These DATA were submitted on: Saturday, January, 25, 2003 at 20:51:07
 
NAME::  Jeffrey Pawlan

CALL::  WA6KBL

E-mail::  jpawlan@pawlan.com

URL::   Pawlan Communications

CPU::  P4

CPU Speed::  1.7GHz

RAM in MB::  512

SOUND CARD::  Delta 44

SOUND DRIVER::  OSS

ADDITIONAL CARD1::  VIA AC97

VIDEO CARD::  ATI radeon 7000 DDR 32MB AGP

VIDEO DRIVER::  Mandrake supplied

LINUX DISTRIBUTION::  Mandrake

LINUX VERSION::  9

KERNEL VERSION::  2.4.19-16mdk  (9/02)

GCC VERSION::  3.2-1

SVGALIB VERSION::  1.4.3

LINRAD VERSION::  52

Note: 

Feb 12 2005:

    Jeffrey has gome through quite some development with his systems. 

    The latest is here:

     WA6KBL's latest LINRAD version

TEXT: 

I did not want to prematurely post details about graphics cards and drivers without exhaustive
testing but the recent posts suggest that I ought to. I had previously mentioned that I was
using the older version of svgalib 1.4.3 and I configured it as VESA.  The card I am using 
is in fact the Radeon 7000 AGP that is being discussed. I bought it on sale at MicroCenter 
for $39.95.  They also had on the shelf PCI versions of the same board in case your motherboard
is so old that it does not have an AGP slot.  So instead of hunting for the 3rd party video
driver and/or installing a later version of svgalib I am able to get 1024x768 resolution 
running. But I cannot say that everything is finished.  I am still testing the ability to 
leave the linrad screen while it is running and go to another window. So far I have been 
successful in getting to a command line login prompt but not back to linrad without rebooting.
Kohjin is helping me with this. I also cannot get any sound out of my cards in linrad even 
though I have tested them independent of linrad using multimedia players and they both work
fine.

Regarding Frys, they were running a sale last weekend for the same motherboard I am using: 
an ECS Mainboard P4VXASD2+  plus a retail boxed Intel P4-1.8GHz (with fan) for a total price
of $159.99   This board has a VIA chipset that had difficulties when I tried RedHat 7.1 but
now that I have purchased Mandrake 9, Linux loaded perfectly and likes all the on-board 
hardware. I did have to buy the OSS licenses for the two sound drivers I am using. 

Gentlemen;

Rein is here and we have been testing the video card, linrad, and switching between windows.
Here is how my sytem is configured and the results of testing:

1.  The motherboard is an ECS Mainboard P4VXASD2+ and I have 512mb ram and a Pentium 4 1.7GHz.

2.  The video card is definitely a new ATI Radeon 7000 32MB DDR AGP that I purchased for 
    $ 39.95 usd at MicroCenter  stock number 856005.

3.  The linux is Mandrake 9

4.  The screen type I am using is KDE.

5. The svgalib is the old one specified by Leif.

6. There are NO other video drivers loaded as suggested by a few others on this list.

7.  the vgalib.config file is set to VESA and 1024x768


Results:

linrad is running well.  I begin it from an X-term window logged in as root. I can correctly
switch from linrad back to the KDE root graphics screen using ctrl-alt-F7.  The system does 
not lock up.  I can then return to linrad by using ctrl-alt-F8.  I can go back and forth 
using these two commands without any lockup!

I was able to determine which of the many many /devices/dspn to user by turning off the 
sound driver (soundoff) then running soundconf. Then I clicked on test sound drivers. It 
produced a recorded voice on left then right channels of each of the two sound cards and 
told me which device it was using. I found that the Delta-44 was on dsp0 and the AC97 was 
on dsp7. now I turned on the sound again and rand linrad and pressed U to setup the sound.
I am getting audio out of the 2nd sound card but I have yet to learn how to use the BFO 
properly.

Conclusion:

I highly recommend this new and inexpensive video card as it has great compatibility and 
does NOT require special linux drivers and works well with svgalib using the VESA setting. 
Mandrake linux 9 has a built-in driver that recognizes it automatically. Running Harddrake 
(hardware configuration utility) I have the linux video card driver set for 1024 x 768 x 16
bits.



Need help:

  I have printed out Leif's pages and also have the Dubus article here. Yet I am still 
unclear how to setup all the parameters and use the program as effectively as Leif or 
Roger.  I would be very appreciate of help.


Linux and linrad working but I am having trouble with linrad bugs especially when 
trying to play pre-existing linrad data files.


Leif answers:

        > Linux and linrad working but I am having trouble 
        > with linrad bugs especially when trying to play 
        > pre-existing linrad data files.

        I found the above among the WA6KBL Linrad 
        Installation Data.

        Please send bug reports to me. Directly or via
        this list.


        73

        Leif