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New hard drive

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  New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-10 20:33 -0500
    Re: New hard drive Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-09-10 23:23 -0400
      Re: New hard drive Bob Martin <bob.martin@excite.com> - 2015-09-11 07:07 +0100
      Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-14 10:20 -0500
        Re: New hard drive Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-09-14 13:53 -0400
          Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-14 13:05 -0500
            Re: New hard drive Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-09-14 15:09 -0400
              Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-14 14:18 -0500
        Re: New hard drive Ahem A Rivet's Shot <steveo@eircom.net> - 2015-09-15 10:08 +0100
          Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-15 05:28 -0500
            Re: New hard drive Morten Reistad <first@last.name> - 2015-09-15 13:43 +0200
              Re: New hard drive Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-15 16:19 +0000
                Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-15 13:15 -0500
                  Re: New hard drive Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> - 2015-09-16 07:04 +0000
                    Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-16 08:39 -0500
                      Re: New hard drive Joe Makowiec <makowiec@invalid.invalid> - 2015-09-16 14:52 +0000
                        Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-17 15:37 -0500
                    Re: New hard drive scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-09-16 13:42 +0000
                Re: New hard drive Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2015-09-15 15:34 -0400
                  Re: New hard drive Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-09-15 17:29 -0400
                  Re: New hard drive Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-16 22:00 +0000
                    Re: New hard drive Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-09-17 03:58 +0000
                      Re: New hard drive "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2015-09-17 00:43 -0500
                        Re: New hard drive Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-09-17 05:59 +0000
                        Re: New hard drive Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-17 11:51 +0000
                          Re: New hard drive hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-09-17 13:18 -0700
                            Re: New hard drive Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2015-09-17 19:15 -0400
                            Re: New hard drive "Jim Thomas" <JT@nospam.com> - 2015-09-20 17:27 +1000
                        Re: New hard drive hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-09-17 13:13 -0700
                    Re: New hard drive Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2015-09-17 06:24 -0400
                      Re: New hard drive Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-17 11:51 +0000
                      Re: New hard drive Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-09-17 18:02 +0000
              Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-15 13:12 -0500
                Re: New hard drive Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-16 22:00 +0000
                  Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-17 19:29 -0500
                Re: New hard drive "Kerr Mudd-John" <admin@127.0.0.1> - 2015-09-17 10:29 +0100
                  Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-17 19:31 -0500
          Re: New hard drive Peter Flass <peter_flass@yahoo.com> - 2015-09-15 16:19 +0000
            Re: New hard drive Charlie Gibbs <cgibbs@kltpzyxm.invalid> - 2015-09-15 17:48 +0000
            Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-15 13:17 -0500
    Re: New hard drive "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2015-09-11 09:28 -0500
      Re: New hard drive scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-09-11 14:59 +0000
        Re: New hard drive Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-09-11 11:32 -0400
          Re: New hard drive Bob Eager <news0005@eager.cx> - 2015-09-11 16:06 +0000
          Re: New hard drive scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-09-11 16:06 +0000
            Re: New hard drive "Jim Thomas" <JT@nospam.com> - 2015-09-12 05:21 +1000
          Re: New hard drive "Jim Thomas" <JT@nospam.com> - 2015-09-12 05:16 +1000
        Re: New hard drive "Osmium" <r124c4u102@comcast.net> - 2015-09-11 10:42 -0500
          Re: New hard drive scott@slp53.sl.home (Scott Lurndal) - 2015-09-11 16:09 +0000
            Re: New hard drive Dan Espen <despen@verizon.net> - 2015-09-11 12:20 -0400
          Re: New hard drive "Jim Thomas" <JT@nospam.com> - 2015-09-12 05:18 +1000
        Re: New hard drive "Jim Thomas" <JT@nospam.com> - 2015-09-12 05:08 +1000
      Re: New hard drive "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2015-09-11 14:34 -0500
        Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-15 05:29 -0500
      Re: New hard drive terry+googleblog@tmk.com - 2015-09-11 16:05 -0700
    Re: New hard drive Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> - 2015-09-11 11:55 -0400
      Re: New hard drive Shadow <Sh@dow.br> - 2015-09-11 14:42 -0300
        Re: New hard drive Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-09-11 16:10 -0400
          Re: New hard drive Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2015-09-11 15:07 -0700
            Re: New hard drive sidd@situ.com (sidd) - 2015-09-12 15:34 -0400
              Re: New hard drive Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2015-09-12 12:56 -0700
                Re: New hard drive Anne & Lynn Wheeler <lynn@garlic.com> - 2015-09-12 13:02 -0700
      Re: New hard drive "Charles Richmond" <numerist@aquaporin4.com> - 2015-09-11 14:39 -0500
        Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-14 10:25 -0500
      Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-14 10:22 -0500
        Re: New hard drive Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> - 2015-09-14 13:49 -0400
          Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-14 13:07 -0500
    Re: New hard drive hancock4@bbs.cpcn.com - 2015-09-14 11:10 -0700
      Re: New hard drive philo <philo@privacy.net> - 2015-09-14 14:45 -0500

