The disagreement is on the quality of the non-Intel VIA chipset
>versus the quality of the Intel chipsets. According to one shop, the
>VIA chipset is much more buggy than the Intel chipsets (BX3 and I820, I
Well, in terms of stability, I'd rate the Intel BX chipset as
being the most stable (albeit without the features of the other
boards), followed by the VIA APP133A (probably the chipset used on the
boards you're looking at), with Intel's i820 being the buggiest of the
three.
>believe) and that this can potentially cause problems running a Linux
>kernel (my intended OS). The fellow with this point of view stated
>that the kernel has a lot of patches applied to work around bugs in the
>VIA chipset. He acknowledged that the Intel chipsets had some bugs,
>but not nearly as many as the VIA chipset.
VIA chipsets work flawlessly under Linux without any patches
(at least with the later 2.0.x and all 2.2 kernels). I haven't
encountered any problems at all with my VIA based motherboard under
Linux, everything was picked up automatically by the kernel. Of
course, my older board (a SiS 5591 based board) wasn't properly
detected by the kernel and still ran perfectly stable, but just
without all the features being used.
>The fellow with the opposite opinion stated that this was false. He
>essentially stated that there may be some bugs in both the VIA chipset
>and the Intel chipsets, but that these bugs should not affect the linux
>kernel and thus will not cause problems. (He also said he had
>installed Linux on several such systems (VIA) and had not run into any
>problems with respect to the chipset.)
My personnal experience using Intel and VIA based boards both
at home and at work would tend to agree with the above opinion. I've
run into really crappy motherboards using chipsets from both companies
and I've used some VERY good motherboards using these same chipsets.
My personal experience with my current VIA based Epox MVP3G-M
motherboard is that this is one of the most stable boards I've ever
used in my home system, under Win98, Win2000 and Linux.
>Which of these opinions is correct? Or are they both partly right and
>partly wrong? (With respect to my hardware upgrade, the questions, of
>course, boils down to whether to purchase a VIA-based board, such as
>Tyan, or an Intel-based board, such as a Supermicro.)
Well, my choice would be an Intel BX board and a 100MHz-bus
PIII if you're going for pure stability (Asus would be my first choice
of companies for one such motherboard, though Soyo, Supermicro, Tyan
and others all make good BX chipset boards) or a VIA APP133A board
with a 133MHz bus PIII if you want very good stability and all the
latest features. Epox and Tyan would be the two companies I'd look to
for good VIA based boards. I can't see any reason why ANYONE would
want an Intel i820 board.
>[For those interested, I have also posted a question about another issue
>I came across with the same two shops - see the subject line "PIII vs PIII
>E - which is faster?"]
That's a MUCH easier question to answer, simply the PIII E is
almost always faster (except in very strange situations where 256K of
cache isn't enough but 512K of cache is, quite rare in real world
applications).
Anthony Hill
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: Anthony Hill <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.chips,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.systems
Subject: Re: PIII vs PIII E - which is faster?
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:55:59 -0500
On 7 Mar 2000 21:38:48 -0700, [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Jim Cochrane)
wrote:
>While calling a couple computer shops today to look into upgrading my
>current system to a PIII motherboard, I came across an interesting
>dilemna - essentially, two shops I talked to gave two different
>opinions on two different types of Pentium III processors.
<snip>
>The basic disagreement is on the E series of Pentium III processors (E
>and EB chips) versus the non-E series (Pentium III and Pentium IIIB).
>The fellow at the first shop stated that the E series chip is a socket
>370 (PPGA - flip) and that it was a lower-end chip than the non-E
>series and that the E chips were slower than the non-E chips.
This person is also totally clueless. The E chips are
available in both socketed and slotted versions, but this does
abosultely nothing for performance one way or the other. Socket chips
are cheaper for Intel produce. That is the one and only difference
between them.
