Linux-Hardware Digest #687, Volume #12 Sat, 15 Apr 00 06:13:10 EDT
Contents:
Re: logitech itouch internet keyboard/mouse (Robbie Gates)
Re: Q: Best printer for linux box? ([EMAIL PROTECTED])
Re: Tape storage (Juergen Pfann)
Asus CD S500 not wprking (Mike Sullivan)
Re: Will a plextor ide cdrw 8/4/32 work? (Juergen Pfann)
Re: New Athlon 700 Box (Mike Sullivan)
HELP!!! ANY ONE ("bobmanx")
stuff a downloader... (lemieuxsimon)
Re: Linux Uses Less Power? (Robert Redelmeier)
Want linux... 200mb left... making OS... Stuck w/windows...shoot me (HI)
ATI Rage for Newbie's Guide (Crunch the Ogre)
SBLive Guide for Newbie's (Crunch the Ogre)
Re: partitionless (Markus Kossmann)
Re: secnd hard drive format necessary? (Yves Bellefeuille)
Re: What's up with the capability differences in resolution Corel<->RH? (Norman
Jordan)
Re: use cd-rw created in Win9x with Adaptec sw?? ("Jason Byrne")
Re: new hard drive, old motherboard, and linux ("Jason Byrne")
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Robbie Gates <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.x
Subject: Re: logitech itouch internet keyboard/mouse
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 13:11:32 +1000
Hi Mike,
Yeah - i splurged for one of these puppies, and then 4 days later
bought a second for my work machine :-) Cordless is just so nice, and
the keys have nice play. The wheel click is a bit stiff - i'll
probably end up with a muscley index finger :-)
Anyway, enough `happy customer' stuff.
after much effort i finally have the itouch keys working on my linux
system. I did it in a very very ugly way, and i'm hoping one of the X
gurus in the audience will tell me how i should do it :-)
The following description is a bit brief. If you're up for recompiling
the Xserver let me know and i'll post the patches i used, but i'm
short of time right now and figure that someone is going to tell me
this hack is totally evil and why didn't i just add foo to the bar config
and make me feel really stupid :-)
the first problem was the mouse - it occasionally leapt to the side
of the screen. Upgrading to XFree86-3.3.6 and using MouseManPlusPS/2
as the protocol seemed to fix this, and the wheel works fine in the
usual way.
then i started on the kbd - whoa. This was a total mess. Basically,
xev can't even see the itouch keys.
to see if i was on a total lose, i decided to get anything to see them
first. showkey -s from a console gets the scancodes ok. For some reason
(as yet undiagnosed) setkeycodes doesn't work for me, so i hacked up a
little program to do the right ioctls on /dev/console and could get the
itouch keys responding on the console, but of course that doesn't help X.
but this made me decide it was possible ... some hours of rummaging
through X source and fiddling with the xkb config followed, but
eventually i found what i wanted. The files of interest live in
xc/programs/Xserver/hw/xfree86/common when you unpack part 1 of the
XFree86-3.3.6 distribution:
it seems that the escaped scancode->keycode conversion is hardwired
into the X server. Question for the X gurus - can i get around this
using Xkb or Xinput somehow ? I'm a total newbie to the internals of
X, and i couldn't see any obvious way.
hence the hack. around line 618 of xf86Events.c you'll find the part
of the scan code handling which converts the escape scancodes for the
windows keys. I basically added a bunch more cases after this to
handle the escaped scancodes for the itouch keys, and return keycodes
starting from 118 (in user X terms, 110 at this point because X adds
8 later). This number was picked because xkbcomp reported the max
keycode i was currently generating was 117 on the windows menu key.
I ended up adding a bunch of defines to atKeynames.h just because this
seemed the right thing to do, adding stuff like
case 0x5f: scancode = 110; break;
case 0x20: scancode = 111; break;
was too hacky even for me.
recompiled the X server and popped it in the right spot and bingo -
xev can see the keys now. I can't believe this is the right way to
handle a weird keyboard though, although the existence of special
handling for the windows keys in this place makes me wonder ...
after xev could see the keys, i adapted
/usr/lib/X11/xkb/keycodes/xfree86
and
/usr/lib/X11/xkb/symbols/us
to produce keycodes and symbols descriptions based on us(pc101), and
remapped the itouch keys to F15 up. While i was there i mapped the
windows keys to F13 and F14.
plain sailing from there then - i use sawmill, so i added an appropriate
function definition to my .sawmillrc to gnome-moz-remote my inbox and
mapped the itouch `mail' key to it using the config gui.