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#151246 — New hard drive

Today I installed a 4Tb hard drive in a friend's machine...
it went well and was a "no big deal" operation.


Seems like only yesterday...with trembling hands...I replaced the 850 
meg drive in my P-1 with a 2 Gb drive. I was sure nervous when I did it 
and when I got it installed and checked the drive's capacity, I felt 
like I was in a huge empty canyon.

[toc] | [next] | [standalone]

#151247

On Thu, 10 Sep 2015, philo wrote:

> Today I installed a 4Tb hard drive in a friend's machine...
> it went well and was a "no big deal" operation.
>
>
> Seems like only yesterday...with trembling hands...I replaced the 850 meg 
> drive in my P-1 with a 2 Gb drive. I was sure nervous when I did it and when 
> I got it installed and checked the drive's capacity, I felt like I was in a 
> huge empty canyon.
>
And the 2gig drive cost more than this 4 Tb drive?

It was 14 years ago (this past June) that I got a used 200MHz Pentium with 
32K of RAM and a 2gig hard drive, to run Linux.  That drive seemed 
endless.  When I was given a hand me down 1GHz Pentium with 512K of RAM 
and a 20gig hard drive, I thought I'd never run out of space.

   Michael

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#151248

in 652488 20150911 042318 Michael Black <et472@ncf.ca> wrote:
>On Thu, 10 Sep 2015, philo wrote:
>
>> Today I installed a 4Tb hard drive in a friend's machine...
>> it went well and was a "no big deal" operation.
>>
>>
>> Seems like only yesterday...with trembling hands...I replaced the 850 meg
>> drive in my P-1 with a 2 Gb drive. I was sure nervous when I did it and when
>> I got it installed and checked the drive's capacity, I felt like I was in a
>> huge empty canyon.
>>
>And the 2gig drive cost more than this 4 Tb drive?
>
>It was 14 years ago (this past June) that I got a used 200MHz Pentium with
>32K of RAM and a 2gig hard drive, to run Linux.  That drive seemed
>endless.  When I was given a hand me down 1GHz Pentium with 512K of RAM
>and a 20gig hard drive, I thought I'd never run out of space.

30 years ago I replaced the 10 MB drive in my PC/AT with a 20 MB drive.
About the same time I replaced the 6 MHz crystal with an 8 MHz crystal.

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#151334

On 09/10/2015 10:23 PM, Michael Black wrote:
> On Thu, 10 Sep 2015, philo wrote:
>
>> Today I installed a 4Tb hard drive in a friend's machine...
>> it went well and was a "no big deal" operation.
>>
>>
>> Seems like only yesterday...with trembling hands...I replaced the 850
>> meg drive in my P-1 with a 2 Gb drive. I was sure nervous when I did
>> it and when I got it installed and checked the drive's capacity, I
>> felt like I was in a huge empty canyon.
>>
> And the 2gig drive cost more than this 4 Tb drive?
>
> It was 14 years ago (this past June) that I got a used 200MHz Pentium
> with 32K of RAM and a 2gig hard drive, to run Linux.  That drive seemed
> endless.  When I was given a hand me down 1GHz Pentium with 512K of RAM
> and a 20gig hard drive, I thought I'd never run out of space.
>
>    Michael
>



My first Linux install was on a 486 with a 170 meg HD and I did not 
install a GUI...just wanted to see if I could do it.


I later dual booted Win98 and Red Hat 5.2 on a P-1 and used a 20 gig 
HD...ran great and I never filled up the drive.

