HAHA! I win!.. and lose....

[Kaiser Erik]

I hate XP.. it's that simple... It's the shittiest OS I've ever used..I made a Tri-Boot system.. Yay me! With Redhat Linux 9, win98 and Win XP.. yay me... the Redhat linux is cuase Linux rocks... 98 cuase It's the only windows I like.. and XP so I can accually play games that are new...But XP is so SLOWWWW... even on a 1.8ghz 516meg system... It's slow... and it fucked up Mozilla.. all my Gesters and bookmarks got reset for some reason... it makes me sad...And I killed 98 somehow... don't know how... I need to get a win98 boot disk so I can save 98... Lucky me though, I can get to my music still..yay!I want 98 back!I would just go to Linux.. but it can't use my built in ethernet and soundcard... makes me sad....I want win98 back.. I hate XP!.. it's the slowest Winblows yet... my 98 set up would shut down in 3 seconds or less... this takes a whole minute to shut itself down... I HATE IT!But at least it has the drivers I need...Yay me... Kaiser Erik of Shireroth.Duke of BrookshireNot dead yet...

[Rakesh86]

Win98 SE was by the best operating system out there (in the Windows arena)I solve the damn operating system problem (since I also love Linux) by using a couple external HDs with seperate operating systems ...Yeah, XP def is not what it was all hyped to be. There's a few "tweaker" programs that might improve efficiency

[AnnMarieTheOne]

Okay Erik, no time like the present...so, if I am going to make sense, it would be much appreciated if you also made sense.So, perhaps we can work together and reach this middle ground, then perhaps, the rest will follow, and then we all can make sense...and have ourselves a sensible time?!Make sense?*smiles*First off, you can begin by explaining or defining for me what exactly you mean by XP and win98 and Linux, etc...in that post you just made. Yes, I gather they are OP's (operating systems) however, by the grammatical usage contained within your message, it appears that there is a deeper meaning to all this in the arrangement of how you presented your words. Please help make sense of this to me...Thanks!This is nice!

[Ari Rahikkala]

Quote:I would just go to Linux.. but it can't use my built in ethernet and soundcard... makes me sad....Since we seem to be having technical problems trying to discuss over AIM, here's what I gleaned...http://www.allpcmac.com/store/hp...-1668.htmlOK, this says that your integrated sound system is AC97. I'm not sure if we're supposed to be interested in that - AC97 seems to be on every damn motherboard nowadays and just plain everything supports it... in any case, what's more interesting is that your motherboard's chipset is Intel 845. This means that your sound drivers need to support ICH (I/O Controller Hub, some Intel thingy). The OSS driver for it is under CONFIG_SOUND_ICH and ALSA driver under CONFIG_SND_INTEL8X0 - if you know how to configure a kernel, you should be able to find an enable those... unfortunately, however, you're using RedHat and I don't have the slightest idea of how its sound configration works. If you don't think you can do anything else, just open the first sound configuration program you can find and click around until you find one or more of the techy words I mentioned .As for the Ethernet, it's very likely that e100 (CONFIG_E100) is the right driver for that controller. See support.intel.com/support.../21397.htm , appsr.intel.com/scripts-d...Intel.aspx and your local kernel documentation outlet. Mitä minä todella sanoin

[Zirandorthel]

Gibberish! All gibberish!*goes and hides behind Bill Gate's checked shirt sleeves*You'll protect me, Mr. Gates, won't you??*little did Eoin know that the seemingly protective multi-billionaire was actually about to squeeze the life out of his victim. So die idiots who use XP because it came with their computer...*That one-minute shutdown thing is fricking annoying, I thought it was just my computer to start with, as all computers I touch eventually get slower and slower and then die, but I find it's an almost universal problem, perhaps to prevent people turning their computers off! BIG BILLY IS ALWAYS WATCHING! ZirandorthelThe Golden DarknessNiirus Tinenetuwar"In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God."-Stephen Braveheart

[Ryan]

*looks to Ari's post*I told you all he was bred in one of Nokia's cloning vats.

[Ari Rahikkala]

Quote:it appears that there is a deeper meaning to all this in the arrangement of how you presented your words. Please help make sense of this to me...It's simple. Computing is not only a hobby and definitely not merely a technical issue. It is a way of life . Mitä minä todella sanoin

[Zirandorthel]

Heh, I didn't notice you said that, AnnMarie (I presume you wish us to refer to you as that now). Arrangement of words to have an intended meaning....welcome to "language". It's a weird little town, population 6 billion, but we like it. ZirandorthelThe Golden DarknessNiirus Tinenetuwar"In order to find his equal, an Irishman is forced to talk to God."-Stephen Braveheart

[Ari Rahikkala]

