Baslinux mailing list

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

I found a howto on AWE32 in linux, which says that if you boot linux with 
loadlin from DOS you don't need isapnp initialization, if you initialize 
in DOS.  I have lines in autoexec.bat about awe, generated by the SB16 
'diagnose' program.  I also have a message on one of the three AWE 
computers 'awe initialization failed' so it must be working on the other 
two.  (The one that failed is the awe64).

What does initialization do?

Forgetting initialization, what I need to do is insmod all the modules, 
but add to the insmod sb line:  mpu_io=0x300 (for some reason 330 is busy 
on my newer computers, or maybe won't work for these cards).
There was no mention of mpu_irq here, which was needed by the opti 931 
card.

I presume I need v_midi too.

Then /usr/local/bin/sfxload /usr/local/lib/synthgm.sbk
(using the files from the awe32 tools package, I presume).

They set the volume with a 'volume 30' (maybe that comes with the awe 
packages?) but I could try aumix or leave it at the default if that works.

I will try this tomorrow after we put back together one or more of these 
computers with awe cards.  The drives and cards are playing musical slots 
this week as we discover dead or failing drives.  You can apparently kill 
a 250MB drive by plugging the signal cable in backwards.  The drive that 
had Ontrack Overlay on it and failed and had Ontrack removed and was 
working again just failed again (it is recognized during boot but programs 
cannot access it).

Our largest free replacement drive (4G) had EZ-DRIVE (which means it was 
not possible to partition it with fdisk or PQMagic), which I removed with 
a PowerMax low-level format.  I can't format it because e2fsck can't find 
the superblock or it is bad.  PowerMax tells me the drive is failing but 
we might use it for a while until it dies.  The 8G drive is also failing, 
which you can tell by very slow measured speeds.  The 4G took about 10 
minutes for the 90-second test, but perhaps 90-sec is for 200MB drives.

Is there some way to find the number for a secondary superblock so I can 
point e2fsck at it?  I tried 8193 as suggested and double than and 
quadruple (it went out of range).  I can now partition with fdisk (which 
used to complain about a bad flag), but cannot format.  The drive has over 
8000 cylinders, 16, 63 (sectors and tracks) so DOS sees it as 1GB but we 
only want it for linux. Does a low-level format remove all copies of the 
superblock?  If so, where do I get replacements?  You would think Maxtor's 
low-level format would produce a usable drive.

The 600MHz computer that had an onboard parport whcih produced garbage in 
DOS and nothing in linux is working fine now that I changed from 3f8 to 
3bc.  ????  IRQ5 is STILL taken by something, no idea what.  I put in a 
parport card set to IRQ 5 and it printed even though a sound card won't 
work as IRQ 5.  ???   It also printed if set to IRQ7.  The onboard parport 
was disabled.  I can't boot if I set an ISA card to the same address as an 
onboard port, but they don't seem to mind sharing IRQs.  Why are sound 
cards fussier?


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