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#151339

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015, philo wrote:

> On 09/10/2015 10:23 PM, Michael Black wrote:
>> On Thu, 10 Sep 2015, philo wrote:
>> 
>>> Today I installed a 4Tb hard drive in a friend's machine...
>>> it went well and was a "no big deal" operation.
>>> 
>>> 
>>> Seems like only yesterday...with trembling hands...I replaced the 850
>>> meg drive in my P-1 with a 2 Gb drive. I was sure nervous when I did
>>> it and when I got it installed and checked the drive's capacity, I
>>> felt like I was in a huge empty canyon.
>>> 
>> And the 2gig drive cost more than this 4 Tb drive?
>> 
>> It was 14 years ago (this past June) that I got a used 200MHz Pentium
>> with 32K of RAM and a 2gig hard drive, to run Linux.  That drive seemed
>> endless.  When I was given a hand me down 1GHz Pentium with 512K of RAM
>> and a 20gig hard drive, I thought I'd never run out of space.
>>
>>    Michael
>> 
>
>
>
> My first Linux install was on a 486 with a 170 meg HD and I did not install a 
> GUI...just wanted to see if I could do it.
>
I tired Linux the fall before, on a 50MHz 486 (it was one of those 
truncated ones, but then had an external math coprocessor) with 8megs of 
RAM and a 240meg hard drive.  That taught me it wasn't sufficient, once I 
had partition space, I had to do a slective install.
>
> I later dual booted Win98 and Red Hat 5.2 on a P-1 and used a 20 gig 
> HD...ran great and I never filled up the drive.
>
I bought a 160gig hard drive to replace a 20gig in 2006.  About $125 
Canadian.  And I've never filled it up.  I carved out partitions as 
needed, and so every time a new release of my favorite Linux distribution, 
I'd carve out a new partition for it.  It still isn't all used up, but a 
good chunk of it is, simply by those multiple installs.  I'd intended to 
delete the old install once I had the new one properly configured, but 
there was so much space, I never got to that point.

That has to be a problem, with space no longer a consideration, we just 
save so much that nothing can be found.

   Michael

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#151340

On 09/14/2015 12:53 PM, Michael Black wrote:
>
>>
>>
>>
>> My first Linux install was on a 486 with a 170 meg HD and I did not
>> install a GUI...just wanted to see if I could do it.
>>
> I tired Linux the fall before, on a 50MHz 486 (it was one of those
> truncated ones, but then had an external math coprocessor) with 8megs of
> RAM and a 240meg hard drive.  That taught me it wasn't sufficient, once
> I had partition space, I had to do a slective install.


The 486 I used was amazingly slow...It had one of those sound card 
cd-roms...but the Linux installer saw it OK. Had I known what I was 
doing during the selective install, the 170 meg drive would have been 
sufficient...but I was clueless.

Once I got the P-1 with the 20 meg drive, I just installed the whole 
thing and eventually learned ( a little) what I was doing. Installing 
and using Linux was some of the best education I ever had and I'm sure 
glad I eventually got the x-server going. IIRC it took me all day to get 
it configured.
>>
>> I later dual booted Win98 and Red Hat 5.2 on a P-1 and used a 20 gig
>> HD...ran great and I never filled up the drive.
>>
> I bought a 160gig hard drive to replace a 20gig in 2006.  About $125
> Canadian.  And I've never filled it up.  I carved out partitions as
> needed, and so every time a new release of my favorite Linux
> distribution, I'd carve out a new partition for it.  It still isn't all
> used up, but a good chunk of it is, simply by those multiple installs.
> I'd intended to delete the old install once I had the new one properly
> configured, but there was so much space, I never got to that point.
>
> That has to be a problem, with space no longer a consideration, we just
> save so much that nothing can be found.
>
>    Michael
>

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#151348

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015, philo wrote:

> On 09/14/2015 12:53 PM, Michael Black wrote:
>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> 
>>> My first Linux install was on a 486 with a 170 meg HD and I did not
>>> install a GUI...just wanted to see if I could do it.
>>> 
>> I tired Linux the fall before, on a 50MHz 486 (it was one of those
>> truncated ones, but then had an external math coprocessor) with 8megs of
>> RAM and a 240meg hard drive.  That taught me it wasn't sufficient, once
>> I had partition space, I had to do a slective install.
>
>
> The 486 I used was amazingly slow...It had one of those sound card 
> cd-roms...but the Linux installer saw it OK. Had I known what I was doing 
> during the selective install, the 170 meg drive would have been 
> sufficient...but I was clueless.
>
> Once I got the P-1 with the 20 meg drive, I just installed the whole thing 
> and eventually learned ( a little) what I was doing. Installing and using 
> Linux was some of the best education I ever had and I'm sure glad I 
> eventually got the x-server going. IIRC it took me all day to get it 
> configured.

