Hugolino

Greetings all, I installed Neverwinter Nights with the Bioware installer and all works flawlessly (to my amazement). But there are to related items which continue to elude me. (1) I can't get the Linux Bink viewer to work or respond at all. This is the official one that has been posted here and elsewhere as the one to use to watch Bink movies. (2) I had a friend download the Community Expansion Pack, which was far too large for me to download, and I had him download the RAR compressed version for Linux. Well... Mandrake 10 OE apparently doesn't have unRAR installed! And I can't install it off the DVDs either because it isn't there. Where can I find it? (I've already tried via Google) Thank you all. Sincerely, Hugolino

Greetings all, I just ordered a copy of Neverwinter Nights Gold for a song on eBay, but these are naturally the Windows PC version and I'm a bit puzzled by all the choices available for its installation. Should I use Ravage? If so, should I use Bioware's update afterwards? Or should I install with Neverwinter Nights with Nwine? Or with Bioware's downloadable install? Another question: I would, naturally, like to play the cut scene movies, but when I downloaded the Linux port of Bink player twice and tried to run it nothing happened (in console and in KDE). Is there an alternative? I haven't decided yet whether I will tackle the instructions from the NWmovies web page because they intimidate a Linux newbie like me greatly and if I can't get Bink to work there seems no point. I wanted to ask all these questions BEFORE my CDs arrived so I could try to tackle this project this weekend or the next with the advantage of having advice and downloads already at hand. Just FYI I'm running an AMD Athlon 2700 motherboard I believe, and a Tornado GeForce FX 5200 graphics card (Nvidia nForce sound card). My current install is Mandrake 10 OE from the mid-priced installer DVD (for desktop users, not servers). I checked NVidia's website and happily noticed that my currently installed drivers for NVidia are the latest ones available. So hopefully that spares me grief. :D Thanks for your help in the past (and future). This forum has helped me a quite a bit already in trying to use Mandrake Linux as a sole desktop. It has been frustrating often and at times I'm tempted to jump to Windows, but I'm hanging in there and you guys have been a real encouragement (indirectly). Sincerely, Hugolino

Greetings all, I accidentally posted a question twice on this forum... and since I don't know how to delete the extra post, I'm just doing what I can do -- editing it and re-writing the content! :) Anyway a public "thank you" to you all seems well overdue! Thanks for your help in the past (and future). This forum has helped me a quite a bit already in trying to use Mandrake Linux as a sole desktop (I don't own the Windows OS at all, but do have an antique modem-less PowerPC Macintosh running MacOS 8 sitting next to my faster Linux machine). It has been frustrating often, but I'm hanging in there and you guys have been a real encouragement (indirectly). Sincerely, Hugolino

Hooray for U.S. Robotics (3Com)! :D I wrote two e-mails to their technical support guys, and (after they learned I was using Linux and not Windows) they solved the problem with a long modem initialization string! How awesome! Three cheers for a company that actually is able to help clueless Linux users! And three cheers for you guys for helping me to narrow down the problem in the first place! :D

Hooray for U.S. Robotics (3Com)! :D I wrote two e-mails to their technical support guys, and (after they learned I was using Linux and not Windows) they solved the problem with a long modem initialization string! How awesome! Three cheers for a company that actually is able to help clueless Linux users! And three cheers for you guys for helping me to narrow down the problem in the first place! :D

I just stumbled across an easy answer to this question by looking through the product support pages of www.usrobotics.com They have a RedHat package (3ComMdm-1.0-1.i386.rpm) which finds where the modem is located and creates a symbolic link for you. To get it to work, you just need to make sure that the rpm "setserial" (found on the Mandrake OE DVD) is installed first. If only all such problems could be so easily solved! Now for the next one...

:o :lol: :D That's great news! :unsure: Now, may I ask what may seem to be two dumb questions? When trying to work around this modem glitch I removed the US Robotics modem card and re-installed an older Conexant modem... only to have the antiquated drivers bug out and then reading in these forums that getting the Conexant modems to work in 10.0 is a bit of work indeed. So, after reading your encouraging post about the US Robotics modems, I put the far newer US Robotics PCI card back in. But now I can't figure out what port the modem is at. Previously a symbolic link had been created to /dev/modem (I'm not sure how, but there had been much tinkering and re-installing of the OS). But now there's clearly no such symbolic link. My modem queries return no information now, and I've tried the four obvious links (ttyS0 - 4). My first question is how I can find the modem's device location and create a symbolic link. I know the modem is there because (besides the fact I put it there with my own hands) it shows up under "Unknown Devices" in the Mandrake "Hardware" utility as a US Robotics 56K PCI modem. My second question is what init string disables the v.92 ? Thank you very much for your help. Sincerely, Hugolino

I explored the web and an article in Linux Gaming Planet led me back to the Battle for Wesnoth web site, and I discovered they've updated their binaries page (either that or I overlooked it earlier). They write: So I guess now I have to wait for the long download (my modem is refusing to go faster than 14.4 and I haven't figured out where the problem lies). :)

> also doesn't mac os now allow linux apps to run? Not sure.. My eldest brother is a computer tech and has gradually (in the past two years or so) been won over to MacOS X (for desktops only that is, not for servers). His previous experience was all on the PC side (DOS, Windows, Novel, OS2, BeOS, Redhat Linux, Mandrake Linux, Suse Linux, etc.), and only in the past few years has he had any exposure to MacOS. He still can't stand anything pre-MacOS X but he's grudgingly sold on MacOS X. Because he already has three PCs at home, his only MacOS X computer is a laptop, and I think he sees the value of MacOS X especially with laptops because they can interface with any one (whereas Windows won't). Anyway, on his PowerPC laptop he is able to run KDE and Linux programs inside MacOS X. At one time he boasted of running a handful of operating systems within MacOS X as well (not as a dual-boot and not quite as an emulator either.... I can't explain it as he did), such as Windows XP and various flavors of Linux. Needless to say, I was quite impressed... although I'm nowhere near as knowledgeable as he is and wouldn't be able to do as he does.

