Baslinux mailing list

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

On Mon, 6 Jun 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> > > So isofs will not insert in BL3 on one of your computers? But BL2,
> > > since it doesn't need insertion, works fine?
> > It won't insert in BL2 either.
>
> But can you mount CDs if you use the BL2 kernel (which has isofs
> built in)?

Yes, it all works now.  Not being able to mount isofs had nothing to do 
with the problem.

> > Do you happen to know why, when I put in an ESS1868 ISA sound card
> > (sb compatible) and disabled onboard secondary controller to avoid
> > a conflict with its IDE controller, and plugged the CD-ROM drive
> > into the controller (before that BIOS could not find it, due to the
> > conflict), the CD-ROM drive now works in DOS, but linux tells me
> > there is an interrupt problem with hdg and the CD-ROM drive does
> > not work in linux.
>
> Because Linux gets its information from the hardware itself, instead
> of the BIOS, while DOS relies on the BIOS?

So I would need some way to disable the sound card IDE controller directly 
in linux, or via software in DOS (which worked for another card - I could 
play DVDs with sound on that card).

I guess that means either sticking to PCI or jumpered cards, or SB16 cards 
since I now have software to disable the IDE controller and gameports, or 
finding some way to disable the non-SB16 cards with software either in DOS 
or in linux.


> > hda - hard drive
> > hdb - empty
> > hdc and hdd - disabled onboard ide1
> > hdf and hdg - tertiary controller.  Apparently the CD-ROM drive was
> > set to slave, but does it need to be master to work in linux?
>
> It's funny that you should mention that, as I was just reading a
> HOWTO (earlier today) which said that Linux will only support slave
> drives if there is also a master drive on the same IDE interface.

On at least one computer, linux would not mount a CD-ROM drive as hdc 
unless we either had an hdb (second hard drive) or first attempted to 
mount the CD-ROM drive as hdb, then as hdc.  We had to move the drive to 
the primary controller as slave, which I was told makes it work slower. 
Maybe this is why it will now rip audio CDs at what appears to be 1X on a 
48X CD-ROM drive.  We should put in a second hard drive on hdb just to 
fill the slot.


> > SB16 has a way to disable the onboard controller with software in
> > DOS, which carries over into linux.  I will look into the DOS ESS
> > software, but does linux have a way to disable an onboard IDE
> > controller on a pnp sound card, for instance can you do that with
> > isapnp?
>
> I don't think so. You can tell Linux to ignore certain IDE
> controllers, but I don't think that is what you want.

The onboard controller and the sound card controller are both trying to 
use IRQ 15.  Would telling linux to ignore ide2 (third controller, on the 
sound card) fix this problem?  How do I tell linux to ignore controllers?

> > Why did the one card work at IRQ10 (I could ping it in linux) but
> > not pass the DOS test?
>
> Iffy diagnostic test? Or an IRQ conflict which only the test could
> detect?

The odd part is that the other card with the same IRQ did not work in 
linux whereas this one did and they looked identical.

> > I changed it to 11 also.  Does isapnp also
> > let you actually change the settings (write new settings
> > permanently to the card)?
>
> isapnp settings go away after a cold reboot.

So the DOS configuration program is more useful.  I have not needed isapnp 
for these cards.  Does isapnp let you change from AUI to BNC, which I had 
to do in order to use one of these cards?  The program actually wrote 
information to the card, similarly to a modem V90 upgrade.  The DOS ctcm 
program also permanently changed IRQ and DMA of one card (the more 
expensive AWE32), but for the other cards (SB32 and AWE64) it was only 
temporary.

I have also downloaded the large Intel ICU - ISA configuration utility - 
which might work on non-SB16 sound cards.  Creative says its utility only 
does CT cards.  CT also has something like isapnp which runs in config.sys 
(ctcmm.sys?) that does temporary changes.  (I wonder if I can safely 
delete it for the jumpered card.)


> > We have an ne card (AUI BNC and 10BaseT) for which you need to
> > specify io and irq and first insmod 8390, which I may recycle
> > though it offers a choice of three connectors.  All five of these
> > cards have AUI - what is the chance of finding that cable used?
>
> AUI? Is that the same as coax?