THat's basically what I found.  I waited around till I came across some 
computer suitable for Linux, but by the time I found one cheap, things had 
moved on so it wasn't really suitable.  I certainly learned from that 486 
that something better was needed.  So then I actually spent $150 on a 
200Mhz Pentium, a big leap forward for me, and all was well.

   Michael


>>> 
>>> I later dual booted Win98 and Red Hat 5.2 on a P-1 and used a 20 gig
>>> HD...ran great and I never filled up the drive.
>>> 
>> I bought a 160gig hard drive to replace a 20gig in 2006.  About $125
>> Canadian.  And I've never filled it up.  I carved out partitions as
>> needed, and so every time a new release of my favorite Linux
>> distribution, I'd carve out a new partition for it.  It still isn't all
>> used up, but a good chunk of it is, simply by those multiple installs.
>> I'd intended to delete the old install once I had the new one properly
>> configured, but there was so much space, I never got to that point.
>> 
>> That has to be a problem, with space no longer a consideration, we just
>> save so much that nothing can be found.
>>
>>    Michael
>> 
>
>

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#151350

On 09/14/2015 02:09 PM, Michael Black wrote:

>
>>>>
>>>> I later dual booted Win98 and Red Hat 5.2 on a P-1 and used a 20 gig
>>>> HD...ran great and I never filled up the drive.
>>>>
>>> I bought a 160gig hard drive to replace a 20gig in 2006.  About $125
>>> Canadian.  And I've never filled it up.  I carved out partitions as
>>> needed, and so every time a new release of my favorite Linux
>>> distribution, I'd carve out a new partition for it.  It still isn't all
>>> used up, but a good chunk of it is, simply by those multiple installs.
>>> I'd intended to delete the old install once I had the new one properly
>>> configured, but there was so much space, I never got to that point.
>>>
>>> That has to be a problem, with space no longer a consideration, we just
>>> save so much that nothing can be found.
>>>
>>>    Michael
>>>
>>
>>



My (now) wife bought the P-1 in 1995 when Win95 came out. She spent 
$1600 (USD) and I thought she was nuts.

Though I had previous computer experience back in the punch card days I 
did not get my first PC until she outgrew the P-1 and gave it to me in 
1999 or so.

After six months of using Win95, then Win98 I decided to give Linux a 
try.   From the day I got the RedHat5.2 Cd and the day I had a fully 
working and configured system...including GUI and dial-up modem...was 
six months!  Took me a while to say the least.

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#151367

On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:20:16 -0500
philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:

> My first Linux install was on a 486 with a 170 meg HD and I did not 
> install a GUI...just wanted to see if I could do it.

	Mine came off about 50 floppies onto a 486DX25 with 16MB of RAM.
I'd already had a unix on the box without TCP/IP for which I compiled X
from the X11R5 distribution (building the missing half of the pseudo-tty
transport to do so). Getting X up on Linux was *so* much easier.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith                          |   Directable Mirror Arrays
C:>WIN                                      | A better way to focus the sun
The computer obeys and wins.                |    licences available see
You lose and Bill collects.                 |    http://www.sohara.org/

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#151368

On 09/15/2015 04:08 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:20:16 -0500
> philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>
>> My first Linux install was on a 486 with a 170 meg HD and I did not
>> install a GUI...just wanted to see if I could do it.
>
> 	Mine came off about 50 floppies onto a 486DX25 with 16MB of RAM.
> I'd already had a unix on the box without TCP/IP for which I compiled X
> from the X11R5 distribution (building the missing half of the pseudo-tty
> transport to do so). Getting X up on Linux was *so* much easier.
>




The 486 I used...was 33mhz. The biggest bottleneck how ever was an 
extremely slow HD. ( Possibly PIO 2 or 3) I know that the machine was 
not in the same league with the PS/2 (I still have) that also used a 33 
mhz cpu.


