Linux-Hardware Digest #319, Volume #13 Sat, 29 Jul 00 20:13:04 EDT
Contents:
Abit BX-133 RAID: impressions (Vincent Fox)
Re: Please help me evaluate this hardware's compatability with Linux (Stanislaw
Flatto)
Re: Brother HL-1240 (Bruce Forsberg)
Re: Questions about Old PC resurection w/Linux. (Stephen Bodnar)
Athalon Motherboards/ Linux Support ("Greg Boehnlein")
Re: Linux Hardware Handbook available (John Hagen)
Re: Athalon Motherboards/ Linux Support (Bartek Kostrzewa)
Re: Abit BX-133 RAID: impressions (Rob McMillin)
AC 97 on ASUS K7V-T (Bartek Kostrzewa)
Re: ati all in wonder --xfree86-4 (Les Hazelton)
Help with SCSI error. (Luigi Gangitano)
support for ami mg 80649? (Fabian Mueller)
support for ami mg 80649? (Fabian Mueller)
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] (Vincent Fox)
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Abit BX-133 RAID: impressions
Date: 29 Jul 2000 20:08:08 GMT
I got one of the Abit BX-133 RAID motherboards and have
started playing with it. I am very favorably impressed
with it in NT and 2000.
I put an IBM 20 gig 75GXP as master on one ATA-100 channel
and an identical drive on the other. Went into the BIOS and
declared them as a single 40 gig RAID 0 array. I noted in the
HP370 BIOS that it labelled the second drive as "Hidden". Hmmm.
More on that later. Booted from a Windows CD and at the appropriate
point hit S to install the drivers for the ATA-100 channels
(you have to repeat this twice) and then proceeded to install Windows.
Works wonderfully well for that environment. I ran the SiSoft Sandra
standard disk tests and it was giving me well over 50 megs/sec read.
Not too shabby.
This also seems to be an excellent board in general. The power
couple has finally been moved to the top of the board. There's
a small LED on the lower right to let you know power is connected
in case you open the case and start working on it without realizing
that it may be off but power is still connected. There's plenty of
room around the Socket for a big fat heatsink. Although I have to
note that the Golden Orb I have on there now is probably coming
off and putting in a stock unit, since it makes noise like a jet engine.
I need some quieter cooling for sanity reasons. Lots of little things
are there that address the relatively minor complaints we all had
with older Abit boards. Stability, perfect. I've been running a
PIII-650 FCPGA (stock is 6.5x100) at 6.5x133 and it's been rock solid
under torture tests even overclocked. About the only thing I can
think of that would keep this from being my definition of a perfect
BX motherboard is that it needs another Socket like the BP6 :-)
I then tried to load RedHat 6.2. It found a single 20 gig drive.
It didn't find 2 20's or one 40. So obviously there's some
WinRAID aspect to the way there are doing RAID. It must not all
be occurring in the hardware, but be partially dependent on device
drivers. I really prefer Linux. I may build a few of these boxes as
Windows units for the coworkers, but I want to use Linux. I'm hoping
that someone can point me to some Linux HPT370 RAID support. Eventually
I want to be able to build a small server with a pair of large drives
doing RAID 1 (mirroring). So if one drive fails I'm still okay.
I want to be able to have the boot partitions and everything on
this one big drive, not have a boot drive on the ATA-33 that is
something I also have to primarily depend on backup tapes for.
I'll do backup tapes, but I hate depending on them as the
one and only line of defense against disk failure. Too many
times I've found bad tapes when I go to restore something.
An elegant and simple mirroring setup with tape as the second
line of defense and not tape as the first is what I want.
Is there a smart and simple way to get where I want to go?
It seems the Windows world has Linux beat here for simplicity.
If my one big drive in the RAID 1 config fails under 2000 I just
reboot and replace the drive and tell it in BIOS to redo the mirror
disk. I'm struggling to see how I can do something similar with
Linux even if it's software RAID that doesn't amount to being
several times more complex.
--
"Who needs horror movies when we have Microsoft"?
-- Christine Comaford, PC Week, 27/9/95
------------------------------
From: Stanislaw Flatto <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Crossposted-To: comp.os.linux.setup
Subject: Re: Please help me evaluate this hardware's compatability with Linux
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 06:47:45 +0000
phil ossifer wrote:
> On Sun, 16 Jul 2000 14:08:34 -0400, kSniNe <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> I thought I made it clear: real-world time constraints make that impractical.
> I _want_ to run Linux.
In "real world" you crawl, then get up and stumble, then walk and then run.
And no amount of cash can change it.
Welcome into real world!!!
--
Stanislaw on Slak 7.1
Registered on Linux counter No.162760.
Even put Ulladulla on their database.