>The fellow at the second shop pointed out that there are two versions
>of the E series chip - the socket 370-type chips and, like the non-E
>chips, slot-1-type chips. He also stated that the E series is not
>lower end - that these chips are faster than the non-E chips. The
>reason he gave was that the E chips, although they have a smaller
>(256K) cache, have a bus speed (CPU register to cache RAM) that is the
>same as the processor speed (e.g., 600MHz for a PIII E 600 chip), while
>the non-E chips have a bus speed that is half the processor speed.
This is 100% accurate (well, I suppose you could get into a
touch more technical detail about bus width and latency differences,
but the point still all boils down to 512K of slow cache vs. 256K of
fast cache, with the latter being faster).
>(Also, to add more confusion to the issue, another shop I talked to
>said that Intel had switched from socket 370 to slot 1 chips, but that
>they have recently switched back to socket 370 chips - so that the
>newest motherboards (not sure if any are available yet) will need to
>support the socket 370 rather than the slot 1 chips.)
Well, I think someone at Intel has being doing some wierd
drugs when they were figuring out all their slots/sockets, not to
mention naming conventions (ie the PIII 600, 600B, 600E and 600EB all
exist and are sold at the same time, not to mention the PIII 600
Xeon). Anyway, Intel moved to slot 1 chips with the PII because this
chip had seperate cache chips manufactured by a third party on the
module along with the processor itself. With the Celeron's, Intel
incorporated the cache into the processor's die, so there was only one
chip in the module, which meant that they could make things cheaper on
a socketed chip. With the new PIII E chips Intel has done the same
thing as they did with the Celeron's (incorprated the cache on-die),
but they did it with more and faster cache. So, regular PIII's (aka
"Katmai" chips) have three chips in their slot 1 cartridge (processor
plus two cache chips), while the PIII E's (aka "Coppermine" chips)
have only 1 (processor core, which contains the cache onboard). For
this reason, it's now once again cheaper for Intel to make these chips
as socketed chips.
Anthony Hill
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: John Peel <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Can't Get SMP to Boot on BP6
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 00:33:59 -0600
I just recently put togfether an SMP sytem using an abit BP6 two celeron
500's, 3dfx voodoo3 3000 agp, soundblaster live value, western digital
ide hard drive, tekram dc390f scsi card, kingston kne30t ethernet card,
and 128 megs of micron pc 100 sdram. I installed RH 6.1 on it kernel
2.2..12-20. Anyway the install went fine but on bootup linux gets about
halfway through and right before it gets to the Welcome to redhat
section and starting processes, the screen goes black and it reboots.
I can get a up kernel to boot no problem but it's the SMP that doesn't
do it. I also compiled a 2.2.14 kernel with smp and it does exactly the
same thing. I can't figure it out but I think it may have somethingto do
with dma. I don't really know what to do or look for so I could use some
help because right now one processor isn't doin a thing.. Thanks in
advance, -peel
John Peel
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: raman_narayan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Linux Laptop setup...
Date: Thu, 09 Mar 2000 23:21:09 -0800
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**************************************************************
------------------------------
From: David Abbott <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: IDE controllers for software RAID
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 19:02:25 +1100
Can anyone recommend an IDE controller that will do a good job with
software RAID 5 under RedHat Linux 6.1. The Linux FAX states cheap IDE
controllers are available, without being specific.
How many IDE expansion cards can one have in the one machine under
Linux? Has anyone got two additional cards to work alongside the
motherboard controllers?
I've set up software RAID 5 on RedHat Linux 6.1 with 4 IDE disks on the
2 IDE controllers on my motherboard, but would like to improve
performance and reliability by having each disk on a separate
controller. I'd also like to add more disks.
Even better if the controllers are available in Australia.
Thanks,
David.
------------------------------
From: "plato" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: is it true that all external modems are not winmodems?
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 10:06:36 +0200
is it true that all external modems are not winmodems?
------------------------------
From: Kipp Cannon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To:
alt.comp.hardware,comp.os.linux.development.system,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.misc,comp.sys.ibm.pc.hardware.storage
Subject: Re: Req. for info on rev. engineering an ISA (Backer) card
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 01:07:40 -0700
Oops,
Sorry, I forgot to put my real name and e-mail address back into
Netscape before posting that message. It should be correct in this
one. Again, sorry 'bout that. And thank-you to people who have
responded so far.