Voila - my internet keyboard is functional under X. ymmv of course.
Now i have to find a good use for the other keys .... :-)
- robbie
p.s. I haven't looked at XFree864.0 - maybe it does things in a totally
different way. I'm not ready to upgrade my X a major version step
yet - i've seem some reports gdm doesn't like it, and that there are
issues with nvidia drivers (which is what i have on one of my
machines).
--
*--------------------------------->*<----------------------------------*
|_| robbie gates | [EMAIL PROTECTED] |_|
V category theorist V //www.ics.mq.edu.au/~robbie V
*--------------------------------->*<----------------------------------*
------------------------------
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 23:25:23 +0200
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup,comp.os.linux.misc,comp.periphs.printers
Subject: Re: Q: Best printer for linux box?
I recently bought a Lexmark OptraColor 40. It is network PS printer and
supports Linux/Unix as well as windows. It work great for both systems
for me. Check www.buy.com clearance page. When I bought it was $94 (new)
compared to more than $300 in stores.
Good luck
Aydin
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Can somebody recommend a printer?
>
> My Epson Action Laser 1400 is driving me nuts, because the sheet
> feeder constantly pulls in two sheets and jams. I want to replace
> it with a new/used printer, but have no idea which one avoids that
> problem.
>
> Here are my priorities, in order:
>
> Required:
>
> 1. GOOD non-jamming sheet feeder which accepts ordinary paper
>
> 2. Runs perfectly under Linux (possibly with some fiddling)
>
> Optional:
>
> 3. Color
>
> 4. Two-sided printing
>
> 5. Cheap
>
> 6. Fast
>
> Any recommendations? I'm considering a refurbished Epson Color Stylus
> 440, because it satisfies #2, #3 and #5; does it satisfy #1? Is there
> a printer which satisfies all six conditions?
>
> Thanks in advance,
> Len.
>
> Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
> Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Juergen Pfann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Tape storage
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 05:30:28 +0200
Philippe PIERARD wrote:
>
> I try to use a tape to make a backup of my linux system.
>
> It is a scsi DAT tape (model 'python').
>
> The tape recorder is reconize in SCSI hosts as sequentiel block device, but
> i can't mount a tape in /dev/rst*
>
> Does anyone know how to do that ?
>
> Thank you
Well, you don't mount tapes. You access them (sequentially, of
course) via
some kind of backup software, be it tar, cpio, dd, dump, kdat,
whatever.
That also means there is no file system on tapes like on direct
access
devices aka hard discs, for instance.
If you knew all that before, maybe because you're familiar with
tapes in
some other *NIX or backup solutions in MS OSes (shudder) - sorry
for that.
BUT : You're still wrong regarding the device name(s) for SCSI
tapes in
Linux; these are /dev/stX for the rewind-on-close version, and
/dev/nstX
for the non-rewinding ones (X being an integer starting from 0 for
the
first device, etc.).
HTH
Juergen
------------------------------
From: Mike Sullivan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: Asus CD S500 not wprking
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 03:37:26 GMT
I just purchased a K7M based system with and ASUS 50X CD drive model
CD-S500. I was able to boot and install RH 6.2 from it, but when the
kernel
loads I get the following
hdc: packet command error: status=0x51 { DriveReady SeekComplete Error }
hdc: packet command error: error=0x54
ATAPI device hdc:
Error: Illegal request -- (Sense key=0x05)
Parameter list length error -- (asc=0x1a, ascq=0x00)
The failed "Mode Sense" packet command was:
"5a 00 2a 00 00 00 00 00 18 00 00 00 "
The drive will not work. It looks to me like ASUS may have deviated
from
the ATAPI standard somewhat. Any thoughts or ideas. At this point it
looks like I will have to get a different drive.
Mike Sullivan
------------------------------
From: Juergen Pfann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Will a plextor ide cdrw 8/4/32 work?
