Baslinux mailing list

[James Miller <jamtat AT mailsnare.net>]

On Thu, 21 Apr 2005, sindi keesan wrote:

> Our fastest computer no longer boots into linux, starting today (after I 
> changed to the onboard AGP video from PCI, and changing back did not help).

I ran into some really wierd problem regarding PCI bus and Linux recently: 
I could not get any (PCI) NIC to work with any Linux I tried in the 
machine in question. I presumed from the testing I did that the PCI bus 
was somehow incompatible with Linux: first time I've ever seen anything 
like that. But it doesn't sound like your problem is of this nature.

Here's a possibility, though. I assume the onboard AGP is sharing the 
computer's RAM for its memory? I had some wierd problems associated with 
shared RAM with onboard video. It didn't involve booting, but the computer 
kept freezing up after running for a time (after several days, I believe). 
When that would happen, I could do nothing but hit the power button and 
restart. Pretty disconcerting. I determined it wasn't application-related. 
I decided it could well be the shared RAM not being actually shared 
properly. I shut down the onboard video and got myself a decent video 
card, and the problem went away. I therefore avoid onboard video with 
shared RAM whenever possible. Could this be a source for your problems?

James