Baslinux mailing list

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

On Tue, 7 Jun 2005, David Moberg wrote:

> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "sindi keesan" <keesan AT sdf.lonestar.org>
>
> > > 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?

I have the SB isapnp cards under control now - use ctcu/ctcm to disable 
the onboard controller.  Intel ICU (Isa config manager) might do the same 
for the ES1868 and Opti931 cards, but I have at least a dozen ISA 
SB16/AWE32 cards (and now two PCI SB cards).  I am seriously thinking of 
recycling four Opti 929s, a Sound Galaxy, the Opti 931, the ES1868 (the 
other three would not work in any OS), with onboard IDE controllers. 
Does anyone one the list want them?  That still leaves me two Crystal and 
an ALS100 without controllers.

> In your case, add "ide2=noprobe" to the end of your kernel boot
> line. However, Documentation/ide.txt seems to indicate that there
> is no probing beyond the first two IDE interfaces, so I don't
> think this will solve the problem.
>
> > > > 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.
>
> I don't think I've ever seen one. Does anyone on this list know
> how rare these are?

Most of our ISA ethernet cards have some combination of RJ-45, BNC, and 
AUI, with AUI being on nearly all the cards, so it must have been common 
in the early 90s.  If we were given the cables we did not recognize them. 
We have one BNC cable which works fine.

> > > 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.
>
> The c option to pnpdump tells pnpdump to choose appropriate settings
> for you, so no editing is necessary. The r options resets the ISA PnP
> hardware, and is not needed in all situations, but it does help.
>
> > 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.
>
> GNU Parted can set the 'hidden' flag on DOS partitions. It can also
> non-destructively resize partitions, unlike fdisk. It's basically
> a better (and larger) fdisk.

I will try it.  I would like to hide Windows most of the time.  In order 
to boot it, the partition it is on (first partition on the second drive) 
needs to also be made 'active' - can parted do this?


I still am stuck with Windows for such idiotic tasks as upgrading USR 
modems to V90 (Phoebe Micro uses DOS) and making boot disks for Seagate 
utilities. In just two years I have conquered scanning, copying audio CDs, 
playing DVDs, and streaming audio, which was all I normally used Windows 
for.  I could not have done it without all the help.  (At least not in a 
linux that lets you think for yourself).  DOS is still better for use with 
a TTL monito,r but the maintainer of mdacon promised (a long time ago) to 
try to add a scroll buffer and underlines would be nice too - does anyone 
want to help me try to modify mdacon.c to do this?

> > > 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?
>
> I think this was answered several years ago on this list.

All I could find on this was that 3c509 'is a different family' and so 
does not need 8390.


> > > 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

After already initializing the card in DOS ( io 220 mpu 330  irq 5 dma 1 
dma16 5) I used pnpdump -rc to produce an isapnp.conf file  and it told me
'uart401:  bad devc' - what does a uart401 do?  Do I actually have one?
Maybe something on the card is bad - another card lost both FM synthesis 
and amplification (it had a transistor and heat sink).

I then typed isapnp /etc/isapnp.conf and it gave me entirely different 
settings, perhaps because the first ones were already taken by the card:
240 300 7 0 6.

In addition to Audio and Game I have Reserved Wavetable (Awe) and
StereoEnhance (3D) on this AWE32 card.  I suppose I could further edit the 
file to eliminate the Game and the MPU parts if there were conflicts.


> > 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.
>
> It works fine after the isapnp voodoo. ppp-on works with it, for the
> first time.

Thanks a lot for figuring out this easy way to use isapnp.  One less thing 
to be afraid of in linux.



> > > 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).
>
> If I try to specify dma16, I get a 16-bit DMA channel not available error.

In DOS, I was able to use ctcm to choose from 6 different configurations, 
two of which had no second DMA.  Do you think your error message means 
that the channel you chose was unavailable, or the card was not set up to 
have a second DMA channel?  It looks from pnpdump like it should be 
dma16=3 but the rules seem to be that DMA16 is 5, 6, or 7.

> MPlayer still works fine. I can't detect any quality problems from only
> having 8-bit.
>
> > 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?
>
> Is that for the AWE midi? Or is AWE midi on the main (e.g. 0x220) IO
> address?

I think wavetable and AWE midi are both the same thing and use 0x620 (if 
the main io for audio is 0x220) or 640 (for 240) - I tried both.  PMB DOS 
midi player seems to require 220.

The jumpered Vibra16 AWE32 did not need anything initialized.  THe others 
would only play midi after initializing in DOS with ctcm and running 
aweutil /s.

I still have to try the two AWE64 cards.  The SB Live PCI ought in theory 
to work without isapnp or DOS.

> > > For my modem, I just do:
> > >
> > > setserial /dev/ttyS2 port 0x3e8 irq 12
> >
> > All of my modems work without setserial - they must be jumpered.
>
> setserial is unnecessary if serial support is in a module. Just
> run isapnp first, then load the module and it will autodetect the
> correct port.

Since I don't have modules either my cards must all be jumpered to Com2.

> > 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.

> No non-pnp setting here. This isn't really a Cirrus Logic modem; it's
> really an Actiontec (I forget the model). It was originally an X2
> modem (it would have said "ISA PnP 56K X2 Modem" above, instead of
> Cirrus Logic) but I flash upgraded it.

I have three other brands of 56K (USR Rockwell Phoebe-Micro).  Nice to 
know at least four companies made hardware 56K modems.  Do you know the 
init string to tell your modem not to try X2 before V90? I only know it 
for USR.  Our Cirrus was 33K.

> > Other than modems and sound cards (including IDE controllers on
> > them) and ethernet cards, what else was made pnp?
>
> I think anything which could have been on an ISA card eventually had
> a PnP model. PCI eventually replaced everything, though.

Video cards don't seem to ever be jumpered or pnp.  Maybe SCSI cards were 
pnp?  Our ISA model was jumpered.

I guess I should have read your instructions for isapnp more closely 
before spending all that time with DOS programs, but now I also have three 
cards that will play midi files online with lynx for DOS, in AWE mode.

My partner just discovered that dosemu is set up to use TTL plus VGA 
monitor just like DOS.


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