Baslinux mailing list

[Robert Steinmetz <rob AT steinmetznet.com>]

3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> Robert Steinmetz wrote:
>  
>
> > What kind of card are your trying to get?
> >    
>
> A PCMCIA (non-cardbus) network card *with* dongle.
> Getting one with a dongle is the hard part.  I
> actually did buy one (at the local online auction) 
> a couple of weeks ago, but the dongle was missing.
>  
10baseT or will coax suffice?

> > > Does the bare.i kernel have that capability?  
> > No it doesn't. 
> >    
> Right.  I'll probably do a custom kernel for that
> (assuming it is worthwhile for a 2.2.16 kernel).
The capability may always be somewhat limited, as the 2.2.16 kernel may 
not compile more recent drivers like PrismII and Orinoco. If we could 
just get these 2 it would be amazing and cover many of the cards out there.

> > My earlier experiments suggest this one additional 
> > parameter will not add very much the the kernel. 
> >    
>
> I'm not sure that it will take just one additional
> parameter.  The BL3 kernel is so bare that I suspect
> I will need to add one or two other parameters to get
> it to work.
Is there anything we can do to get some wireless capability in BL3,  
even if its an alternate kernel?

> > an old notebook kernel should be a consideration there.
> >    
> 486 notebooks are the primary target for BL3.  That's
> why I want to put PCMCIA into the foundation.
>
> > If install the pcmcia package for Slack 7.1 do you think 
> > it will work? 
> >    
>
> No, 7.1 uses the wrong library.  Hopefully, the PCMCIA package
> from Slackware 4.0 will work.  That will be my starting point
> (although I will probably be using a card-database file from
> a later Slackware).
>  
I'll try it on my machine, just to see if it will work.
The card-database may require translation, there were some changes in 
how this was handled over the life of the pcmcia package.

> > 640x480x8 which is common to old note books and to old video 
> > cards.
> >    
> I've played around with the different Xvesa settings, and I can't 
> see an actual improvement going from plain 640x480 to 640x480x8.  
> I choose 640x480x12 for the menu because 12 is the lowest number 
> that appeared to provide any benefit for Xvesa.  If you are sure 
> that Xvesa actually (not just theoretically) displays more colors
> at 640x480x8 than it does at 640x480, please tell us.
>  
I'll try to verify that. It looks like its 16 color on my notebook, not 
256. I guess I need to do some testing.

--
Robert Steinmetz AIA
Principal
Steinmetz & Associates