Baslinux mailing list

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

On Tue, 30 May 2006 3aoo-cvfd AT dea.spamcon.org wrote:

> sindi keesan wrote:
> > Is there some way to determine directly, using cardmgr,
> > which card line I should use for this unsupported card?
>
> cardmgr -vo
>
> Cheers,
> Steven

I will try this as soon as we get the 'new' pcmcia desktop computer 
plugged in.  The old one was intermittently finding its IDE drives and 
then stopped completely.  So we checked out the one we found next to the 
dumpster with 333MHz Celeron cpu.  Known good RAM (ours) and cards. 
Onboard ATI video and ES1371 sound.  Added a PCMCIA controller and 
ethernet card and IDE zip drive.  DOS has some IRQ conflict (IRQ 10 for 
two things) but boots.

We had to plug in the two IDE drives both as master because if you put in 
an IDE drive as a slave the computer no longer recognize even the master. 
CD-ROM drive as primary slave, IDE zip drive as secondary slave.  Did not 
try out the zip drive yet.  It normally works in DOS and linux.

CD-ROM drive works in DOS (tho it takes a while for Oak driver to find it) 
but not in linux.

dmesg:
hdb:  end_request:  I/O error, dev 03:40 (hdb) sector 0
(and similarly for 2 4 6 0 2 4 6)  Unable to read partition table.
When I try to mount a CD, 'hdb not a valid block device'.

Is there something I can do with loadlin so linux will not try to find a
partition table or sectors, but treat it as a CD-ROM device?


Next problem is the onboard ATI video.  (Did not check sound).

Two of our ATI AGP cards work with Xvesa, the other does not, and all 
three crash with the SVGA server.  This ATI chip, predictably, displays 
very odd colors with Xvesa (and after exiting) and with the SVGA server it 
displays at 320 and crashes (using Steven's minimal XF86Config but higher 
monitor refresh rates to match our monitor).

So I put in S3 Virge which with SVGA server also displays at 320 and 
crashes, and with Virge server simply crashes.  This card worked with both 
in another computer.  The card works fine with Xvesa.

zgv (svgalib) crashes with no chipset specified but works as VESA or VGA.

Apparently the onboard AGP video chip (ATI) is doing something odd in 
linux that affects the PCI card.  The ATI does framebuffer but I can't 
make it work in X.

I will be trying Xvesa first from now on except for laptops or Nvidia or 
Matrox cards.

Would a later version of the SVGA server work any better, from SW8.1, or 
if I can compile it, something more recent?

Sindi