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[Sindi Keesan <keesan AT iamjlamb.com>]

We are still trying to make more one linux computer.  We gave up on the 
two that won't boot with DR-DOS (Win98 and Win95 DOS work, and yesterday 
so did IBMDOS) and won't do plip and one now has bad PCI slots. A friend 
suggested a thorough scrubbing with soap and water to remove corrosion, 
dirt and dust from the circuits, since one of these worked a few times.

The AMD and Cyrix 233MHx cpus work in one other board but at about 5/6 the
speed when set to 233 (the CMOS sets the Cyrix to PR233 3x66 or 2.5x75 and
they test out like 166MHz Intel in another computer) on good days.  After
a few boots the CMOS resets itself to Cyrix PR 133 but you can go into
CMOS while booting and reset when you need more speed.  We used the Cyrix
to make this into a computer for the building site (we are supposed to be
building a house, not a linux computer, this month) and will try out linux
'Sketch' vector drawing program on it some day.

A friend gave us a 'known good' Gateway 233 board and some RAM for it.  
Another friend gave us an ATI AGP video card for the board.  We spent a
few hours putting the thing together.  (In order to turn it on, despite
the odd logic switch, we jumpered something on the board and can now hit
Reset for power).  

I decided to also put Win98SE (1999) on here now that it will boot without
the logo, and discovered it has no driver for the 1998 ATI Rage IIc, which
is misidentified by Win98 as ATI VGA Wonder and is running at 16 colors
and making Opera totally scrambled.  I could set it back to plain PCI VGA
but I would like more resolution to view WORD files with.  It is a 7.8M
download of the driver (which can be used to spread your Windows screen
across two monitors, maybe only if you have a second VGA card of some
sort?).

Since we could not put in a PCI card and get it recognized after running 
with an AGP card on a previous computer without first plugging in an ISA 
card to reset something, I plugged in an ISA card (after removing the 
modem - the stupid board has only two ISA slots).  The monitor would not 
light up.  Same with a second ISA card.  Put in a PCI card anyway and it 
booted to the point of telling us, after a line about resetting 
configuration data or some such:

ERROR
Resource Conflict - PCIMass Storage Controller Configuration Error
Bus:00, Device:07, Function:01

Same with two other PCI cards.
Nothing in CMOS looked appropriate for fixing this.

Gateway PII 233MHz, common computer that was sold with an AGP card in it 
but given to us without the card.  

Any suggestions short of a 2 hour driver download for the ATI or 
purchasing (shudder) another AGP card?