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 05:38:55 +0200
Jim Bisnett wrote:
>
> I have owned a plextor scsi cdrom for a long time. It has worked well. So I
> thought I would give the brand another try. They are well known in the scsi
> area.
Yes, but if you don't have to turn twice every cent, why not get
the 12/4/32
SCSI RW instead ? It's so FINE - grab a 60 min. audio CD in 3 min.
(with
the Plextor 40x) and write it in 5 min. *gggg*.
Juergen
------------------------------
From: Mike Sullivan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Crossposted-To:
alt.uu.comp.os.linux.questions,comp.local.linux.redhat.alpha,comp.os.linux.hardawe,comp.os.linux.help,comp.os.linux.setup,linux.news.groups
Subject: Re: New Athlon 700 Box
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 03:45:22 GMT
Antonio wrote:
> Please excuse a newbie
> I am not sure this is the proper way to ask a question.
> I have researched for some time all the hardware configurations and news
> posts, I have also looked in the AMD site. I would appreciate any comments
> or suggestions you might have, and most important why.
> I want to run win95 as well as many distributions of Linux as I can in my
> learning process of Linux.
> Here is what I intend on getting.
>
> Athlon 700 $263 or dual Celeron 533 $246
>
> 256MB PC 100 SDRAM 8ns $230
>
> Teac 4x4x32 CD-RW INT IDE $247
>
> Board ASUS K7M AMD-751 CHIPSET ATX WITH AUDIO OR WITHOUT $159
>
> IBM 20.5 GB Deskstar GXP 7200 RPM AT/66 2MB cache $166
>
> Sparkle 300W ATX PS Fan out (AMD approved) MIDTOWER $38
>
> Sound blaster Live Value CT4830 $46.75
>
> 3DFX Voodoo3 3000 16 MG AGP $122.50
>
> Thanks
> Antonio
It all looks good, unless you want the Floating point performance I would go
with
the dual celeron you will find it will give a more responsive console under
linux as
the system loading will be split across the two CPUs. You will also get the
experiance of playing with dual CPU. If you want a gaming machine get the
Athlon.
Note I have an Athlon as I require High FP performance. Either machine is a
smoker so there is no real bad choice.
Mike Sullivan
------------------------------
From: "bobmanx" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: HELP!!! ANY ONE
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 22:48:38 -0000
I am new to linux, and i must say I am pleased with the results so far.
Ok no to the important part I have SuSE 6.4 installed but i am haveing
hardware problems. I have a sound blaster live! i have emu10k1 installed
and it found my card but doesn't work when linux boots up it looks for the
card at IRQ 0. I think this is the problem seeing as the card is not at that
IRQ but i dont know how to tell linux that. Alo i just got a "All-In-Wonder
128 32 MD ram". I need to know if i should use the drivers for the rage 128
chip and if so were do i get them i looked every were and cant find them. i
tryed the drivers for the all-in-wonder "not 128" but i can only get a
resolution of 640x480 with them. i want to be able to play quake 3 and i
cant do it with geaneric drivers.
Thanks for any help
BobmanX
Bobby Atkins
------------------------------
From: lemieuxsimon <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Subject: stuff a downloader...
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 03:56:05 GMT
Salut,
voici une liste de stuff que tu voulais que je te cherche... il ne te reste
plus qu'a les downloader!
WinZip 2000:
http://www.winzip.com/download.htm
Drivers de modem:
http://www.modem-help.freeserve.co.uk/modlinks.html#softk56
Drivers ATI Rage Fury 128:
http://support.ati.com/products/rage128/boards/rage128_boards_win2k.html
Iomega Zip driver:
http://apps.iomega.com/servlet/dataprocess/driverlist?database=steerdown
CD-Writer:
tu peux aller voir a www.adaptec.com...
Oublie jamais d'utiliser www.google.com!!!
Salut,
Simon
------------------------------
From: Robert Redelmeier <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux Uses Less Power?
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 23:41:10 -0500
[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
>
> Recently I did an energy audit on some of my more used
> equipment. I found my computer, when running Linux (Red Hat 6.0) only
> drew 0.80 amps of root mean square (RMS) current. When I booted it up
> into Windows 98, it drew 0.88 amps of RMS current.
