rdbrooks

Thanks very much. This seems to actually make sense to me so I'll give it a try this weekend. I'll let you know how it goes.

Thanks for your help yeti, but I had no problem finding out what I needed to get. I have the kernel already. I knew I needed the kernel patch and XFree86 4.0 I believe it was. I also got the drivers from viaarena. The problem was with the instructions for installation and compiling, particularly with the via drivers. They seem to be written with the assumption that you already know how to do all the different operations involved so they are extremely vague to someone who doesn't. I am studying some tutorials on general commands and syntax used in installations and compiling. Maybe after a while, the instructions will make sense to me.

Thanks. That was quite helpful.

That's kind of what I figured, and I agree. I'm usually pretty resourceful when it comes to finding files, drivers, etc, so I didn't know what I had until after I had it. Thanks.

About the small partition you mentioned, if it is near 10 mb in size, it is a leftover from the xp installation. I don't know why windows 2000 and xp do this. I never tried to find out because it never caused me any problems, but it's always there after installing 2000 or xp. (The size of the small partition may be relative to the size of the drive. I've seen it vary from 4 to 8 mb. It's always 8 on my 30 gig drive.) About the bootloader, I used to want to leave the windows bootloader alone and use a floppy to boot to linux. I just didn't trust linux to handle it. Now I'm perfectly alright with letting Lilo handle it. I don't like GRUB still, and if you happen to be using any rieserFS file systems on linux partitions, grub still doesn't support that as far as I know. If anything goes wrong with your linux installation and your bootloader is compromised so you can't load windows, reinstalling Lilo or reinstalling linux will straighten that out. I already know that from experience. The thing I don't like to do is modify the NTLDR setup. That has proven to be a big mistake in the past for me. Windows could care less about whether or not your linux installation will boot. Lilo seems to treat different operating systems with equality.

When I first started using mandrake 10, certain packages I selected asked for cd 4 to install them. Of course, the official download is only 3 isos. I thought this was a glitch at first, until I found that the individual programs are available on mandrake's official sites and mirrors. I copied the file name of iso 3 and changed the 3 to a 4, to do a search online for the 4th iso image. I found it on numerous mirrors, usually linked to from gaming sites. I guess this is because the nvidia and ati drivers not included in the official download are on this cd. My question : Why is this iso available for download, but not included on the official download servers?

Boot to windows and go to www.burn4free.com. Download the free software and install it. I've tried nero and others for burning isos. This program is the only one I've had no trouble with. I don't even consider using anything else anymore. It's an excellent program for all data burning. It even has a special button on the toolbar for burning isos. Excuse me for that solution being windows based, but hey... It just works.

About the media test... I was mistaken. My bad. Red Hat, Fedora, and I believe SUSE all give that option before the graphical interface is started when installing, but Mandrake doesn't. Even if you start the expert installation mode, it asks a question or two before starting the X server, but not that. The md5sums are available where you download the ISOs, but after searching for a while, I haven't found any info on what in the world you're supposed to do with them. If anybody else knows, feel free to enlighten us. Linux is getting more user friendly little by little, especially mandrake, but it still has a long way to go. Most people don't want to use an alternative operating system if it means they're going to have to learn a new language to be able to use it. Linux noobies can't really help, and most developers don't care to fool around with coming up with little applets and such to make things automatic for new users, because they already know how to do the stuff in terminal. It gets frustrating some times. If a distribution of linux ever really becomes as user friendly as windows, I guess it will have a price on it about the same as windows. The source code might be free, but the code for making it user friendly isn't. I guess Linspire from Lindows is a good example. I've heard it's great, but it's not free, so I haven't tried it.

You're welcome. The media test I was talking about is something that the mandrake 10 installation cd asks if you want to do before installing. If you put disc 1 in and reboot, it should be one of the first things it asks. If you didn't download ISOs and burn your own install cds, this may be different. I've only used the ISO images I downloaded to install.

The values you finally got are right along the range of the values in both of my Athlon XP boards here. One is a km266 and the other very similar, but a km400. As for the expected ranges displayed and the ALARMs that are active, that's a load of crap. I don't know where those expected ranges came from, but the actual values look good. The expected values are wrong because the modprobe version isn't for the hardware being used, I guess. If I misunderstood something in your sensor s data display, forgive me.

