pleasant Linux for a 503+?

Folks,

I've been working your suggestions for a pleasant Linux on a VA 503+.

The live CDs are great for determining which cards work, and which don't.

I found a solution to one problem that may be helpful to others.
I want to put four cards into the 503+'s 3 PCI slots + 3 ISA slots:
1) sound
2) Promise controller
3) USB 2
4) ethernet

I have PCI cards for all four, but the only ISA cards I have are sound
cards - Sound Blaster models CT1350B and CT2940. These ISA Sound
Blasters work with Windows, but they don't seem to work with Ubuntu &
family. This was very discouraging because I wanted all four of these
capabilities.

I found a very well written work-around at
http://www.aotk50.dsl.pipex.com/install-ubuntu-sb16/install-ubuntu-
sb16.htm
I followed the directions and got sound from the ISA card. Great!

I then added the PCI USB card, and the sound died. An IRQ conflict,
maybe? Yes! In Ubuntu I clicked on Application/Accessories/Terminal and
entered:
cat /proc/interrupts
to find that the USB card uses IRQ 5, which the sound card wants.

In the PNP/PCI section of the JE4333 Bios I changed "Resources Controlled
By" from Auto to Manual, then I changed both IRQ 5 and DMA 1 from
"PCI/ISA" to "Legacy ISA". Now it all works!


Here's my observations so far on the Linux distros I've tried:

Knoppix is an awesome live demo!

Open Suse's Samba didn't work, so I gave it up. I don't want to mess
with the Samba config file. I think Open Suse has become like Fedora,
unpaid beta testing.

Damn Small Linux - I can't do much with this. Maybe it's too damn small.
I'll have to come back to it.

Xubuntu 7.04 wouldn't install because its hard drive partitioner is
broken. I'll wait for a fix.

Ubuntu 7.04 is great! Web access and Samba work from the get-go, and it
even installs with no fuss to a hard drive hooked to a Promise
Controller. I'm very happy with it. I'm thinking this is the keeper.
But it's a little slow, so I still want to check out Xubuntu.

Thanks again for your suggestions.

>

On Sun, 16 Sep 2007 19:12:21 +0000, Boon wrote:

> Folks,
>
> I've been working your suggestions for a pleasant Linux on a VA 503+.
>
> The live CDs are great for determining which cards work, and which
> don't.
>
> I found a solution to one problem that may be helpful to others. I want
> to put four cards into the 503+'s 3 PCI slots + 3 ISA slots: 1) sound 2)
> Promise controller
> 3) USB 2
> 4) ethernet
>
> I have PCI cards for all four, but the only ISA cards I have are sound
> cards - Sound Blaster models CT1350B and CT2940. These ISA Sound
> Blasters work with Windows, but they don't seem to work with Ubuntu &
> family. This was very discouraging because I wanted all four of these
> capabilities.
>
> I found a very well written work-around at
> http://www.aotk50.dsl.pipex.com/install-ubuntu-sb16/install-ubuntu-
> sb16.htm
> I followed the directions and got sound from the ISA card. Great!
>
> I then added the PCI USB card, and the sound died. An IRQ conflict,
> maybe? Yes! In Ubuntu I clicked on Application/Accessories/Terminal
> and entered:
> cat /proc/interrupts
> to find that the USB card uses IRQ 5, which the sound card wants.
>
> In the PNP/PCI section of the JE4333 Bios I changed "Resources
> Controlled By" from Auto to Manual, then I changed both IRQ 5 and DMA 1
> from "PCI/ISA" to "Legacy ISA". Now it all works!
>
>
> Here's my observations so far on the Linux distros I've tried:
>
> Knoppix is an awesome live demo!
>
> Open Suse's Samba didn't work, so I gave it up. I don't want to mess
> with the Samba config file. I think Open Suse has become like Fedora,
> unpaid beta testing.
>
> Damn Small Linux - I can't do much with this. Maybe it's too damn
> small. I'll have to come back to it.
>
> Xubuntu 7.04 wouldn't install because its hard drive partitioner is
> broken. I'll wait for a fix.
>
> Ubuntu 7.04 is great! Web access and Samba work from the get-go, and it
> even installs with no fuss to a hard drive hooked to a Promise
> Controller. I'm very happy with it. I'm thinking this is the keeper.
> But it's a little slow, so I still want to check out Xubuntu.
>
> Thanks again for your suggestions.

Very resourceful getting the PCI and ISA cards sorted out. I had the same
issues getting four network cards working on my 503+ firewall.

Now that you have Ubuntu installed you can easily install the XFCE desktop
and switch back and forth between it and Gnome at login. Open a terminal
window, type sudo apt-get install xubuntu-desktop, log out, select XFCE
and log back in. You can install the KDE desktop the same way, sudo
apt-get install kubuntu-desktop

You'll probably also want to have a look at ubuntuguide.org. It has simple
instructions for adding extra repositories, installing the various
multimedia codecs for MP3, etc.