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

See comments below about reasons for updating busybox.

My vesafb kernel works just fine on a computer with S3 TRIO3D. It crashes 
continually on the computer with matroxfb, but matroxfb.o (module) sort of 
works (despite the fg changing colors from white to yellow to turquoise, 
which gives interesting colors in lynx, and needing a reset after exit 
from zgv).

I had compiled support for sound, so I started Mplayer, then remembered I 
needed sound modules, inserted them with a script, and crawled under the 
desk to plug in the speakers so I could hear.  (I discovered that you can 
plug in the second speaker of a powered set directly into the sound card, 
without power, and get sound, but the main speaker only plays with power. 
I only listen to streaming audio in mono anyway).

When I emerged, still listening to internet radio, I found that the MGA 
screen had gone blank (no it was not unplugged) and the VGA screen lost 
its cursor and nothing worked (it froze, could not change vts or boot). 
The music continued playing.

Mplayer online works fine with the vesafb computer with S3 Trio3D.
Another matrox card worked with vesafb in another computer, so either 
this card has problems with vesafb and sound, or the computer has some 
hardware problem.  I needed to disable UDMA in BIOS for primary slave, or 
linux would disable DMA during boot due to some timeout problem involving 
irqs. I will move the linux drive from hdb to hdd in case the primary 
controller is going bad, then try the other matrox card with vesafb and 
sound.

A new problem:

To switch modes with framebuffer kernels other than vesafb, use fbset, 
which comes in a package of fbutils.  Compilation requires bison and flex.
Bison.tgz would not install due to a problem with expr.

I get error messages about expr and also tail when I try to run David's 
script for installing busybox. The full-featured expr is 13KB, in 
sh_utils.tgz, and tail is 24K (txtutils.tgz).

David used Stephen's later busybox to run his script and it worked.

Steven, please consider updating busybox to 1.01 so expr and tail will 
work. There was a bug fix to tail, and some change to expr.

And lots of other bugfixes:  httpd, nc, telnet, tar, mv;  and size 
reductions, and tweaks, and standardizations.

Sindi