------------------------------
From: Bruce Forsberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Brother HL-1240
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 20:49:42 GMT
In article <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>,
> >If you can afford it the HL-1270N is a good choice as well. It has
> >Postscript emulation builtin, a 10/100 Base T network card and works
> >very well. It comes with 4 MB standard and you can add 1 72 pin
non-EDO
> >simm upto 32MB. If you will use graphics with postscript you will
need
> >more memory. If you have alot of old computers laying around you
> >probably already have the extra memory. Since it has postscript it is
> >alot easier to setup, you don't need ghostscript.
> >
> >Bruce Forsberg
> This is interesting. A networkable, postscript printer
> for 400+ US$ (cnet). I was wondering if the postscript
> (BR script?) is a "real" postscript as opposed to something
> like the postscript option in NEC 870, which does not work
> for linux.
>
I had a ink jet (HP 660) for about two years and the quality of the
output got worse and worse over the two year period. Also the ink
supplies are very expensive. I don't need color so I looked for an
inexpensive BW laser. Consumer Reports rated the HL-1240 as the best
(for windows of course) of the group that they rated. They said it
also had the lowest cost per page. Most people did
not recommend the 1240 for Linux since it is limited in memory and if
memory serves me correct can't be upgraded. The HL-1270N uses the same
drum and toner as the 1240 with about the same specs so I assume it has
the same print engine. I have had it for about 3-4 months now with no
problems what so ever. I have only been not able to print one page so
far and it was a web page on ebay. There is a psutils software package
on the web for Linux that I use that allows me to output 2 or 4 pages
per page and that works great. If you use the built in Postscript
emulation you will need to upgrade the memory like I said before. 4MB
is not enough to process postscript documents. It also comes standard
with 10/100 Base T. Printing just plain listings are pretty speedy to.
I have not timed it but it must easy be close to the rated 12 PPM.
I don't know what the NEC 870 does. This acts just like a network
postscript printer. You send the postscript document to a queue called
BINARY_P1 on the machine. You could also send ASCII or PCL to it as
well. I have used it on win95 and it works fine aas well. Most of my
work with it has been with RedHat 5.2 & SUSE 6.2 on my desktop and
laptop systems. I have also used the parrellel and ethernet connections
both. It also has a USB connection.
> Also, any other networkable, postscript, affordable laser
> printer options out there. I know lexmark makes a couple,
> but their lower model does not do network (they are postscript,
> though).
>
> What are the differences between postscript 2 and postscript 3.
> The lexmark M410n does network and is proscript 3, but cost
> more than the brother, though. Are there any measurable
> advantage?
>
>
Sent via Deja.com http://www.deja.com/
Before you buy.
------------------------------
From: Stephen Bodnar <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Questions about Old PC resurection w/Linux.
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 13:13:53 -0800
Actually, you can do it without a hard drive at all, so save that
scsi card and hard drive for something more useful.
Check out:
http://www.zdnet.com/enterprise/stories/main/0,10228,2503199,00.html
for a really good article on how to do it with just a floppy for
a boot disc.
Later,
Stephen
In message <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
(Kano Ako) writes:
>
>Hey All
>
>I am going to resurrect an old PC of mine. It is a 486DX2 at 50MHz
>(purchased in '92). I intend to use it as a firewall. I am planning
>to use Slackware Linux as the OS.
>
>Since it is an old machine I want to offload as much I/O from the CPU
>as possible, this means SCSI. I am planning on using an Adaptec ISA
>card and the smallest HD I can find.
>
>Questions now follow. I take it that the smallest drive available now
>a days exceeds the BIOS' abilities, correct? So then I would have to
>download & flash the bios to be able to handle larger drives, correct?
>Secondly about CDs. Fast CDs require a certain amount of HP from the
>CPU correct? Does this apply to SCSI? I guess I'll not need the
>latest &greatest (just enough to handle loading some not a lot of
>software) just again want to make sure the minimum now a days does not
>exceed the hardwares limitations.
>
>Thanks
>
>Mag-ingat kayong lahat ang sabi ni Kano Ako!
>
>[EMAIL PROTECTED]
------------------------------
From: "Greg Boehnlein" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Athalon Motherboards/ Linux Support
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 17:19:54 -0400
Hello,
I'm considering upgrading my home machine. I have an ATX motherboard
w/ a K6-2-350 and 128 Meg PC-100 ram. I am looking for something like an
Athalon 850 or 900 chip and motherboard combo. I have the following
questions, if anyone cares to answer..
1. Does anyone have any experience with Athalon chips under Linux?
2. It looks like there are two main chipsets that support the Athalon
processors:
- AMD-750 and AMD-751
- VIA KX133
I have found little discussion related to either, other than a couple
of patches that reference "Irongate" support on the linux-kernel
mailing list. Since I do a lot of high-end audio production and mixing
on my home box, I am looking for two things in the IDE chipset:
- Stability
- Speed (UDMA 66 or 100)
3. I don't do a lot of gamin, but I do have an 8 Meg ATI RAGE Pro card.
Xfree support has not been an issue and the card rocks, but does
anyone know of any particular gotchas when using AGP w/ these newer
chipsets?
