[Scottish] Sorting out our new computer with Linux

[Colin McKinnon]

On Sunday 13 March 2005 14:52, John McCreadie wrote:
> Dear Sirs,
>
...err...Sirs?...Scotlug users?? Relax John, it's a bit less formal round 
here. But politeness is always welcome.

> We bought a new computer with:
>
> Athlon 64bit 3500 SO939
> MSI K8N SLI Platinum (SO939)
> 2No Kingston 512MB PC3200
> 120GB SATA HDD 7200RPM 8MB Cashe
> Pioneer 109 black 16x16x +OEM
> 3.5" Floppy
> 56K PCI Hardware Modem
> 256MB PCI Express Sapphire RX600XT
>
> The operating system is Suse Linux 9.2.
>
> We have now found that we are finding that some of the components are not
> working as the discs which were supplied are for windows only.
>

OK, first thing is that the Microsoft/Intel thing has created quite a 
different way of supplying/building a system. In the Linux world (mostly) all 
the software (usually) comes through the same channel. Sometimes it's a good 
thing - ever tried to coordinate 4+ suppliers to resolve a technical issue? 
Ever done it when you're responsible for less then than 0.001% of their 
turnover?

Enough of the advocacy stuff.

So can you give us a bit more background - was this bought as a complete 
system? Was the OS included in the same purchase? Did the vendor pre-assemble 
the system? Burn it in? Install any software? The reason I ask is that if you 
were a sold a new, pre-installed SUSE box which doesn't work, then it's up to 
the vendor to sort it out (Sale of Goods Act 1979 (as amended)). 

Assuming you bought the bits yourself and/or you really want to work through 
this yourself then....

First SuSE 9.2 is reasonably good at detecting hardware (often seems to come 
on duff media though). If this is a boxed version of SuSE then bear in mind 
that there are people getting PAID to help sort your problems out. Read the 
stuff which came in the box for how to register your product and obtain 
technical support.
 
> What I am in need of is a person who can sort this out and get the system
> working properly.
>

There's lots of very skilled (and some less so) people on the list. Are you 
looking to pay someone to come in and setup your system or some hand-holding 
and nudges (usually freely available on the list) ?

Regardless, it'd probably help to build a bit more background...have the 
components worked with other OS? When you say the graphics card isn't working 
properly do you mean the system will only start up in text mode? or you never 
see anything on the screen?

To get you started...

Video card - your uses a an ATI radeon processor. ATI do supply Linux drivers 
from their website, in rpm format but it doesn't say which distro these are 
targeted at. SuSE also provide rpms at 
ftp://ftp.suse.com/pub/suse/i386/supplementary/X/ATI/suse92/i386/fglrx/8.10.19/

I guess you have access to a working machine connected to the internet. Will 
this be available if/while you try to set the machine up yourself? There's 
usually lots of people hanging out on #scotlug at freenode.org whom may be 
willing to talk you through stuff in real-time over IRC.

HTH

C.