D'Espice

No, actually his architetcure is i686

i586 = original Pentium & Pentium MMX, AMD K6 & K6/2

i686 = Pentium Pro, Pentium II, III, K7

i786 = Netburst = Pentium 4

However these architechtures are downwards compatible meaning that any i686 processor will run i586, i486, i386, i286 and even x86 programs.

kmc77: It's ok when free says that 200 MB are used, here's what the output of free should look like:

[martin@Mandrake_AMD64 martin]$ free

            total          used            free          shared    buffers  cached

Mem:  1021432 1011128      10304          0          5532      583512

-/+ buffers/cache:  422084  599348

Swap:    488872        384  488488

As you can see, almost 1 gig of my RAM is used but the part to focus on is "cached". That's what actually is not used but cached hence free.

The mouse wheel should work, start MCC and choose the correct mouse. The sidebuttons are a no go though, I never got the two sidebuttons of my MS Intelli Explorer to work. Eventually I gave up and bought a Logitech Cordless Desktop with a mouse with only two buttons and a wheel.

Assuming you're running Mandrake, you'll need to kill mdkkdm. Log in as root and type "killall -9 mdkkdm". Then install the driver, configure it and afterwards start mdkkdm again.

My video card is the Radeon 9800np and unfortunately I couldn't get into KDE (haven't seen GNOME yet) unless I choose the basic VESA driver under the X86Free4 menu in the config. But now that I am in the GUI with the VESA driver would I be able to install the Linux drivers ATI posted a couple months ago without an issue? I have no clue how to install stuff... but I'll learn it soon enough  , but is it worth using the latest ATI Linux drivers without having issues getting into the GUI?

You don't need a GUI to install the ATI drivers. Infact, you even should kill any running X-Servers before you do so.

Download the RPM from ATI's website (make sure it's the right one), install it via

rpm -i --force filename.rpm

then follow the instructions. If you want 3D support in X, you'll also need to install the kernel sources which however are not on the CD - get them off a mirror or the Mandrake server. If you don't want any 3D support, the kernel module does not need to be built and all you need to do is follow the instructions minus the kernel module part.

I am using a Santa Cruz as my sound card and the hardware config recognizes it as a Cirrus Logic card, which I guess is correct since the Santa Cruz uses the CL chip on the card. Now.. I do have sound (I tried out some audio cd's to check), but the sound is REALLY low. I did raise the volume in the audio program I used (think I used that totem media player), but it really doesnt help much. Anyone who uses a Santa Cruz have this volume issue as well?? Any other way to increase the volume??

You need to run either kmix (the KDE mixer) or alsamixer (in a terminal window).

I'm not sure about this but Mandrake 9.2 might support that controller out of the box without having to install additional drivers.

You can do that with Evolution but I'm very sure that KMail supports that as well.

It's all 64-bit, like I said it's an updated Xine from Cooker/AMD64 not Cooker/i586 ;) I also tried the Xine that came with 9.2 on the CDs but same thing... I guess you're right, it's probably some lib64xine issue that will (hopefully) get fixed rather soon. The reason why I'm still using xineui 0.9.22 is that 1.0rc3 is haviing some weird window border issues - I can't get rid of it.

I really prefer not to be going back to i586 since that'll cause serious lib problems - 32-bit apps don't work with 64-bit libs and vice versa meaning I'd probably had to install a bunch of 32-bit libraries in order to run 32-bit Xine.

Sorry, forgot to mention that I am using the Xine packages from Cooker/AMD64. lib64xine 1.0rc3.4 and xineui-0.9.22-5

There's a pretty cool help and tuturial on the mplayer website:

http://www.mplayerhq.hu/DOCS/HTML/en/menc-...feat-divx4.html

However ripping those VOB files was unnecessary because by using them, you'll have a bunch of small DivX files rather than a large 700MB file. That's why it'd be better to use dvd:// as source, not these VOB files.

These VOB files are just copies of what's on the DVD - even more VOB files. You'll need to encode them using mencoder for example to AVI/DivX 4

Hi there,

I'm having some weird DVD trouble with Xine - I can't play DVDs with it, well sometimes I can.

If I reboot, remove libdvdcss immediately after rebooting then install it again, I can watch any DVD I want when I first start Xine. If I close it, start it again it won't be able to play any, that's right, any DVD at all. Whether it's CSS encrypted or not - no go.

It is working fine anytime in mplayer though so what's the deal? I'm running Mandrake 9.2 AMD64 with the latest lib64xine package from Cooker/AMD64 and a self-compiled libdvdcss 1.2.8. I'd really prefer Xine over mplayer for watching DVDs since Xine supports the navigation and menus whereas mplayer for some reason does not. This issue is not related to whether lib64dvdnav is installed or not, Xine even allows me to navigate through the menus of DVDs without lib64dvdnav installed, I guess it has its own dvdnav library. mplayer however ignores lib64dvdnav completely.

Any suggestions?

If you wanna go Dual AMD, you'll need two Opteron 24x CPUs, also I would suggest a mainboard like the Tyan SK2885 that allows you to have up to four RAM sticks for each CPU.

I did some Dual Opteron benching (infact I still have that computer standing right next to me but I'm gonna return it) and found out, that two RAM sticks for CPU 0 and none for CPU 1 (meaning it has to access the memory via crossbar) is slightly slower than two RAM sticks for each CPU.

However, only applications running on CPU 1 are slower (for example Seti@Home: 3 minutes slower an CPU 1 than on CPU 0) in case only CPU 0 has direct access to system memory. If you can afford it, buy four DDR400 memory modules, otherwise make sure to buy two and have CPU 0 handle them both. Giving each CPU one RAM module is way slower.

Also you need to make sure you have the proper PSU, most Dual Opteron mainboards need an ESP power supply which is not only more expensive than a regular ATX12V power supply but also (in general) very noisy. These are server PSUs meaning that noise doesn't matter - reliability and a long life cycle does however. I found the ESP power supply I got for that Dual Opteron system way too noisy for normal use, it sounds kinda like one of those small vacuum cleaners.

I will also be doing some additional Linux benchmarks for my article (finished all the Windows benchmarks and don't really have time to do the Linux benching right now due to three exams at university next week) after 2/15 so I might be able to give you some information regarding the performance compared to a single 144 and single 246 Opteron running Mandrake Linux 9.2 AMD64.

And one more thing: The Opteron and Athlon64-FX are both Socket 940, the Athlon64 is Socket 754. However, the Athlon64-FX will be moving to Socket 939 this year which is totally incompatible to S940. AMD is trying to keep the Opteron out of desktop computers (hence the price) and only for servers. One needs registered DDR-SDRAM for any Socket 940 mainboard & Opteron/Athlon64-FX computer, the Socket 939 will allow the Athlon64-FX to use the cheaper and slightly faster non-Registered DDR-SDRAM.

This also means that if you buy a Socket 940 mainboard, you will never be able to use anything but 24x Opterons.

I am pretty sure that you cannot eject your LiveCD while still running.