Eventually I learned that in setting up the x-server...If I needed to 
get /something/ going right away...VESA would usually work.


I never bothered to compile my own packages with one exception:

Since RH5.2 did not have USB support, I compiled a USB kernel.
Unfortunately I never did get USB going. I found out many years later 
that I might have needed to add a module (?) for the particular USB card 
I added to the machine. Compiling a new kernel was still a good 
excercise to have done.

[toc] | [prev] | [next] | [standalone]

#151377

In article <mt8roe$asb$1@dont-email.me>, philo  <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>On 09/15/2015 04:08 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>> On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:20:16 -0500
>> philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>>
>>> My first Linux install was on a 486 with a 170 meg HD and I did not
>>> install a GUI...just wanted to see if I could do it.
>>
>> 	Mine came off about 50 floppies onto a 486DX25 with 16MB of RAM.
>> I'd already had a unix on the box without TCP/IP for which I compiled X
>> from the X11R5 distribution (building the missing half of the pseudo-tty
>> transport to do so). Getting X up on Linux was *so* much easier.
>>
>
>
>
>
>The 486 I used...was 33mhz. The biggest bottleneck how ever was an 
>extremely slow HD. ( Possibly PIO 2 or 3) I know that the machine was 
>not in the same league with the PS/2 (I still have) that also used a 33 
>mhz cpu.

I tested Linux first on a re-assembled machine from previous top-of-the-line
386 servers, with _lots_ of memory and cache, and two _very_ fast ide
disks, 110 and 120 mb. It was around two weeks after you didn't have
to build the file system from minix anymore, where you could use a
distro. My memory fails me of the name of this distro.

I got the character inteface up within a day, and struggled to get 
the display beyond svga, going into driver hell. I got 768x1024(?), but
the display could do a lot more. That took a few months to sort out.

>Eventually I learned that in setting up the x-server...If I needed to 
>get /something/ going right away...VESA would usually work.

Or svga. 

This driver hell has plagued the relationship between the open source
and alternative OS vendors and the hardware pushers for decades. 

New fancy hardware, requires magic software the hardware guys seem
to think. So they guard the specs for the API interfaces, and the
open source people have to reverse-engineer some proper drivers.
The ones coming from the hardware vendors are uniformly shitty, at
least in the firt 2 major versions. I have confirmation that this
problem also plagues Microsoft, but they use their market muscle
to force out specs and good drivers.

It was like this for graphics drivers until ca 2008, for wifi cards
until a few years ago, and for graphics accelrators it is still like
this.

That this locks the hardware vendors out from the market of Linux/BSD
users, which has become sizabe, still seem to elude them.

>I never bothered to compile my own packages with one exception:

I did the kernel build with -Os and explicit options to build for
the processor in use. It made a difference in speed. The processor
was an 80386 with so high clock speed and cache memory (ISTR 8m
cache, 16m real memory; we took all the cache chips from 8 motherboards
that were being recycled).

>Since RH5.2 did not have USB support, I compiled a USB kernel.
>Unfortunately I never did get USB going. I found out many years later 
>that I might have needed to add a module (?) for the particular USB card 
>I added to the machine. Compiling a new kernel was still a good 
>excercise to have done.

USB drivers seem to have been an exception from the rule above.
Likewise, the fast ethernet (>= 1G) drivers seem to be seamlessly
integrated into Linux.

