[ale] Next Generation Linux Machine

joshy joshy at mindspring.com
Tue Sep 5 14:11:27 EDT 2000


On Tue, Sep 05, 2000 at 12:35:43PM -0400, Vernard Martin wrote:
> Hello folks,
> 
> Recently, Myself and a a colleague of mine came to the harsh realization that 
> newer machines are coming with no ISA slots and some with no serial or parallel
> ports. Although Linux will boot and run on these machines fine as servers, this
> presents a problem when doing desktop environments because the pci world is a
> bit different than the ISA world in the case of modems and sound cards.

:)

yep. i came to this conclusion myself when purchasing a new Athlon
motherboard.  I bought the super lowend SB but i did see some 15 or 20$
cards at CompUSA.  They all tend to be SB compatible but you don't get
very good performance. But then, it's a sound card, how much do you really
want it to do. Once you've got 16bit 44khz output with CD input, there's
not much more most people want under linux.

> Can anyone recommend solutions to the following:
> 
> 1) a $5-$15 pci 16bit sound card that is supported under linux?  I know that
> the Sound Blaster Live! Value edition is supported and it costs about $30 but
> is the el cheapo market just out of luck?
> 
> 2) The brand name of a a $20-$35 pci modem that uses the lucent chipset.  I had
> great success with one of these modems but it was a no name brand. Is there a
> Brand name that I can look for and know that it has a the lucent chipset?

I finally gave up on internal modems a while ago. You could never tell if
they were going to work or now. External will always that takes AT
commands over a serial port. I used an external until I got my ADSL.

> Also, what is the status of USB support for keyboards, mice and printers in the
> 2.2 series of kernels?  Is it still a backport that you have to add yourself or
> is it officially integrated in now? I'd love to start using USB devices for
> their physical ease of use but have no luck so far.

I use PS/2 at home just 'cause I have 12 keyboards at home. (CompUSA sold
off a bunch at 98 cents a piece because they didn't have the Win95
key). At work I have a Logitech Marble Trackball with USB and it works
just fine (i'm using a recent debian with a stock 2.2.15 kernel)

- joshy


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  And in the end 
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is equal to the love you make
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