Very easily explained, and I'd actually expect a larger difference.
Linux idles at a "HLT" instruction wherein the CPU typically
comsumes less than 1 Watt. MS-Win9? idles in a busy loop,
typically consuming 15W of power (highly CPU dependant).
The only place where MS-Win9? could save more power is it does
spin down hard disks. This might save a few watts at the cost
of increased wear when the disk spin-up. Linux does not spin
down disks easily.
BTW: what do you use to measure power? It's very tough to get
good readings that low, and you have to be careful because power
supplies are highly non-linear (powerfactor = ~50%).
-- Robert
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (HI)
Subject: Want linux... 200mb left... making OS... Stuck w/windows...shoot me
Date: 15 Apr 2000 05:51:33 GMT
Here's my problem... First I need a, or the linux code... completely in
assembly. (basically I'm going to write a whole OS and I don't want to start
from scratch). I have a second hard drive which I have to install differrently
or it won't work. I have 200 mb free on the hard drive. My zip drive won't be a
slave... it wants it's freedom and gets finicky if it isn't master. What I mean
is that it doesn't work at all. The 200 Meg. Samsung needs to be master so i
can boot from it. My main 1.7 gig hard drive has to stay as primary master
because my mom is taking a computer course. I have my cdrom slaved to my main
hard drive. I'd try the windows help guys but... well they usually aren't smart
enough to help me. If they were windows wouldn't crash once a day on average.
Also I'd like some information and circuits on booting linux from a flash disk.
I'd like some circuits for SMALL linux based motherboards/sbc's using 386 or
486 processors. I have 486DLC-40 with coprocessor, 486SLC/E-33, three 486slc/e
(pretty sure it's a /e) 66 or 60. I also have some 486 sx's and dx's. If you
don't have any I'll just copy this motherboard I already have and make a
smaller one... it's a 2-sided pcb. And how was the current linux kernel
written?? And what high speed (pentium 100 up) SBC works best with linux. Keep
in mind it can't be "embedded" it must not use any special code... file
management... or anything else. I am writing a generic OS and I can't go around
allowing for special features nobody else will need to use because I don't have
the time. Hope ya can help me... know you can't. I'm doomed so I hope I didn't
waste too much of your time. Booting from flash disks in linux...??? thanks
anyway.
P D u 7 7 @ a o l . c o m
delete the delete in email address. If this post is of a technical request
(which it usually is) thank you for reading it and double thank you if you
reply.
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Crunch the Ogre)
Subject: ATI Rage for Newbie's Guide
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 04:34:02 GMT
Check into this site for a good solution to calming your Rage
http://members.home.com/grberry
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Crunch the Ogre)
Subject: SBLive Guide for Newbie's
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 04:34:57 GMT
Give this site a look over for a solution to setting up you SBLive
http://members.home.com/grberry
------------------------------
From: Markus Kossmann <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: partitionless
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 07:36:50 +0200
Bill wrote:
>
> What exacly is the "partitionless installation" on redhat 6.2?
>
> Does it just run on a UMSDOS filesystem?
No , AFAIK it uses a file , which is mounted via loop device.
>
> It doesn't have any partitions, so how do I access files that would normally
> reside in /etc, /dev, /usr?
The loop device simulates a single partition
>
> Can this be a permanment replacement for regular Linux, or not?
IMHO it is good for test purposes but not for a permanent installation
--
Markus Kossmann
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Yves Bellefeuille)
Subject: Re: secnd hard drive format necessary?
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 03:06:31 -0400
Reply-To: Yves Bellefeuille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
On Thu, 13 Apr 2000, Charles Brands <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I just installed a second hard drive and I installed the ext2 file
> system with the mke2fs command. Is that all I have to do to make it
> work or do I have to format it as in dos?
Partition it with /sbin/fdisk, format it with /sbin/mke2fs or
/sbin/mkfs.ext2, and mount it somewhere. That's all.
--
Yves Bellefeuille <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>, Ottawa, Canada
Francais / English / Esperanto
Fight Spam! Join CAUCE cost-free: http://www.cauce.org/
------------------------------
From: Norman Jordan <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: What's up with the capability differences in resolution Corel<->RH?
