I have a PowerMac 9500 with an XLR8 400 MHz G3, 384 mgs RAM, IXMicro video
card and an Adaptec wide-SCSI card, which i have up and running LINUX with
several annoying glitches.
* The ix3D card only seems to work in Mac frame buffer mode and thus
cannot change resolution. My vision is such that i need to be able
to change screen resolution under X windows.
* Two different multi-button ADB mice only send button 1. Some kernels
don't seem to find either if not configured properly.
* The AIC7xxx driver either faults (2.2.18) or claim a resource conflict
of undetermined nature (2.4.0). I think this is an AHA-2940/AW (or
something like that, my notes are at home).
I've tried several kernels and none seem to give readable results on the
ix3D. Most show a series of 2-8 crude images of penguins and LOTS of
random dots instead of readable text on boot up in none-Mac display mode.
Many kernels won't compile for me (get undef's, etc.). I also tried an
S3 Trio64V+, but MacOS won't recognize it and i don't know how to boot
from floppy and/or via Quik yet.
I'm not sure if the ADB mouse problem is worth pursuing, as i could get a
USB wheel-mouse for about an hour's worth of my time. (I suppose the video
card problem might be amenable to that kind of solution as well.)
The messages i get from trying to run the wide-SCSI card are uninformative
at best. I've not gotten around to putting in printf's and doing other such
driver debugging techniques, as i was hoping to avoid that. I can't tell,
for example, if MacOS has set up the PCI bus in a manner that LINUX doesn't
know how to deal with (and hence the resource conflict). (Unlike a couple of
days ago, at least it finds the card!)
Questions:
* What kernel and/or what driver runs the ix3D properly (if any)?
* Is the ixMicro card even worth bothering with? If not, which modestly
priced video cards are Mac-compatable and LINUX-friendly? (I don't
care how well they work for games, as i don't play them.)
* Can one dual-boot with 'Quik'? If so, will LINUX then recognize the
S3 Trio64V+ which MacOS can't deal with? Is it then more likely to
handle the AHA-2940 (or whatever) properly?
* Are ADB mice worth messing with, or should i just go USB. Which ADB
mice are real 3 button mice (which the 'Whale Mouse' appears not to
be, from i can tell so far from WWW searching)?
* Which kernels via Debian.org will properly compile for my configuration
(or any, for that matter)? Should i go to a non-Debian kernel, and if
so, which one?
* Any clues for getting the AHA-2940 to work properly via BootX?
Hopefully, only two or three of these are FAQ-type inquiries. Some of these
may generate (de-generate into) discussion of the merits of various approaches.
I'm not sure i want to generate that much list traffic, so please reply direct
on such matters and i'll summarize for the net.
-- Tovar (who remembers when there were only four UNIX boxes on the
'Net)