4. What optimizations should be used when compiling applications? 586 or
686?
Thanks in advance...
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 15:10:12 -0700
From: John Hagen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Linux Hardware Handbook available
Rod Smith wrote:
>
> Hi,
>
> Those in this group may be interested to know that my latest book,
> _Linux Hardware Handbook_, is now available. For more information, check
> my web page:
>
> http://www.rodsbooks.com/hardware/
You know, this is probably a decent book.
But I'm really put off when I follow the Fatbrain link and look at the
ratings for the book. The book is rated 5-stars. So, when I go to look at
the ratings, there's only one: it's from the author and, of course, it's
5-stars.
This is questionable behavior, whatever the worth of the book. You should
really let the customer judge your work.
Cheers,
--
john hagen ~ [EMAIL PROTECTED]
=================================
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 00:23:56 +0200
From: Bartek Kostrzewa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Athalon Motherboards/ Linux Support
Greg Boehnlein wrote:
>
> Hello,
> I'm considering upgrading my home machine. I have an ATX motherboard
> w/ a K6-2-350 and 128 Meg PC-100 ram. I am looking for something like an
> Athalon 850 or 900 chip and motherboard combo. I have the following
> questions, if anyone cares to answer..
>
> 1. Does anyone have any experience with Athalon chips under Linux?
Yep, bought a K7V-T with Althon T-Bird 750 (OEM Slot-A version) some
days ago, works great!
> 2. It looks like there are two main chipsets that support the Athalon
> processors:
> - AMD-750 and AMD-751
this is a bridge processor, used also on VIA chipsets
> - VIA KX133
a revision of KT133 with T-Bird support
> I have found little discussion related to either, other than a couple
> of patches that reference "Irongate" support on the linux-kernel
> mailing list. Since I do a lot of high-end audio production and mixing
> on my home box, I am looking for two things in the IDE chipset:
> - Stability
perfect here
> - Speed (UDMA 66 or 100)
DAMN fast
> 3. I don't do a lot of gamin, but I do have an 8 Meg ATI RAGE Pro card.
> Xfree support has not been an issue and the card rocks, but does
> anyone know of any particular gotchas when using AGP w/ these newer
> chipsets?
nope, I have less problems then with my BX (where I had a small memory
leak that leaded to a slight smearing)
> 4. What optimizations should be used when compiling applications? 586 or
> 686?
686 I'd say. Try it out!
>
> Thanks in advance...
------------------------------
From: Rob McMillin <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: Abit BX-133 RAID: impressions
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 16:07:47 -0700
Vincent Fox wrote:
> Is there a smart and simple way to get where I want to go?
> It seems the Windows world has Linux beat here for simplicity.
> If my one big drive in the RAID 1 config fails under 2000 I just
> reboot and replace the drive and tell it in BIOS to redo the mirror
> disk. I'm struggling to see how I can do something similar with
> Linux even if it's software RAID that doesn't amount to being
> several times more complex.
I don't know about this particular hardware configuration, but after doing
extensive casting about for real RAID configurations, you'd better damn
well ask the vendor about Linux support PRIOR to a purchase decision. What
I found is that AMI makes a decent RAID controller, and Dell's PERC RAID is
also good. However, I can't give my wholehearted assent to the Dell
solution because they won't give me disaster recovery solutions in case of
a fire or whatever -- I called their tech support line and I got some poor
bugger who had no idea what I was talking about, nor did his boss, and so
on. Mainly, what I was asking was "how do you install on this drive given
the stock RedHat releases don't support it out of the box?" On the other
hand, AMI you KNOW is not supported for boot partitions, so you always need
a boot disk.
In general, the only RAID solutions that work on Linux (in my admittedly
limited experience) are all-hardware RAIDs. Adaptec has said that their
"RAID" cards actually require copious software to make them go, leading me
to wonder whether they're just slightly modified from their other SCSI
controllers. It sounds like this is what you have with this motherboard.
--
http://www.pricegrabber.com | Dog is my co-pilot.
------------------------------
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 01:23:34 +0200
From: Bartek Kostrzewa <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: AC 97 on ASUS K7V-T
Is there any howto around about the AC97 sound chipset? Even if I
disable it I can't use sound with my SB PCI 128, and so I'm trying to
get the on-board chipset running, that's one free slot, and one place
for a cooler.
Bartek Kostrzewa
------------------------------
Date: Sat, 29 Jul 2000 19:24:49 -0400
From: Les Hazelton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Re: ati all in wonder --xfree86-4
This is a multi-part message in MIME format.
