Re: Linux question...

Sean

Sincd you asked, let me tell you how it works for me. There is a lot of
fluff/market_hype floating around about all those many devices that don't
have Linux drivers. This may be one of the last fear generating appeals
left for proprietary folk. I'll list three possibles here


1 - Stuff-an-bail

Personally for a single OS system I use the stuff-an-bail technique with
the BDI. Boot the BDI and look for the full screen EMC operated milling
machine, let it ask you a few questions, and if you are successful at
answering them with the mouse, click on the developer install and let it
go. If it doesn't show the EMC screen, or won't let you answers the
questions with the mouse -- bail out and when you reboot, your
pre-existing system will still be there. Nice eh.

There are a few "old machine" drivers that have been left out of the
newest distributions. And the latest, greatest hardware may take a week
or two before the drivers are ready and tested. This doesn't mean that
the drivers aren't there, they are just not included on a single disk.


2 - Find-em-first

Since current BDI's are based on the Red Hat 6+ series of distributions
you would do well to attack their hardware compatability and driver
download site. You've got MS-98 working so look at it's hardware list.
Google will also find many of these drivers if you ask it using very
specific device manufacturer, model number, and the words "linux driver".
Put these downloads on a floppy or two then start the BDI install.

If you come to a crisis ask on one of the many linux lists or the emc
list.


3 - Build-it-from-fresh-scratch

If you're building a new box on the cheap for this, check out
www.computergeeks.com. They list linux compatability from their own
testing for a lot of used/older devices. Need something like

CMI CX3D Positional Audio 4 Channel PCI Sound Card -- $9.50
64MB Savage 2000 AGP Video Card w/TV Out -- $49.00
Lucent 56K V.90 PCI Modem Card -- $13.95

and if you need a box to put it all in try

http://www.compgeeks.com/details.asp?invtid=PMS1D-1 -- $19 to 29

And that includes a slot 1 motherboard on which they will all fit and
still have room for a servo card. It's only listed to 333 Ghz processor
but that'll get you a lot of stepping or all the servo you'll ever want.

4 - Disclaimer

No affiliation.
Listed devices are only examples of one approach I tend to take.

HTH

Ray

>    From: "audiomaker2000" <audiomaker@...>

<s>

> So, I'm guessing since I don't know any better that this BDI formats
> your drive and installs Linux, but it couldn't possibly come with all
> the specific drivers that Microsoft has accumulated, and they can be
> quite hard to track down manually.
>
> So how does this work?