[SWLUG] Problems

[Steve Anderson]

Way-hey - my first reply after much lurking. Way-hey!

Rhys Sage wrote:

> Actually, the shop put the chip onto the board. It
> comes up, identified by name as an AMD 1500+ on about
> the 5th line of the display when I switch on. I'd
> imagine that the chip works at 100 FSB anyway. I only
> have two settings on this board: 133 and 100 as
> hardware settings then 100 - 255 by bios. I've seen
> the AMD 2200 described at 266 but I can't find out
> much more information. As the chip is now covered by a
> heatsink, it's hard to find out more.

I'd imagine having your board set to 133 would be closer to what you 
need, what with it being half of 266. But get checking the AMD website 
for all the details; it's not the nicest website to navigate for details 
but they have stuff there on processors going right back to 386s, and it 
proved invaluable in getting a K6-2 500 set up correctly for me a couple 
of weeks ago.

> Finally... a warning to anybody considering trying to
> use XP Pro - don't and don't ever buy it. It simply
> does not work. It took 15 installations to get it to
> work and then it fell over and wouldn't let me in to
> fix it.
> 
> I've had boot-crash-boot cycles from it where it goes
> immediately from booting to crashing to booting
> without displaying any of the recovery options.

We've had a computer in the office do exactly that as well (with XP Home 
rather than XP Pro). But it's okay on all the other computers that run 
it. Not defending it, it's a necessary evil, that's all. I've got it at 
home on the main PC - coincidentally, also an Athlon XP 2200+ - and 
can't Linuxify that PC until a) my girlfriend becomes a complete convert 
and b) WineX can play all the new games as well as XP can. So sometime 
over the rainbow...

> If Microsoft is supposed to be so good, how come
> Mandrake 9.1 installed faster and hasn't fallen over
> or had any problems?

Red Hat 9 (hey, I'm a newbie - one of my cardboard-box mounted computers 
is going to be Debian or Gentoo now I'm getting to grips) installed on 
my Via C3 powered Linux box in less time than it took to get XP Pro 
installed. No idea why. The slowest thing was me remembering to swap CDs 
whilst it was running upstairs. XP Pro took ages and did a worse job of 
hardware identification than RedHat did on the other box. Silly really.

> My biggest gripe with Mandrake so
> far is that I can't play Yahoo games - silly I know
> but I used to enjoy a game of pool in my idle moments.

There's going to be a way of running them. If they're Java, make sure 
you have a Java VM. Flash is handled quite well these days and 
Macromedia Director - my bread-and-butter - can be run under WINE 
apparently, so I'd assume it's not *that* far down the line that 
Director Shockwave games will be able to be run.

Steve
(there, no longer the SWLUG virgin I was).