Another way you can test it visually is to run one the openGL screensavers in configure desktop. If the movement is slow and jerky in full screen mode, you at least don't have openGL working. As far as loading pictures and windows, the video driver shouldn't make much difference there. The default VESA driver does that just fine. That's what I have to use on this PC for now because I haven't yet found a solution for my unsupported onboard video. (I may find I'm wrong about that if I ever get it set up right, but I can't imagine it being much faster on this PC.

Another thing you can try if you didn't already is to go into configure your computer, then hardware, then sound drivers, and select one manuallly instead of the two offered. I wouldn't recommend trying drivers for different card models, but there is a generic driver called "audio" which is an OSS driver instead of ALSA. You could try it. It works on my PC just as well as the default snd-via82xx. I just realized that I was talking to the same person with the mouse and keyboard problem. Did you run the checksum (media test) on your installation media before installing? I once had a hardware problem on Redhat 9 that was caused by corrupted data on install disc 3. I tried several times with the install but the problem was always the same. (I don't remember now what the problem was.) I finally ran the media test, which I had skipped on previous installs, and it found errors on disc3, which I found to be due to a small scratch on the cd-rw I had burned it on. After burning the ISO image on a new cd, the problem was solved.

I have the integrated ac97 sound on my system as well. I have had no problems with it on mandrake 10. My mainboard is a MSI-KM4M-L with KM400 northbridge and 8235 southbridge. Driver in use is ALSA snd-via82xx. System identifies the card as VIA 8233. Have you checked your mainboard manufacturer to see if they have any linux sound drivers? Sometimes the manufacturer will have specific drivers which address construction related issues. The VIA drivers may not be enough. Although a lot of mainboards use the integrated ac97 sound, there may be differences in the way it is patched into the processor. This can cause problems with an operating system's default drivers for the hardware. For that matter, I guess it's possible IRQ settings in your PC's cmos setup (BIOS) could cause such a problem. By the way, I've been trying to figure out how to compile and configure packages for a while, and I can't find my own ass with both hands, so don't feel bad about that.

I really don't know what to tell you about the mouse and keyboard problems. If you only installed once, maybe something went wrong. You could try reinstalling, but don't expect much from it. You mentioned you tried redhat 9 before. I have tried it in the past also and had some hardware issues I couldn't get around. Redhat 9 has been out for quite a while. There is no redhat 10. The project was changed to the Fedora Core project. I have tried it recently. (I was trying numerous distributions of linux, trying to find one that supported my video without having to pull my hair out figuring out how to manually install drivers. It didn't solve my problem so I uninstalled it.) Fedora core is essentially the latest update of Redhat Linux for general public use, in other words, you could think of it as Redhat 10. You might want to give it a try. Personally, I think it would be a shame to be unable to get Mandrake 10 to work. Like I said, I have tried numerous distributions, and Mandrake 10 is where it's at. (Even though I still haven't got my video to work beyond the capabilities of the generic VESA driver.)

I am relatively new to linux. I know a little about using terminals, but not much. The video hardware in my homemade PC is the VIA Unichrome integrated system on KM400 north and 8235 south. (MSI KM4M-L mainboard) The VESA driver in linux is excellent for display and even handles some games well, but I really need to get the correct driver setup so I can have hardware acceleration and openGL capability. There is a lot of info and files on the web regarding this, but no one has volunteered to compile an rpm for mandrake 10 to make an easy install for this. (I checked the mandrake development area, and the issue is one of the projects listed for needing a volunteer to develop it.) I have tried to download and install the drivers myself, but the directions included are always geared towards people who already know exactly what to do in a terminal. Steps are left out because they assume you know how to do what was instructed. There's no point in listing any examples. The oversimplified instructions were still 4 or 5 pages of tech that was way beyond my limited linux experience. Anyway, I was wondering if there is anybody out there who has successfully installed this video configuration on Mandrake 10. I really like Mandrake 10, but if I can't address this problem, I am greatly limited in what I can do with it. Note : If you haven't actually installed the unichrome drivers successfully yourself, or at least tried to, please don't reply to this post.