-- mrr

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#151384

Morten Reistad <first@last.name> wrote:
> In article <mt8roe$asb$1@dont-email.me>, philo  <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>> On 09/15/2015 04:08 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>> On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:20:16 -0500
>>> philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>>> 
>>>> My first Linux install was on a 486 with a 170 meg HD and I did not
>>>> install a GUI...just wanted to see if I could do it.
>>> 
>>> 	Mine came off about 50 floppies onto a 486DX25 with 16MB of RAM.
>>> I'd already had a unix on the box without TCP/IP for which I compiled X
>>> from the X11R5 distribution (building the missing half of the pseudo-tty
>>> transport to do so). Getting X up on Linux was *so* much easier.
>>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> The 486 I used...was 33mhz. The biggest bottleneck how ever was an 
>> extremely slow HD. ( Possibly PIO 2 or 3) I know that the machine was 
>> not in the same league with the PS/2 (I still have) that also used a 33 
>> mhz cpu.
> 
> I tested Linux first on a re-assembled machine from previous top-of-the-line
> 386 servers, with _lots_ of memory and cache, and two _very_ fast ide
> disks, 110 and 120 mb. It was around two weeks after you didn't have
> to build the file system from minix anymore, where you could use a
> distro. My memory fails me of the name of this distro.
> 
> I got the character inteface up within a day, and struggled to get 
> the display beyond svga, going into driver hell. I got 768x1024(?), but
> the display could do a lot more. That took a few months to sort out.
> 
>> Eventually I learned that in setting up the x-server...If I needed to 
>> get /something/ going right away...VESA would usually work.
> 
> Or svga. 
> 
> This driver hell has plagued the relationship between the open source
> and alternative OS vendors and the hardware pushers for decades. 
> 
> New fancy hardware, requires magic software the hardware guys seem
> to think. So they guard the specs for the API interfaces, and the
> open source people have to reverse-engineer some proper drivers.
> The ones coming from the hardware vendors are uniformly shitty, at
> least in the firt 2 major versions. I have confirmation that this
> problem also plagues Microsoft, but they use their market muscle
> to force out specs and good drivers.
> 
> It was like this for graphics drivers until ca 2008, for wifi cards
> until a few years ago, and for graphics accelrators it is still like
> this.
> 
> That this locks the hardware vendors out from the market of Linux/BSD
> users, which has become sizabe, still seem to elude them.
> 
>> I never bothered to compile my own packages with one exception:
> 
> I did the kernel build with -Os and explicit options to build for
> the processor in use. It made a difference in speed. The processor
> was an 80386 with so high clock speed and cache memory (ISTR 8m
> cache, 16m real memory; we took all the cache chips from 8 motherboards
> that were being recycled).
> 
>> Since RH5.2 did not have USB support, I compiled a USB kernel.
>> Unfortunately I never did get USB going. I found out many years later 
>> that I might have needed to add a module (?) for the particular USB card 
>> I added to the machine. Compiling a new kernel was still a good 
>> excercise to have done.
> 
> USB drivers seem to have been an exception from the rule above.
> Likewise, the fast ethernet (>= 1G) drivers seem to be seamlessly
> integrated into Linux.
> 

Display drivers are still a problem  My laptop has an ATI Radeon card and
driver support is still spotty.  What was especially annoying was that the
display worked fine for the install but I couldn't get it to work on the
installed system.  I finally had to give up on Redhat and switch to Ubuntu
to get it to work, and it took about six months!

-- 
Pete

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#151394

On 09/15/2015 11:19 AM, Peter Flass wrote:
.
>>
>>> Since RH5.2 did not have USB support, I compiled a USB kernel.
>>> Unfortunately I never did get USB going. I found out many years later
>>> that I might have needed to add a module (?) for the particular USB card
>>> I added to the machine. Compiling a new kernel was still a good
>>> excercise to have done.
>>
>> USB drivers seem to have been an exception from the rule above.
>> Likewise, the fast ethernet (>= 1G) drivers seem to be seamlessly
>> integrated into Linux.
>>
>
> Display drivers are still a problem  My laptop has an ATI Radeon card and
> driver support is still spotty.  What was especially annoying was that the
> display worked fine for the install but I couldn't get it to work on the
> installed system.  I finally had to give up on Redhat and switch to Ubuntu
> to get it to work, and it took about six months!
>



RH 5.2 was a great learning tool and I used it for at least six months 
to a year...then moved to other distributions.

A number of years ago I switched to Ubuntu as my full time distribution 
and am sticking with 12.04 until the day comes when I get some new H/W

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#151425

On Tue, 15 Sep 2015 13:15:10 -0500, philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>
>
>
> RH 5.2 was a great learning tool and I used it for at least six months 
> to a year...then moved to other distributions.

It was solid.  It ran my server for 9 years, 10 months with never a
failure.

>
> A number of years ago I switched to Ubuntu as my full time distribution 
> and am sticking with 12.04 until the day comes when I get some new H/W

I stick with 14.04LTS both GUI and server versions.  Seems very good.
However this machine is FreeBSD!