Well, speaking as a non-computer hack who has used DOS, Apple II, MS-DOS, DR-DOS, Windows 3.1, Macintosh 6-7, Windows 95, VAX Decstations, Unix terminals, MacOS 7.5.5-10.2, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows XP, Mandrake Linux, FreeDOS ... My vote would be MacOS X, which (as a desktop computer, not as a server) I found to be much more stable, broader (in software) and useable than Mandrake Linux on my present AMD Athlon computer. The only reason I'm running Mandrake Linux, and not Mac OS X, is price. If the price were cheaper, I'd be happily running MacOS X. However, its not really fair to compare Linux to MacOS X precisely because Linux doesn't control the hardware combos you throw at it... while Apple is able to control what hardware combos get thrown at MacOS X. Thus MacOS X runs better (in my experience) in large part because its a bit sheltered and pampered from the untamed wilds of market diversity. I did try to buy the best possible hardware for Linux, and indeed built this computer from scratch specifically to run Linux. But despite all my efforts, Linux has been one of the least consistently reliable operating systems I've ever run actually (excepting Windows I suppose). Now, I have been toying with FreeDOS and am pretty impressed with what theycan do with very little memory and speed. Very very impressive. :) I use it on a little 1 gigabyte partition on my hard drive and it makes a great backup for my unsteady Linux. B)

> Can you point me to the RPM for the game? wesnoth-0.6.1-1mdk.rpm wesnoth-server-0.6.1-1mdk.rpm There's a Battle for Wesnoth web site as well (www.wesnoth.org) and the version is far more advanced (0.78) , but they don't have any RPMs you can download... only code to compile. > Have you installed the Nvidia drivers? I've installed: NVIDIA_GLX-5336-6mdk.rpm NVIDIA_nforce-2.4.25.2mdk-1.0-0261.5mdk.rpm NVIDIA_nforce-smp-2.4.25.2mdk-1.0-0261.5mdk.rpm NVIDIA_kernel-2.4.25.2mdk-5336-6mdk.rpm (and variations of that RPM name) > If you try to start the game from the command line what error output does it show you? $ /usr/games/wesnoth Initialized true type fonts BEGIN: preprocessing file... END: preprocessing file... (took 79ms) BEGIN: parsing config... END: parsing config... (took 0ms) Could not find units configuration $

Greetings, :unsure: I installed the official Mandrake 10.0 RPM for the fantasy turn-based strategy game "Battle for Wesnoth", but the program won't run! Is anyone able to run this game? Would installing the latest version (see www.wesnoth.org) help? I'm quite a Linux newbie so much prefer working with RPMs whenever possible. :( As for my computer's info, I have an Inno 3D Tornado GeForce FX 5200 graphics card, but I wouldn't imagine graphics would be a problem for a simple turn-based game. My sound card is Nvidia and so is my motherboard. My processor is AMD Athlon. Sincerely, Hugolino

It doesn't appear to be an ISP problem, and the settings seem to be fine. But all is not perfectly well, because when I use the Mandrake configuration utility to check the hardware the modem shows up among the question marked devices (as the right U.S. Robotics modem, but without a driver listed). I'm using KPPP to connect to the Internet and the settings appear to be fine. KPPP is pointed to /device/modem which seems to be the only thing that works, and the speed of the modem is listed (currently) at 110K (in the KPPP settings that is). But the actual connection speed is always listed as 14.4 K Is there any way to test the modem or my settings? Query modem always appears to work and gives back all the correct information for my modem. Thanks for any help.

Greetings, I hope no one will take offense at a little sidetrack, but I have the exact same modem (USR5610B) and I can't seem to connect with it at faster than 14.4 -- which makes no sense since it is a 56K modem. I'm using KPPP and the only way I could get it to work was to select /device/modem in KPPP, but I have not created any soft link or done anything beyond trying to configure it using KPPP and using Mandrake's network configuration tool. I have tried setting the modem speed (in KPPP) to 57K and 110K but neither setting seems to have any affect. Any ideas on what I'm doing wrong or how to test to see if my modem is functional? (Yes, query modem does work just fine so it "seems" to be working fine) Thanks, and sorry for the sidetrack... I posted this problem once before and received no reply except someone saying my problem made no sense to him. Sincerely, Hugolino

Greetings, Following the advice of another forum post, I hit "F1" when the pre-installer started, and then typed "linux napic nolapic". That solved the hanging problem! Thanks guys! Sincerely, John :D P.S. Now on to fixing the problems that have appeared after successful installation! ;)