[2563] in Release_7.7_team
m10-423-2 is up with Linux Athena.
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Bill Cattey)
Tue Jan 30 21:49:22 2001
Message-ID: <MuRroc9z000103JWIm@mit.edu>
Date: Wed, 31 Jan 2001 02:49:12 +0000 ()
From: Bill Cattey <wdc@MIT.EDU>
To: dspace-local@MIT.EDU
CC: cfox@MIT.EDU, rtansley@MIT.EDU, nicole_hennessey@hp.com,
ceagan@hpbstore.com, linux-dev@MIT.EDU, release-team@MIT.EDU
With help from Camilla Fox, I've gotten the new Vectra VL400
working with Linux Athena using the SIPB installer.
Problems:
1. There is some subtle problem with the on-board 3Com 3c905c Ethernet
NIC. HP's diagnostics don't like it. The Standard IS install Diskette
choked on it, but the current SIPB installer works with
it just fine.
2. The BIOS seemed hell-bent on ignoring the NVidia graphics card.
I had to explicitly tell the BIOS to look at the AGP graphics, not the
nonexistant PCI graphics. None of the changes took effect by
CTRL/ALT/DEL reboot. Power cycling was required.
3. The BIOS came with the wrong method of accessing past the first 8GB
of disk. Guessing at this took half a day. (Thank you Camilla for
suggesting it!) Finally we searched out the BIOS settings for the disk
and switched the access method for big disks from the default "[DOS]" to
the other setting aptly named "[OTHER]".
4. The HP web site does not have the documentation for the L1510 LCD
display online yet. The single pager that comes with it laked basic
information. Ultimately setting "Generic LCD 1024x768" worked, after
I remembered that I had to hand-tool around Athena's default 1280x1024
resolution hard coding.
All is up. There is 600 Meg of disk being wasted because I decided to
let the working test-install go to completion. (I'd not carefully use
all the disk, just made partitions big enough to get past the magical
8gb barrier.)
This would have gone a lot more smoothly if HP had used more eccumenical
BIOS defaults, and if 3Com hadn't decided to tweak things a teeny bit.
In fairness to 3com, the particular driver having problems is NOT a
mainstream Linux driver. It is a magical Etherboot driver. Heaven knows
what magic has been undone between rev 74 (whicn works) and rev 76
(which doesn't) of the 3c905c NIC.
-wdc
