[TriLUG] Debian on Dell

[Faheem Mitha]

On Sat, 6 Mar 2004 crimsun at fungus.sh.nu wrote:

> On Sat, Mar 06, 2004 at 06:28:03PM -0500, Faheem Mitha wrote:
> > Can you tell me the make of the drive? Also, does regular SCSI
> > emulation (for 2.4.x) still get the hardware support for burning
> > working, or do I have to do more?
>
> From /var/log/dmesg:
> ...
> hdc: HL-DT-STDVD-ROM GDR8162B, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
> ...

> You do not need to use scsi-emulation (CONFIG_BLK_DEV_IDESCSI in 2.6).
> Instead, use cdrecord v2's ATAPI transport with kernel 2.6's device
> spec:
>
> # cdrecord -v dev=/dev/hdc foo.iso    (from the above drive)

But scsi emulation suffices for 2.4 kernels?

> This means also that you can remove the append="hdc=ide-scsi" from your
> bootloader's conffile.

I've got everything as modules, so I'm doing it in /etc/modutils.

> > So it is possible they might be using some other ethernet card? And could
> > there be problems in that case? Sigh...
>
> It's possible. Make sure you get the e1000.
>
> > I'm still trying to use 2.6.x (2.6.2) on my home machine. I've been
> > having annoying problems with my mouse pointer being too jumpy. I
> > thought that passing the psmouse.proto=bare option to the kernel
> > should fix it, but it doesn't seem to.
>
> Shouldn't occur with these Dells and their USB mice.

I'm using a Cirque Smartcat touchpad (PS/2) and a USB mouse simultaneously
on my home machine. Dunno whether that has a bearing on it. I don't have
this problem with 2.4.x.

> > I've had lots of trouble with ALSA, at least on 2.4.x, which I am
> > still using. I did get a similar integrated sound chipset (Intel8x0)
> > working on both an IBM machine and on a Dell Optiplex, though I had to
> > switch off KDE's arts daemon, which was interfering with it. I just
> > figure the Audigy would work more nicely.
>
> Intel8x0s do not support hardware multiopen. ALSA provides a software
> multiopen mixer at the API level known as dmix (which you can combine
> with dsnoop for dshare), so you can multiplex simultaneous sounds. This
> of course requires most applications to be updated to support dmix, but
> it does work fairly well on this Dell.

Hmm. Interesting. So the problem is with the hardware and not with Arts?

> The Audigy uses an EMU10K1 variant, which does support hardware
> multiopen, so dmix is not necessary (though I do use it at home for my
> sblive).

Thanks.                                                   Faheem.