Bah, now you guys are making me post here . Well, that doesn't matter since I've got nothing else to do while waiting for one dude I asked for help to finish getting it (he needs to start RedHat in a virtual machine - > it takes a while...)Quote:That one-minute shutdown thing is fricking annoying, I thought it was just my computer to start with, as all computers I touch eventually get slower and slower and then die, but I find it's an almost universal problem, perhaps to prevent people turning their computers off! BIG BILLY IS ALWAYS WATCHING!XP optimizes quite a lot of stuff to make start-up faster (parallelizes the start-up of different services, moves stuff onto fast areas of the HD, etc.). I'm not sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if it did something like caching service dependencies at shutdown... meaning that the time it takes to shut down is taken directly from the time it takes to start up. It's a trade-off, but one that makes sense, IMO. When I turn my computer off, I don't stay around watching if it really goes down or doesn't... OTOH, when I start it up, I do definitely want it up ASAP. Quote: *looks to Ari's post*I told you all he was bred in one of Nokia's cloning vats. Hah. Everything I said is understandable, even elementary, to my fellow geeks... but then again, you mehums are so easy to impress with just a few acronyms and big words that I enjoy this kind of threads... Mitä minä todella sanoin

[Ari Rahikkala]

OK... I've gotten the help I needed... except that it wasn't as helpful as it might have been if it had come from a professional RH user... anyway:Just loading the driver modules for those pieces of hardware should be enough to make the distro play nice and allow its autoconfiguration tools to use the hardware. The problem is, you need to load those modules on each boot-up, and you apparently need to know a bit about RedHat to be able to modify /etc/modules.conf (the file which determines what driver modules to load). But hell, I'll try anyway, basing everything I say on what I can guess after reading http://www.mp3dev.org/z1a/modules.conf ...First, try executing (as root) these commands:Quote:modprobe e100This should load the driver for your network card. Check your network configuration tools after using it. Quote:modprobe i810_audioThis should load the driver for the sound card. Check autoconfiguration tools again.. and... hm... at this part, report back and tell what's happened this far. I'll go on writing instructions but only as a reminder for myself...Quote:alias eth0 e100alias sound-slot-0 i810_audio options i810_audio clocking=48000 # really needed on this rig?post-install sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -L >/dev/null 2>&1 || :pre-remove sound-slot-0 /bin/aumix-minimal -f /etc/.aumixrc -S >/dev/null 2>&1 || :This goes in /etc/modules.conf, after adding this (and checking it doesn't conflict with anything that's already there) reboot - there's probably a way to merge the configuration into a running system but I have no idea of how... Mitä minä todella sanoin

[Solitary Poet 8]

AnnMarie, Linux, XP, and win98 are all operating systems for computers. XP is Windows XP and win98 is Windows 98. Erik put all 3 on his computer, and now win98 doesn't work. Birrrrrrrrrrrd Maaaaaaaaan!!!!!~The Solitary Poet of Goldshire

[AnnMarieTheOne]

Erik, you are confusing me and it has to stop. You want sense. Then stop the confusion! Be clear yourself. So I can be clear myself. OKAY?!This is all just computer mumbo jumbo that hasn't any significance, as far as I can tell.

[Kaiser Erik]

Computer mumbo jumbo.. exactly.. Ari and I know what we are talking about.. as do others... THis is a thread about computers.... indeed.. confusing.. to some.. confusing to me? no.. to Ari? No.. hell even Alex is getting it (she's sitting next to me...)..But yes....Ari, I will try those things when Alex brings her Laptop over agian, so I can read it while on my Linux OS... Wheee.. Kaiser Erik of Shireroth.Duke of BrookshireNot dead yet...

[david northworthy beckfor]

i will be trying again with linux soon, now that I have a working pc...soon I will be free of win xp again!and to think I used to distribute linux cd's.... war trophy liberated from Babkha by the Federated NORworthic Liberation Devision (FNORD)

[Phoenix the Risen]

y'know... these Computer Geek threads are likely the only threads in this whole nation which I do not read thoroughly...Maybe because I'm just too lazy to actually comprehend the things said... or maybe it has something to do with that "b--"...-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----Version 3.12GAT d- s+:->+: a--- C++(+++) U?P? L E? W++(-) N- o? K? w(---)O !M-- V? PS(++) PE-(--) Y PGP-t@ 5? X+@ R+(*)>$ tv b-- DI+@D-- G-- e->+++++ h! r++ y-(*)>?------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ Phoenix the Risen - Dutchess Pro-Tempore of Kildare; stand-in for Gryphon the Pure - Political Nuisance but at least She gets the job done. - Official Genkher of Gryphon Avocatio's Cool Short Sig and Gryphon the Pure's Awesome Tables! - "To quote a former Kaiser.... 'Shireroth doesn't give up land....'" ~UEC (Quoting Kaiser Letifer I), In response to claims on the Raynor Isles"To paraphrase a former Kaiser: 'Here! Take Amity for free! And that other half of Mar Sara too!'" ~SaiKar LumEth, (Paraphrasing Kaiser Mog I) In response to UEC"To paraphrase a former angry mob "DOWN WITH THE EVIL LAND-GIVING AWAY KAISER! REVOLT! REBELLION! CIVIL WAR!" ~Scott Siskind, (paraphrasing the Letifer Rebellion group) In response to SaiKar LumEth"I HEARBY QUESTION THE KAISERESS AUTHORITY!" ~Gryphon Avocado (Switching Day)Edited by: Phoenix the Risen at: 11/3/03 5:17 pm

