OK, I see many many posts trying to get things working. Perhaps it is
time to put together a list or six lists of hardware NOT to purchase if
you are considering installing Linux-Mandrake. I can give you a start
from my own experience.
1. Motherboards with chipsets that say VXPro, VXPro+, TXPro. Slow,
buggy, poorly made, and have electrolytic capacitors where tantalums are
needed. Likely to blue-screen you in Windows. Made under dozen(s) of
brand names like Houston Tech, Hsin Tech, Eurome, Alton, Amptron,
LuckyStar, and so on. All manufactured by PCChips.
2. More recent motherboards by PCChips seem to have much better
chipsets and BIOS ROMs BUT their quality still seems to favor
corner-cutting. In this category, the TX Pro -II the BXcel and similar
chipsets. Still not part of the rest of the world, and likely to
contain a few Linux headaches.
3. HSP devices, including the modem-like signal conditioners. Some of
these are on board like the PCTel on the PCChips M748MR. To be safe,
make sure that if you intend to use a modem that the manufacturer says
it will work with DOS, or buy an EXTERNAL modem.
4. Video cards from Cirrus Logic. I have found a high failure rate for
these even in Windows machines, starting with a line of multicolored
dots along some portion of the screen moving to muddy text and
unpredictable system resets. In Linux, they appear to be quite unstable
with most X servers. Also avoid Trident before the 9660, unless it is a
server you'll rarely look at the screen on.
5. Laptops with C&T chipsets in the 6555x range are very difficult to
get working in more than 256 colors unless you know what you are doing
sufficiently to play with the DACSpeed and to write your own modelines.
6. Surprisingly, the low-end Cyrix MediaGX performs well in most linux
implementations except Mandrake. The updates for Mandrake fail to
recognize it as a pentium-class processor so avoid them.
7. Please send your flames to my address, not to the list, but most of
the older Gateways should also be avoided. A company that spends its
money on customer service rather than building them right the first time
really underwhelms me. They work on the wrong things, and a lot of
their hardware is barely better than junk, in my experience. (And I am
in the midst of more than 500 Gateways for a population of 3500 people.
)Gateway seems to have greatly improved its warranty service and
willingness to make good on bad parts, but they still ship a lot of
"lemons".
8. Modem/sound card combos. This cheap short-cut is to be eschewed in
considering any upgrade or new purchase. They share interrupt space,
and we all should be aware the "modem" is an HSP modem-like device.
9. (As I say, flame ME, not the list) Packard Bell computers of any
vintage. I have managed to make about one in three work well under
windows, and have the same success rate with linux. If I wanted to be
rich and had no ethical qualms, I could keep busy in Anchorage, Alaska,
reinstalling OP systems for P-Bs. I have never experienced anything
more likely to drop its MBR or a few clusters off the disk than these
babies.
10. SiS chipset (especially integrated video chipset or SiS AGP Pro)
machines seem to have issues that are resolvable with effort, but if
buying a comp for linux, avoid them. They are usually very decent
chipsets, and some of the boards made with them are the most stable
under heat, overclocking, and heavy load that I have ever seen (the
Shuttle HOT-598 and 599, for example, simply run without a hiccup,
though they will break no benchmark records). Still, getting sound to
work on one of them is an issue, and the video until XFree86 3.3.5 was a
challenge even for folks who manufacture linux-based computers.
11. Seagate Drives seem to require special efforts. {Seek Complete}
errors under the switchover to multimode are very common on them. Some
chipsets will not install Mandrake with a Seagate Drive unless you have
the most recent BIOS. Other Chipsets (Intel 430TX at 75MHz) will appear
to install OK then give you all sorts of read errors or even fail to
boot or fail to be recognized after the install. The solution seems to
be to use ANY other brand of drive. Not all Seagates cause this, but
I have had bad experiences with ST38461A, ST 36610 (check that number)
and ST2850. The 2850 was capable of making a hard lock on a
linux-mandrake system though it appeared to install properly. The 38461
would crash the machine (Via MVP3 chipset) on install, or install
apparently properly (Intel 430TX) and crash on boot. The 6G drive
finally worked when I slowed the bus to 66MHz, but would refuse to be
recognized at any higher bus speed.
I am sure there are lots of additions to be made. Anyone? Also, if
I have treated anything unfairly, please let me know. I am trying to
put together an "avoid buying this if you plan to use linux, because you
will be working on the system instead of working with it." As a service
person for computers, of course, I should love all these combos and
their lucrative results, but as a person with a lot of experience and a
conscience, I don't very much like any of them.
Civileme
--
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