BNC is coax.  AUI looks like game port.

> On another note, I never realized how easy isapnp was until
> I installed the latest version of isapnptools on BL2:
>
> 1) Install isapnptools
> 2) pnpdump -rc >/etc/isapnp.conf
> 3) isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf

I thought you needed to manually edit isapnp.conf, which looks rather 
confusing to me.  I will try that if my pnp AWE cards don't play midi.

One of them is in a computer where we just added a separate DOS drive and
the drive letters are now all screwed up because the first partition on 
the second drive is D:, and I think I need to hide any non-linux 
partitions on the second drive - apart from PQMagic, is there some easy 
way to do this, maybe in linux?  Fdisk does not seem to hide partitions.
I will look at partition manager again.  I have two DOS and two linux 
partitions there and want to keep DOS on its own drive instead.

The only card I tried pnp dump on was an Opti 931 which was apparently not 
pnp (the program found no pnp cards).  I was trying to figure out the 
settings, but eventually ran across them for the 930 (same settings 
worked) in Bulgarian.

> The IRQ, DMA, and I/O addresses are displayed if you're using
> a console, so you need to run this from a VT, not an xterm.

This should be just what I need to get the other ISA ethernet card to tell 
me which io and irq to use with insmod ne.  Why don't 3c509 cards require 
you to tell them this information and other ethernet cards do?

> Here's what I see after inputting these commands:
>
> Board 1 has Identity 35 ff ff ff ff 00 30 32 0d:  CIR3000 Serial No -1 
> [checksum 35]
> Board 2 has Identity 6d ff ff ff ff f0 00 8c 0e:  CTL00f0 Serial No -1 
> [checksum 6d]
> CIR3000/-1[0]{CIRRUS LOGIC PnP V34 MODEM}: Port 0x3E8; IRQ12 --- Enabled OK
> CTL00f0/-1[0]{Audio               }: Ports 0x220 0x330 0x388; IRQ5 DMA1 DMA3 
> --- Enabled OK
> CTL00f0/-1[1]{Game                }: Port 0x201; --- Enabled OK

I had one of these Cirrus modems - you had to give it echo ATH0 commands 
to go onhook before it was able to dial, which we tried to automate in 
autoexec.bat, but then every time someone booted that computer it would 
hang up the other person's connection if they were online.  It worked 
better as pnp in Windows so we gave it away.

> Now, to activate my Vibra16, I do (after insmod of soundcore etc.):
>
> insmod sb io=0x220 irq=5 dma=1

dma16=5 was needed for my newer computers to avoid a DMA conflict (mp3 
only).

I can activate my Vibra16 the same way without first running isapnp, but 
maybe I will need it to get awe to work.  What is 0x620 used for in awe 
cards - do I need to set sb to use that address somehow?  The only setting 
I could find for that online was mpu_io=0x620 which might be a mistake for 
mpu_io=0x330 (midi port).  I got error messages if I tried either.

> And MPlayer (with OSS) works perfectly. playmidi works after I insmod
> opl3 with the address of 0x388. I guess if I used mpuio=0x330 (or
> whatever the option is) I could plug in my MIDI keyboard and try that.
>
> For my modem, I just do:
>
> setserial /dev/ttyS2 port 0x3e8 irq 12

All of my modems work without setserial - they must be jumpered.  The 
Rockwell has a choice of pnp or non-pnp (you set jumpers to make it pnp or 
not) and the Phoebe Micro has two sets of unlabelled jumpers (comport and 
IRQ, I presume).  We were lucky to find them, also some USR.  Phoebe and 
USR were X2 upgradeable to V90.  The only pnp modems I have seen were 
Cirrus Logic - and I think they also have a non-pnp setting but when set 
to non-pnp they had to be put onhook before dialing.

> And then I can dial up perfectly with any kernel. So it turns out
> that I was wrong about isapnp. It is easy, and it works correctly
> with the BL kernels.
>
> David

Other than modems and sound cards (including IDE controllers on them) and 
ethernet cards, what else was made pnp?

Sindi