!Re: Nuke Redmond!

From: Richard Erlacher <edick_at_idcomm.com>
Date: Thu Apr 6 14:10:13 2000

Please see embedded comments below.

Dick

----- Original Message -----
From: John Wilson <wilson_at_dbit.dbit.com>
To: <classiccmp_at_classiccmp.org>
Sent: Thursday, April 06, 2000 11:55 AM
Subject: Re: !Re: Nuke Redmond!


> On Thu, Apr 06, 2000 at 01:00:56PM -0400, Bill Pechter wrote:
> > I do none of the above but my Win95 desktop intermittantly blows
> > chunks and drops ethernet IP connectivity. I've seen this less often
> > with Win98...
>
> I wish I'd gotten that far, but W98 doesn't even like my SVGA enough to
> give me a really usable display, I loaded all the drivers (and it's a
> generic Trident PCI VGA, not some oddball thing) but no matter what I set
> it to it always snaps back into 16-color mode at the lowest resolution.
> Works OK under NT but the system keeps locking up, and half the time the
> mouse doesn't get detected so it takes a few reboots to get it going.
>
I've used the same Trident 9680's in my Windows boxes since they first came
out. Before that, I used Trident 8900's of various flavors, and the
occasional 9440 on a VLB box. The only problem I've ever had at ANY
resolution is the fact that it looks so much like its predecessor, the
"Trident SuperVGA" for which Windows provides a driver, that it stubbornly
hangs on to it. It gives up if you load the correct driver using the
Device Manager's "update driver" procedure.
>
> > > I've never wanted to become an expert on *NIX and its kin, but IIRC,
if you
> > > make any changes to the system you not only have to restart the
system, you
> > > have to recompile several modules, including, in some cases, the
kernel.
> >
> > If you're adding new device driver -- maybe. Not if the one was
> > alread compiled for that kernel.
>
> I don't know about other Unices but loadable drivers on Linux work *very*
> well these days. I wrote a couple recently and I just love how you can
type
> "make" and by the time you're done, the new driver has replaced the old
one
> and it's all initialized and ready to go. Took me a couple of days before
> I even managed to crash the system the first time (through pointer bugs
> in ring 0 code), definitely a very nice environment, if you're willing to
> swallow the idea of writing device drivers in an HLL in the first place.
>
My problem with LINUX is that the only thing for which I've wanted to
utilize LINUX as a NETWARE substitute, via the MARS NWE vehicle that comes
with it. Though I'm told it is quite solid, I've never seen a document
about that program that explains it well enough that I can get it to work.
LINUX claims it's loaded the MARS stuff and claims that the Network is
running, but it doesn't have enough information about the simple low-level
configuration details to permit development of a rigorous sequence of
actions to make it work. The doc's are full of self-contradictions, e.g.
omission, in places, of key words such as "not" thereby making it hard to
decipher. I'm considering acquiring the "file and print services for
NETWARE networks" module for NT and replacing the NETWARE box with that.
The only thing stopping me is that I'm not sure it works with the bare-bones
IPX interface. The ODI driver set is too large to make the DOS memory
useable for what I need. Even so, the ODI drivers and shell are only half
the size of the smallest "other" driver set.
>
> John Wilson
> D Bit
Received on Thu Apr 06 2000 - 14:10:13 BST