==============A531F698D9E8F88F4561A295
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Samuel Irlapati wrote:
>
> Has anyone been able to get 'ati all in wonder' to work with xfree86-4? I
> tried to get it to work with the binaries but was unable to do it. I right
> now use RH6.2 with 2.4.0-test3 kernel. Is there anything special that needs
> to be done? Or if you got it working can you send me your xconfig file?
My system is someplace between L-M 7.0 and 7.1 running kernel 2.2.16
patched for 2.2.17pre4. I currently run XFree86-4.0.1. My video card is
ATI AIW 128 PCI with 16meg.
My XF86Config file is attached. Hope it helps.
Les Hazelton
==============A531F698D9E8F88F4561A295
Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii;
name="XF86Config"
Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit
Content-Disposition: inline;
filename="XF86Config"
# File generated by setrage
Section "Module"
Load "dbe"
SubSection "extmod"
Option "omit xfree86-dga"
EndSubSection
Load "type1"
Load "freetype"
Load "speedo"
Load "extmod"
Load "xie"
Load "pex5"
Load "glx"
Load "dri"
Load "GLcore"
Load "dbe"
Load "record"
EndSection
Section "Files"
RgbPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/rgb"
FontPath "/usr/local/X11/fonts_tt"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/local/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/misc/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Type1/"
FontPath "/usr/X11R6/lib/X11/fonts/Speedo/"
EndSection
Section "ServerFlags"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Keyboard1"
Driver "Keyboard"
Option "AutoRepeat" "500 30"
Option "XkbRules" "xfree86"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection
Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Mouse1"
Driver "mouse"
Option "Protocol" "PS/2"
Option "Device" "/dev/mouse"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons"
Option "Emulate3Timeout 250"
EndSection
Section "Monitor"
Identifier "My Monitor"
HorizSync 31.5-82.0
VertRefresh 40-150
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "Standard VGA"
VendorName "Unknown"
BoardName "Unknown"
Driver "vga"
EndSection
Section "Device"
Identifier "My Video Card"
Driver "r128"
VideoRam 16384
EndSection
Section "Screen"
Identifier "Screen 1"
Device "My Video Card"
Monitor "My Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
Subsection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1280x1024" "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
ViewPort 0 0
EndSubsection
EndSection
Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Simple Layout"
Screen "Screen 1"
InputDevice "Mouse1" "CorePointer"
InputDevice "Keyboard1" "CoreKeyboard"
EndSection
==============A531F698D9E8F88F4561A295==
------------------------------
From: Luigi Gangitano <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: Help with SCSI error.
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 01:00:00 +0200
Hi,
I've got two IBM Netfinity 3000 (PIII 500, 128MB, IBM 9.1GB UW SCSI,
Adaptec 2940), with Slackware 7.0 and kernel 2.2.14.
On one of the server I upgraded the kernel to 2.2.16 to fix the
capabilites bug. No problem.
On the other, as soon as I swith to 2.2.16, I get:
kernel: (scsi0:0:6:0) invalid cur_addr:0x9e011 during WIDE_RESIDUE
kernel: (scsi0:0:6:0) sg_address[-1]:0x0 sg_length[-1]:0
kernel: (scsi0:0:6:0) sg_address:0x0 sg_length:0
in the log during bootup. Error doesn't appen with 2.2.14, nor does it
appen on the other box (same hardware, same distribution, same kernel
configuration except for the ide patch I had to include to get
S.M.A.R.T. utilities compiling...)
Any hint?
Thanks a lot in advance.
L
------------------------------
From: Fabian Mueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: support for ami mg 80649?
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 01:34:31 +0200
Hi
Does anybody know something about support for the
mentioned chipset on which Iwill's "Side 100 IDE-Raid"
controller is based on?
I want to buy the new "KV200-R" mainboard from Iwill
which has the chipset onboard if there are existing
linux drivers for it.
Thanx, Fabian
------------------------------
From: Fabian Mueller <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
Subject: support for ami mg 80649?
Date: Sun, 30 Jul 2000 01:35:57 +0200
Hi
Does anybody know something about support for the
mentioned chipset on which Iwill's "Side 100 IDE-Raid"
controller is based on?
I want to buy the new "KV200-R" mainboard from Iwill
which has the chipset onboard if there are existing
linux drivers for it.
Thanx, Fabian
------------------------------
** FOR YOUR REFERENCE **
The service address, to which questions about the list itself and requests
to be added to or deleted from it should be directed, is:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
You can send mail to the entire list (and comp.os.linux.hardware) via:
Internet: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
Linux may be obtained via one of these FTP sites:
ftp.funet.fi pub/Linux
tsx-11.mit.edu pub/linux
sunsite.unc.edu pub/Linux
End of Linux-Hardware Digest
******************************
