'Hardware Titbits' collects instructions on how to set up hardware devices which haven't been detected or configured by Mandrake Linux.
You are welcome to contribute a titbit, too!

Configuring The Domex DMX3194UP SCSI Adapter

(Contributed by Mandrake Linux user Charles Thomas)

You can use the Initio INI-9100/9100W module if your DMX3194UP card is not configured properly by your system.
I had many problems with my DMX not being recognized by linux until release 8.0. Release 8.0 found my card but the dtc module refused to load, even manualy under HardDrake. Then I saw somewhere in a newsgroup posting that the Initio 9100 module was compatible with certain Domex cards.
I ran HardDrake, selected my SCSI card and ran the configuration tool. I selected the Initio INI-9100/9100W module and my Zip drive was found in about 4 seconds. I turned on my Artec scanner, did a HardDrake refresh and there it was, too.
Now I don't have to reboot to you know what to use my scanner ;->

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Guillemot Prophet II (Kyro II) In Mandrake Linux 8.1

(Contributed by Mandrake Linux user Frank Lehnen)

" While Mandrake Linux 8.0 still set up this card with a Kyro II chip as a default VESA device (lacking the correct Linux drivers), version 8.1 does recognize it as a Kyro chip but Harddrake [more likely that's XFdrake. tom] sets color depth to 32 bit which causes a nice system hang during first (and subsequent) boot. Just set color depth to 16 bit and hope and pray for real Kyro drivers."
Notice that Mandrake Linux 8.1 (and 8.2) does not support cards with the Kyro chipset and uses the framebuffer device instead.

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Configuring And Using A 'Disk On Key' Portable Drive

(Contributed by Mandrake Linux User Robert C. Pilkington)

Preparation

1. Back up the original DOK software (v. 2.50 and later).
2. Remove any files on the DOK.
3. Open your favorite terminal and become the super-user.
4. mkdir /mnt/dok - We'll need a place to mount the DOK once (hopefully) we get it working.
5. cd /var/log - We're here to view the syslog
6. Plug the DOK into your USB port
7. Display the syslog with cat syslog
8. Make sure that the M-System DOK is recognized, you should see some DOK system information.
9. ls /proc/scsi/usb-storage-0/ - Display the USB SCSI emulated devices. Mine was seen as 0:1
10. cat /proc/scsi/usb-storage-0/1 - Prints to screen the information about the DOK. This should reflect the information from the syslog.

Setting up device

[You might want to check if 'diskdrake' (Mandrake Control Center - Hardware - Mount Points) already recognizes the device at this point. If so, you might prefer using it to 'fdisk'. If not, give 'cfdisk' a try, it's a bit easier to handle than 'fdisk'. tom]

1. fdisk /dev/sda - Places you into the fdisk command mode. You will be formatting the DOK from here.
   1. p - Shows you information on the partitioning of the DOK. When I originally did this, I had already used the DOK on Win2k and WinXP systems, which 'fdisk' apparently did not like. Information showed that there were 3 partitions and several cylinder errors, which were confusing to me, as this is a digital device.
   2. d - You may need to delete all of the partitions in order to reformat the DOK correctly (I did). Make sure you have backed up any original DOK software.
      1. 1, 2, 3 - Enter the number of the partition you want to delete. I deleted all of my partitions to start with, and did another p to make sure 'fdisk' saw it the same way.
   3. n - This will create new partitions. You will be prompted for the partition number and beginning and ending sectors.
      1. 4 - I had numerous problems until I used 4 (making the DOK +sda4). I recommend this.
      2. 1 - This is the default. You want to use all of the DOK, so make this the starting sector.
      3. 1005 - This is the default for my 128MB DOK. If you have done these steps in the order I've laid out, you should see the starting and ending sectors listed in some of the information above. Use the final one if you want to use all the entire DOK.
   4. t - Declares the format mode.
      1. 4 - You want to set the format mode on sda4.
      2. L - This brings up a list of the available format modes.
      3. b - Declares the format of the file system to be used. I used b (Win95 FAT32) because most OSs recognize FAT32 and have R/W capability for it, I wanted to use this because I have multiple OS systems.
   5. w - This writes the new information to the partition table (on the DOK?). However its done, I did a test where I reformatted my Linux box, and did a reinstall. I plugged in the DOK and was able to mount and read from it immediately, so I believe the partition table is written to the DOK. This step took a little while to complete.
2. mkfs.msdos /dev/sda4 - This apparently formats the DOK to a DOS/FAT format (I thought I had already done that).
3. mount /dev/sda4 /mnt/dok - Lets mount it and see if it works, hopefully you don't get any error messages.

Testing setup

1. df - Check to see that your new device is showing the proper size and available space. My disk sizes are shown in 1KB blocks, so my DOK registered as ~127000 1K blocks.
2. cp ~/mp3/random.mp3 /mnt/dok - Lets see if this sucker is works...
   1. cd /mnt/dok - Change to the newly mounted device.
   2. ls -la - Verify that the file was tranferred correctly (size match).
   3. mv random.mp3 newrandom.mp3 - We're going to move it back now to see if it works both ways....
   4. cp newrandom.mp3 ~/mp3
   5. ls -la ~/mp3/newrandom.mp3 - Hopefully, you'll get back the right size and with no errors in between.
3. umount /mnt/dok - I occasionally get a "device is busy" error when doing this, especially if after a data transfer. If I wait long enough, I am able to umount it cleanly.
4. You should now try testing your DOK on a M$ box, to see if you're able to now use your DOK cross-platform. M- Systems warns that, "...partitions are not exchangeable to Windows.", but I have been mostly successful using transfers between Win2k, WinXP, and Linux (2.4.8-26mdk) boxes. I have experienced a problem+when doing moves from the DOK to a linux directory, but the copy seems to work fine. Removing (rm) files seems to be the preferred method for the DOK to erase its files.

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