-Kipp
------------------------------
From: Chaotic Thought <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: /dev/sequencer: not found?
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 08:13:43 GMT
I'm trying to get Linux to support my sound hardware (A Gus PnP) and have not
been enjoying complete success thus far. I want to use the ALSA drivers for
this card, but I can't get MIDI working.
I'm using Linux kernel version 2.2.14, with Sound support compiled in, but
sound.o does not load. I coconfigured the ALSA drivers with the
"--with-isapnp=yes --with-sequencer=yes" options. After doing the
"./configure;make install" process on the alsa-drivers, alsa-lib, and
alsa-utils packages, I did "modprobe snd-card-interwave" to load the kernel
modules in. I also ran the "./snddevices" script (before I loaded the module)
After that, sound works just fine but only PCM. Trying to play a midi file
using the playmidi utility gives the error "/dev/sequencer: not found" or
something similar. My card is initialized properly by the ALSA. I don't
understand what I'm doing wrong here. If anyone can help, I'd appreciate it.
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: "Kellyboy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: CDROM problem that wont go away.....HELP!!!!
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 02:13:03 -0600
Im giving you my scenario of my problem w/cdrom below thats why its "bit"
long......
I had cdrw on linux box no problem for a while until recently.. I was unable
to mount ( I get error like bad block or fs or too many mounted fs) .... (I
originally installed Linux by booting from CDROM).... I took cdrw drive out
(out of fear of ruining cdrw that I cant afford to replace)
I put cdrw into my win98 box .... it works fine as if problem never
happened...umm.....cdrw is not the problem... cdrw stays in win98 for now
I went and brought new cdrom (56x Digital Research--its only available at
price I can afford)... installed into Linuxbox where my cdrw used to
reside.... I attemp to boot from cdrom....no problem... started to install
Mandrake(with downloaded ISOimage)... but after "formating HD" and before
"select packager to install (or something)...everything went downhill... and
get error message (I forgot)... I repeat install but error gets worse and
worse
is cdrom failled or Mandrake disk gone defective on me....????
thinking that the disc is defective... I tried RedHat5.2 disc... same
thing... it failed during middle of install..... I try installing win98 to
see what happen... I wouldnt boot from cd and when booting from floppy..it
couldnt read cdrom....
.... at this point....... cdrom is not "working" at all... there is still
sound from cdrom that indicated that its running perfectly....
.... whats is the deal?? Is me using "boot from cdrom" excessivly causing
it??? is it cable problem..?? Motherboard problem (FIC 508+ )??
Im returning the cdrom tomorrow.... and Im considering scsi cdrom since I
already have u2w controller...Ill go shopping on ebay soon...... should I ??
Can I boot from scsi cdrom?
Anyone have any idea about this situation ??
In the meantime Im installing Linux via NFS for now......
Kellyboy
------------------------------
From: "Kellyboy" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: CDROM problem that wont go away.....HELP!!!!
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 02:20:20 -0600
Or is it because of dust??
forgot to ask that one.....grin
Kellyboy
------------------------------
From: Rolf Magnus <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Hot Swapping a floppy drive?
Date: Fri, 10 Mar 2000 09:57:41 +0100
Reply-To: "Rolf Magnus" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Tjousk wrote...
>I have hot-swapped many parts, sometimes even hard disks. But I wouldn't
>recommend it. And as for un-plugging the power cable, I never do, and I
>have never had any problems.... As the power cable is connected to a
>grounded power outlet, The PC is grounded while the cable is plugged in,
and
>I am therefore grounded whenever I am touching a metal part of the case....
But if you have e.g. an ATX power supply, you MUST switch it off if it has a
real power switch. The normal power button at the front of your computer is
NOT sufficient.
Rolf Magnus
------------------------------
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End of Linux-Hardware Digest
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