There are decisions made in implementing any operating system. D-Link
corporation sold tens of thousands of PCMCIA modem/LAN combo cards for laptops
that they had made according to the "preliminary" specs for Windows 95 which the
final operating system did not support. I was the purchaser of one of those
cards.
But the UDMA support (or lack of it) under certain chipsets or for certain
DRIVES seems to be not a linux deficiency. It is unique to Mandrake 6.x in my
experience. The worst offender is Seagate, which I have had to patch files for
in many ways even to get installed, UDMA notwithstanding. I have had this
difficulty with Intel TX chipsets as well. Sometimes slowing the bus clock
helped with a particular drive, other times it did not.
Face it, linux distributors do not have the resources to test on absolutely every
piece of hardware out there. Microsoft does have those resources and
consequently supports some of the hardware better (in terms of functioning as
intended). Microsoft also supports cheap junk that should never have been put
together. I am very happy to know that the linux kernel will never support
winmodems and other Host-Supported-Processing (HSP) devices that have only the
fact that they are low-cost to promote them. Look on Alta-Vista with a search
key of HSP to learn what ISPs think of those Modems and learn that most of the
workarounds reduce them to the performance they can support.
I could rant about certain manufacturers, like those a few years ago who put
worthless pieces of plastic where cache chips were expected on motherboards, and
whose hardware blue-screened even windows more often than not. There's a
plenitude of them out there. Use of an op system that will not support such
corner-cutting as they did would be a good way to stop such nonsense.
Of course, my viewpoint is as a person who implements computers for others, not
as a personal purchaser.
I hope something will happen, Ian. I would suggest you try a different
distribution. This one is a bit new to reach to what seems to you to be everyday
hardware but in a global context is a small portion of the market.
I can report, however that with two Shuttle Motherboards and IBM drives, I have
UDMA (and in one case UDMA-66) working with K6-2 350 and 450 processors. So the
particular mix you have may work fine wih any one part swapped out.
Civileme
Alan Shoemaker wrote:
> bay56 wrote:
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: Alan Shoemaker <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> > Sent: Saturday, October 02, 1999 5:17 AM
> > Subject: Re: [newbie] UDMA don't work in 6.1 with Ali Chipset
> >
> > > Ian....oh come on! There's no reason to get this morose over a problem
> > > that has a simple workaround. It was just the removal of a -p option
> > > from one init file that disabled auto-shutdown that solved the problem
> > > being discussed, wasn't it? That seems a paltry item to be so upset
> > > over. As I said before -- sheesh!!!
> >
> > Well if that were the way of it I would agree, but this is not how it
> > happened - I tried the fix (by the letter) and it caused it to fail to get
> > that far. So no, it did not solve it as such. It may be paltry in your view,
> > but it is significant enough to prevent the overall machine from working in
> > it's intended manner.
> >
> > I have learned that if you have a TMC TI5VG+ motherboard with it's MVP3,
> > with an AMD K6-2 CPU then you may expect to have some difficulties which
> > would prevent linux from running properly. Not many can afford to go out and
> > replace motherboard, cpu, videocard, soundcard, and modem, maybe the mouse,
> > and possibly the keyboard and monitor too, purely to run linux - especially
> > when all of those are average modern day contemporary components - it adds a
> > hidden cost to linux, and tends to head it towards eliteist. There is
> > nothing particularly wrong in that, but it may not have the kind of wider
> > appeal the OS may really deserve. It may be quite able, and it may require
> > quite a bit of effort, but it's not reasonable to then suggest an owner
> > might like to start by trashing an entire system. (A system which lets face
> > it can work if the correct functions are within the cabability of a given
> > OS.) This is something which could do with pointing up more strongly that it
> > currently is.
> >
> > So, as a practical approach I will come back to linux either when it can
> > support the hardware I have, or when I can afford to build (and want to own)
> > the kind of all intel machine it seems linux would be happier with. But
> > that's just a practical approach for a given set of circumstances. I can see
> > no other ways forward - that is just practical - do you really see it as
> > morose? Disappointed perhaps.
> >
> > Regards,
> > Ian
> >
>
> Ian....I see. Well, my suggestion would be to email Gael Duval
> personally with your story. hope things work out for you.
>
> Alan
