[conspire] (forw) Re: installation help needed (for July 10)

[Rick Moen]

----- Forwarded message from Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com> -----

Date: Wed, 7 Jul 2004 10:37:22 -0700
From: Rick Moen <rick at linuxmafia.com>
To: [snipped]
Subject: Re: installation help needed (for July 10)

Quoting [snipped]:

> i have two separate 3com cards installed but neither
> show up. when i plug in the 3C905B card card to my
> linksys router, all the lights are lit.

> i am baffled: the hardware is there accdg. to the
> "lspci" command, but the Redhat 9.0 installer is not
> picking it up. the previous owner had a wireless card
> which he removed and replaced with the 3com card.

One thing to try:  Move the cards around to different PCI sockets until
the installer picks them up.  It shouldn't work, but it often does.

> I'm thinking of buying a 40g drive since the hard
> drive is 6G (accdg to the seller) and I got turned
> down by Redhat 9.0 when I wanted the workstation
> install.

Yeah, time does fly, eh?  Most of my own machines still have drives
smaller than that, and yet 40GB is now the smallest new drive you can
find on the market.

 I'm not very well versed on hardware but the
> current hard drive is a 
> 
>     Quantum Fireball CE 3.5 series
>     power req: 5/12 V
>     5/30/570 mA
> 
> Will this hard drive work with my computer:
> 
>   
> http://www.centralcomputer.com/emerchant/itemdetail.asp?item=DRIMAX6E041S

Um, I think so.

At various points in the past, the ATA ("IDE") interface has had
problems with motherboard BIOSes being unable to keep up with
improvements in drive capacity.  I believe there was a 504 MB barrier,
an 8 GB barrier, a 33 GB barrier, and like that.  Unfortunately, I can't
really remember precisely.  ("Barrier" means that some older
motherboards either couldn't see the drive at all, or saw only a portion
of it.)

The Large Disk HOWTO talks about some of that:
http://www.tldp.org/HOWTO/Large-Disk-HOWTO-11.html
...but it isn't very current.

I notice that the drive you're talking about is available with either
ATA/133 or SATA connectors.  You should avoid SATA unless you're sure
your motherboard is quite new and has one.

> Should I wait to see if you guys can install first?

{shrug}  Up to you.  I might buy it on speculation that either my current
computer could use it or the one I acquired after discarding the old one
out of sheer frustration with its limitations.  ;->

I personally don't trust Fry's as a source for hard drives, or much
else:  too many episodes that undermine my trust in them.  Central
Computer is better, but of course much further away (Santa Clara, as
opposed to Palo Alto for Fry's).


----- End forwarded message -----