Date: Fri, 14 Apr 2000 15:15:01 GMT
You should be able to edit your "/etc/X11/XF86Config" file to change the
resolution to what you want. Otherwise you could use your copy of that
file from Mandrake in Corel.
"Timothy Brown & Co." wrote:
> I like to run 1600x1200 and use large fonts. I think the screen
> looks great that way. RH Mandrake'll do it fine with my specs, but
> the Corel distro won't put out that high of a rez. Anybody know if I
> could take the Xfree from RH 6.1 and integrate it into Debian 1.0?
> Is that possible.
------------------------------
From: "Jason Byrne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: use cd-rw created in Win9x with Adaptec sw??
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 02:32:18 -0700
Michael Kelly <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:8d83qr$20jk$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I have ide read/write cdrom and so far I've only been
> able to find info on burning CDRs. Anyone know where
> I could find a HOWTO or other info on using CD-RW that
> were created with Adaptec sw in Winx/NT?? I'd like to
> be able to read and write them from Linux as well as
> the Win9x/NT OSs.
>
> So far I've only been able to mount the CD-RW drive for
> reading iso9660 CDs.
If I recall correctly... there is an option in some of the Adaptec (windows)
software that lets you put CD's in a mode that is 'readable by most
CD-roms'. Technically... I claim ignorance on what mode it is actually
using.
I've created a number of CD's with Adaptec CD-RW software for various other
Unix machines (SGI xfs CD's, RedHat 6.1 sparc distribution CD for sparc 10
install - *not* from iso image) and otherwise mount other similarily burned
CD's... while I'm running Linux without any problems.
> TIA
>
> --
>
> Mike
> --
> "I don't want to belong to any club that would have *me* as a member!"
> -- Groucho Marx
>
------------------------------
From: "Jason Byrne" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: new hard drive, old motherboard, and linux
Date: Sat, 15 Apr 2000 02:49:03 -0700
Jason Meyers <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote in message
news:4JHJ4.2537$[EMAIL PROTECTED]...
> I want to install a new hard drive on a linux box that I plan to use as a
> backup/server machine. I'm pretty sure that the motherboard on the
machine
> only supports up to 8.4gig. However, some sources I've read suggest that
> disk geometry can be handed off to operating systems that support it. So,
> in a nutshell, can linux (RH 6.0) handle a larger drive, even if the
> motherboard does not?
I ran into a similar situation... so I'll share my experience - might be
helpful for you in deciding what to do. This should help you make decisions
about how to work around EZ-bios/LILO issues - if you want to keep it for a
dual-boot windows setup?
PC to be installed had old, crippled Phoenix bios - could only see 2.1g
drives. Actual hard-drive (8.4g Maxtor) had 'EZ-bios' installed - not sure
if this had anything to do with Linux seeing entire drive.
btw... not to throw in a bunch of extra variables - I actually used a SuSE
install to create all the partitions - since it has a much more powerful
partitioning tool... and then installed RH 5.1 (pre-BugHat 6.x days). This
machine was only set up for some RedHat-specific pre-compiled binaries by
employer wanted to test-drive - so I just chose RedHat to eliminate
unnecessary headaches... even though I don't use RedHat by choice.
Anyway... I did *not* install LILO in the MBR... which would have been fatal
to EZ-bios stuff.
Actual partitioning was as follows:
/dev/hda1 - 2g windows partition - already on drive before any linux
installs.
killed existing extended partitions (fat16) and made the following
partitions with Linux:
/dev/hda2 - / mount for Linux (LILO installed here)
/dev/hda5 - /dev/hda9 various other Linux partitions
/dev/hda10 - fat16 partition created *for* windows using Linux
So... before I started Linux install... /dev/hda1 was obviously the active
partition on the hard-drive. When I installed Linux... I just 'activated'
/dev/hda2... which effectively 'switches off' /dev/hda1 status... This means
that when the machine boots... the first *primary* partition that is seen is
/dev/hda2... so you get a LILO prompt and can then boot to Linux or windows
from there (of course I added appropriate entry for windows to
/etc/lilo.conf)
> Thanks for any help at all.
>
> Jason
>
>
------------------------------
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