-- 
Stan Barr     plan.b@bluesomatic.org

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#151437

On 09/16/2015 02:04 AM, Stan Barr wrote:
> On Tue, 15 Sep 2015 13:15:10 -0500, philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> RH 5.2 was a great learning tool and I used it for at least six months
>> to a year...then moved to other distributions.
>
> It was solid.  It ran my server for 9 years, 10 months with never a
> failure.
>


Great record!


I did volunteer work at an NPO and mostly did computer repair work. They 
had a company they'd call in to maintain their Windows 2008 Server but 
if I was already there and it would go down...I'd sometimes fix it for 
them. It would often grind to a near halt...and it was a small 
organization that maybe only had 20 machines on their network.


BTW: The company that maintained the server was very generous, they gave 
it to them free. Of course they charged a fortune for service. Before I 
retired from my volunteer work, I at least got the org. to not renew 
their contract. They found a small independent guy who did not cheat them.



>>
>> A number of years ago I switched to Ubuntu as my full time distribution
>> and am sticking with 12.04 until the day comes when I get some new H/W
>
> I stick with 14.04LTS both GUI and server versions.  Seems very good.
> However this machine is FreeBSD!
>

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#151442

On 16 Sep 2015 in alt.folklore.computers, philo wrote:

> BTW: The company that maintained the server was very generous, they
> gave it to them free. Of course they charged a fortune for service.
> Before I retired from my volunteer work, I at least got the org. to
> not renew their contract. They found a small independent guy who did
> not cheat them. 

That's the Gillette razor / Kodak camera model: give away the machine to 
sell the expendables.  I suppose it could apply to HP and printers, too.

-- 
Joe Makowiec
http://makowiec.org/
Email: http://makowiec.org/contact/?Joe
Usenet Improvement Project: http://twovoyagers.com/improve-usenet.org/

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#151529

On 09/16/2015 09:52 AM, Joe Makowiec wrote:
> On 16 Sep 2015 in alt.folklore.computers, philo wrote:
>
>> BTW: The company that maintained the server was very generous, they
>> gave it to them free. Of course they charged a fortune for service.
>> Before I retired from my volunteer work, I at least got the org. to
>> not renew their contract. They found a small independent guy who did
>> not cheat them.
>
> That's the Gillette razor / Kodak camera model: give away the machine to
> sell the expendables.  I suppose it could apply to HP and printers, too.
>



That could apply to almost any low-end ink jet printer.

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#151439

Stan Barr <plan.b@bluesomatic.org> writes:
>On Tue, 15 Sep 2015 13:15:10 -0500, philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>>
>>
>>
>> RH 5.2 was a great learning tool and I used it for at least six months 
>> to a year...then moved to other distributions.
>
>It was solid.  It ran my server for 9 years, 10 months with never a
>failure.

I did the same with RH 6.2 - it handled web traffic and was my MX machine
for a decade (it was a repurposed Sony VAIO laptop acquired in 12/2001.

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#151402

On 15/09/2015 12:19 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
> Morten Reistad <first@last.name> wrote:
>> In article <mt8roe$asb$1@dont-email.me>, philo  <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>>> On 09/15/2015 04:08 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>> On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:20:16 -0500
>>>> philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
. . .

>>
>> I tested Linux first on a re-assembled machine from previous top-of-the-line
>> 386 servers, with _lots_ of memory and cache, and two _very_ fast ide
>> disks, 110 and 120 mb. It was around two weeks after you didn't have
>> to build the file system from minix anymore, where you could use a
>> distro. My memory fails me of the name of this distro.
>>
>> I got the character inteface up within a day, and struggled to get
>> the display beyond svga, going into driver hell. I got 768x1024(?), but
>> the display could do a lot more. That took a few months to sort out.
>>
>>> Eventually I learned that in setting up the x-server...If I needed to
>>> get /something/ going right away...VESA would usually work.
. . .
>
>> This driver hell has plagued the relationship between the open source
>> and alternative OS vendors and the hardware pushers for decades.
. .
>>
>> New fancy hardware, requires magic software the hardware guys seem
>> to think. So they guard the specs for the API interfaces, and the
>> open source people have to reverse-engineer some proper drivers.
>> The ones coming from the hardware vendors are uniformly shitty, at
>> least in the firt 2 major versions. I have confirmation that this
>> problem also plagues Microsoft, but they use their market muscle
>> to force out specs and good drivers.
. .

