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On Tue, 2004-01-06 at 00:29, Ian B. Jacobs wrote:
> Hi all,
>=20
> Earlier today I received my new Dell 4600 series desktop,
> which I'll use as a backup machine, server, etc. I really
> expected Knoppix to make the linuxification of this machine
> a breeze. I was disappointed.=20

Now several weeks later my system is up and running.

> I encountered three problems:
>=20
>  * Video card (I82865G) not recognized. I can use some
>    cheat codes to work around some issues, but I may need
>    to install a driver from Intel. I'm happy to say that
>    Dell makes available drivers for linux.=20

I was wrong: Knoppix recognizes the video card. But apparently
there's a bug in the BIOS (my version is A07 [0])
that prevents Knoppix from recognizing
the fact that there is more Video RAM available than the BIOS
lets on. Thanks to a nice description of the problem [1] which
mentions a patch for the 855GM [2], I contacted the author
of the patch (Christian Zietz) who was very helpful and
explained how to modify the 855patch source files for the 865G:

<quote>
 Another user was successful making the following changes=20
 to 855patch[.c]:

   > #define chipsetid 0x25708086
   > and replacing the values 0x80000058 by 0x80000090.=20
</quote>

The patch for the 855 is available here [3].

[0]
http://support.dell.com/FileLib/Type.aspx?c=3Dus&l=3Den&s=3Dgen&Category=3D=
1&OS=3DNAA&OSL=3DEN&SvcTag=3D&SysID=3DDIM_P4_4600&DeviceID=3D308
[1] http://www.xfree86.org/~dawes/845driver.html
[2] http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/msg02247.html
[3] http://www.chzsoft.com.ar/855patch.tar.gz

>  * Linksys WUSB11 Wireless not recognized. Some people
>    in the Knoppix forums say that the card is recognized,
>    but there seem to be a fair number of problems. Somebody
>    suggested a driver that I haven't tried yet.

I had some success with the Berlios driver [4]. I contacted
one of the people (Joerg Alber) developing this driver to=20
explain my compilation problems, and he promptly fixed them.
However, I was still getting terrible packet loss, which was
improved when I reduced the transfer rate from 10M to 2M.=20
Obviously, this isn't ideal, but for now it gets the job done.

[4] http://at76c503a.berlios.de/
[5]
https://lists.berlios.de/pipermail/at76c503a-user/2004-January/001006.html

>  * Agpart issues when XWindows starts up; I don't know if this
>    is related to the video card issue above.

This was related to the BIOS problem described above.

Lastly, there was a problem of an "Undefined mode number"
when booting. This was resolved by editing lilo.conf
and setting vga=3Dnormal (at the top).

- Ian

--=20
Ian Jacobs ([email protected])   http://www.w3.org/People/Jacobs
Tel:                     +1 718 260-9447

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