[ale] Computers for sale with Linux installed.

[miguel]

>and one is my firewall and has no HDD running)

are you  runnig a firewall distro like ipcop or smoothwall?

cheers
-miguel



Jeff Hubbs wrote:

>On Mon, 2003-02-03 at 10:41, Joe wrote:
>
>>Jeff Hubbs <hbbs at attbi.com> writes:
>>
>>>But if you do that, bring along a tomsrtbt floppy to check for the buggy
>>>CMD640 and RZ1000 IDE controller chips in the Pentium classics.  About a
>>>third of all machines made in that era have them and are to be avoided. 
>>>
>>Linux has had workarounds for those problems since they were detected,
>>and they're enabled by default in (AFAIK) all kernels that support
>>them. So unless you're looking for pure speed (and if you're buying
>>a 5-year-old machine, you're not :-), they should be OK.
>>
>
>Not necessarily.  IIRC, many of the machines with the bad IDE
>controllers had the additional issue of them simply being wired up
>incorrectly on the motherboard.  And, inasmuch as there is a conf0g-time
>kernel option for buggy CMD640 support, the RZ1000 issue was a bit
>thornier.  In any case, the buggy controllers are a bit of a minefield
>for any multitasking OS.  All I'm saying is, if you can easily avoid a
>bad one for a good one, do so, but if you get a bad one (I have two,
>BTW, and one is my firewall and has no HDD running), you might consider
>working around the problem by somehow not relying on that controller.
>
>What's bad is that Micron, which back in the day was one of the most
>highly thought-of PC manufacturers (of those who made their own mobos),
>made LOTS of machines with the buggy controllers.
>
>- Jeff
>
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