>>
>>> I never bothered to compile my own packages with one exception:
>>
>> I did the kernel build with -Os and explicit options to build for
>> the processor in use. It made a difference in speed. The processor
>> was an 80386 with so high clock speed and cache memory (ISTR 8m
>> cache, 16m real memory; we took all the cache chips from 8 motherboards
>> that were being recycled).
. . .
>>
>> USB drivers seem to have been an exception from the rule above.
>> Likewise, the fast ethernet (>= 1G) drivers seem to be seamlessly
>> integrated into Linux.
>>
>
> Display drivers are still a problem  My laptop has an ATI Radeon card and
> driver support is still spotty.  What was especially annoying was that the
> display worked fine for the install but I couldn't get it to work on the
> installed system.  I finally had to give up on Redhat and switch to Ubuntu
> to get it to work, and it took about six months!
>

Read this thread and remind me of the advantages of using open source 
distributions if your time is worth anything.

w..

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#151417

Walter Banks <walter@bytecraft.com> writes:

> On 15/09/2015 12:19 PM, Peter Flass wrote:
>> Morten Reistad <first@last.name> wrote:
>>> In article <mt8roe$asb$1@dont-email.me>, philo  <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
>>>> On 09/15/2015 04:08 AM, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:
>>>>> On Mon, 14 Sep 2015 10:20:16 -0500
>>>>> philo <philo@privacy.net> wrote:
> . . .
>
>>>
>>> I tested Linux first on a re-assembled machine from previous top-of-the-line
>>> 386 servers, with _lots_ of memory and cache, and two _very_ fast ide
>>> disks, 110 and 120 mb. It was around two weeks after you didn't have
>>> to build the file system from minix anymore, where you could use a
>>> distro. My memory fails me of the name of this distro.
>>>
>>> I got the character inteface up within a day, and struggled to get
>>> the display beyond svga, going into driver hell. I got 768x1024(?), but
>>> the display could do a lot more. That took a few months to sort out.
>>>
>>>> Eventually I learned that in setting up the x-server...If I needed to
>>>> get /something/ going right away...VESA would usually work.
> . . .
>>
>>> This driver hell has plagued the relationship between the open source
>>> and alternative OS vendors and the hardware pushers for decades.
> . .
>>>
>>> New fancy hardware, requires magic software the hardware guys seem
>>> to think. So they guard the specs for the API interfaces, and the
>>> open source people have to reverse-engineer some proper drivers.
>>> The ones coming from the hardware vendors are uniformly shitty, at
>>> least in the firt 2 major versions. I have confirmation that this
>>> problem also plagues Microsoft, but they use their market muscle
>>> to force out specs and good drivers.
> . .
>
>>>
>>>> I never bothered to compile my own packages with one exception:
>>>
>>> I did the kernel build with -Os and explicit options to build for
>>> the processor in use. It made a difference in speed. The processor
>>> was an 80386 with so high clock speed and cache memory (ISTR 8m
>>> cache, 16m real memory; we took all the cache chips from 8 motherboards
>>> that were being recycled).
> . . .
>>>
>>> USB drivers seem to have been an exception from the rule above.
>>> Likewise, the fast ethernet (>= 1G) drivers seem to be seamlessly
>>> integrated into Linux.
>>>
>>
>> Display drivers are still a problem  My laptop has an ATI Radeon card and
>> driver support is still spotty.  What was especially annoying was that the
>> display worked fine for the install but I couldn't get it to work on the
>> installed system.  I finally had to give up on Redhat and switch to Ubuntu
>> to get it to work, and it took about six months!
>>
>
> Read this thread and remind me of the advantages of using open source
> distributions if your time is worth anything.

Most of the stuff in this thread was from quite a while back.
Not to say I haven't experienced issues.
The last one was support for a Canon printer.
I had an "unsupported" RPM from Canon, but it was 32 bit only.
Could not find the 64 bit anywhere.
Tried to build from source but couldn't find all the mods needed
for my model.
Ended up with the Turboprint pay-for version.
That worked the first time.

OTOH, I've spent many hours trying to get Windows installs going too.

-- 
Dan Espen

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