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[sindi keesan <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>]

I have three Gateway boards (made by NEC/Intel, something like JN440BX, 
all with the three pins missing from the configuration jumper needed to 
upgrade the cpu and change speeds but we are told we can run a wire 
between the solder blobs where the pins should have been).

One came with a 266MHz cpu, the others with 233MHz.
AGP video in the first, AGP or PCI in the second, 4MB RAM.

I booted them all with Win98 DOS and system files, and put on BL3 (various 
versions but the same Xvesa).

1.  266MHz.  The system files do not interfere with Xvesa, and it all 
works properly at all available resolutions and color depths.  AGP.
I don't recall the version number but I think it is BL3.0 or something 
shortly after that.

2.  A 233MHz with PCI video, I need to bypass the system files in order to 
use Xvesa at all, otherwise I get a black screen (something like Interrupt 
pointers... flashes by briefly first).  This is the only computer where I 
need to bypass Win98 DOS system files (not needed on two other Win98SE and 
one Win98FE).  Then it works in lots of colors, specifically with Steven's 
swm setup at 800x600x12, PS/2 mouse, 2 button.  This one has BL 3.0.

3.  Another 233MHz with AGP video, does NOT need to bypass system files 
with Win98SE in order to run Xvesa at various resolutions and color 
depths, all of which works fine (I tested up to 1024 and 24 bit color 
without a window manager).  Using BL3.32 just downloaded today, with swm 
and not icewm.

BUT if I run Xsetup and startx it works at 640, 800, 1024 in 4-bit color. 
In 8-bit or higher color it starts to load the expected screen (in 8-bit 
it is doubled and odd looking) and then crashes with the message:

XPM:  could not allocate colors.

If I spell things out with xinit (which I note BL3.0 does not have)
xinit -- /usr/X11R6/bin/Xvesa -screen 800x600x12
it also crashes.

If I leave off the xinit -- it works fine (but no swm).

I think I also tried
Xvesa -screen 800x600x12 & swm (but I did not keep good notes)

4-bit color works fine with swm, 8-bit or higher gets the XPM message.

I am wondering if, since these boards all behave differently, the two 
233MHz ones were rejected by Intel/NEC as slightly defective (not able to 
go faster than 233MHz) and had some other bugs in them as well.  One 
appears to have some sort of memory problem (the only one that won't let 
me use Xvesa with Win98 DOS himem.sys) and the other has some strange 
conflict between Xvesa, swm, and more than 4-bit color.

The one with the color problems was given to a thrift shop recently, the 
other two came from a friend whose office upgraded.


I was trying to figure out which of the 233MHz machines would be better 
for Xvesa.  I guess it is the one which does not like himem.sys, since I 
don't know of any way to bypass the color problem on the other, however I 
will first see if icewm cures it and report back if so.  First we need to 
figure out why all the modems we have tried at that location except one (a 
28.8K) won't dial unless you first separately give them an ATH1 - two 
33K's, a 14.4K, and a 56K winmodem.  Bad phone line slowing down some 
signal?  Too many phone lines in a row?  We also tried running the 
telephone cable directly to the modem rather than through three computers 
and a fax machine.  I have put ath1 at the end of eznet.conf.  Otherwise 
there is 'no dial tone'

We might try the upgrade since someone gave us two 300MHz Slot 1 cpus 
identical to what is in there except for speed (same bus speed, different 
multiplier).  To upgrade you need to find the pdf manual, jumper pins 2-3 
(which are not there) and reboot which puts you into a special Maintenance 
Mode with its own additional menu for setting speeds, power off, remove 
the jumper pins, and reboot again.  To make things more interesting, 
google could not display text from the pdf manual nor could pdftotext. 
I got a message something like ' it is not permitted to extract the 
text from this file'.  xpdf worked perfectly with 128MB RAM.


Not that we need 300MHz but that seems to be what is free now.
The bottom tends to drop out of the used computer market at about 7 years, 
which will soon be 1998, the age of these cpus.

Steven, could you compile JUST pdftops for BL3, which could be used in 
conjunction with the SW4.0 gs on newer pdf files by first converting to 
ps?

keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org
SDF Public Access UNIX System - http://sdf.lonestar.org