[david northworthy beckfor]

oo....i forgot bout geek code....*runs off to make new one....*-----BEGIN GEEK CODE BLOCK-----Version: 3.1G!(IT)ds++:++a?(--)C++(C+++)$ULP(+)L+E?W+++(++)$No?K-w--(++)$O!M-V?PS+PE@Y(-)PGP-t+5(+)XR?tv--b++DIDGeh!r---!y+------END GEEK CODE BLOCK------ war trophy liberated from Babkha by the Federated NORworthic Liberation Devision (FNORD) Edited by: david northworthy beckford  at: 11/3/03 5:59 pm

[Phoenix the Risen]

No!!! You foooolll!!!! Spaces!!! You must put SPACESSS!!!!((otherwise I cannot use ungeek!!!)) Phoenix the Risen - Dutchess Pro-Tempore of Kildare; stand-in for Gryphon the Pure - Political Nuisance but at least She gets the job done. - Official Genkher of Gryphon Avocatio's Cool Short Sig and Gryphon the Pure's Awesome Tables! - "To quote a former Kaiser.... 'Shireroth doesn't give up land....'" ~UEC (Quoting Kaiser Letifer I), In response to claims on the Raynor Isles"To paraphrase a former Kaiser: 'Here! Take Amity for free! And that other half of Mar Sara too!'" ~SaiKar LumEth, (Paraphrasing Kaiser Mog I) In response to UEC"To paraphrase a former angry mob "DOWN WITH THE EVIL LAND-GIVING AWAY KAISER! REVOLT! REBELLION! CIVIL WAR!" ~Scott Siskind, (paraphrasing the Letifer Rebellion group) In response to SaiKar LumEth"I HEARBY QUESTION THE KAISERESS AUTHORITY!" ~Gryphon Avocado (Switching Day)

[Kaiser Erik]

HAHA!.. 98lives! But I have to change the Bios settings to get to it.. need to change the HD to boot from..Anyhoo... I only need 1 bit of info for Grub... WHERE IS THE FUCKING BOOT SECTOR.. It's not on 1... I somehow found it on 63... But it moved when I fixed win98...So. anyone know how I can find where the boot sector got off to? Kaiser Erik of Shireroth.Duke of BrookshireNot dead yet...

[Ari Rahikkala]

I wouldn't know... I've never had to boot Windows using grub... besides, I'm not sure if I know what you're talking about. Maybe you should, if possible, paste your grub.conf here? Mitä minä todella sanoin

[david northworthy beckfor]

ok.....tried to put lin ux (mandrake) on my pc.......scwered the mbr, and am now having to use an old winxp settup war trophy liberated from Babkha by the Federated NORworthic Liberation Devision (FNORD)

[Kaiser Erik]

the MBR... I can't find it. Grub ussually uses root (hd1,0)Chainloader +1To load windows.. well.. rootnovalidate...but I changed it to Root to see what's happening more...Chainloader basicly says.. right... lmy my job is done here.. here you go other bootloader on hd1,0 your turn. +1 means the first sector on the HDD.. but my I have no bootloader there.... I somehow installed something that replaced my dos boot files and told me they were on sector 63.. so I put Chainloader +63 and it worked.. but the dos boot files were fucked up.... and didn't agree with 98.. So I had to turn my spare POS machine into a 98 machine and grab the good files I needed from it. But when I put them in place... they went to a different sector...unfortunitly.. I can't get at my grub.conf file right now... I still have yet to work on my Linux machine to get the network card working... Kaiser Erik of Shireroth.Duke of BrookshireNot dead yet...

[Ari Rahikkala]

Just remembered... back your tri-boot system's (hd1,0)'s boot sector up before you follow these instructions. Quote:dd if=/dev/hdb of=backup.bootsector count=1 should suffice..Hm... how about just copying the boot sector bit by bit? Boot Linux (you have a LiveCD or something like that, right?) on a W98 box and execute Quote:dd if=/dev/hda of=bootsector count=1 (assuming /dev/hda is the disk where Windows lives). Copy the file "bootsector" over to your tri-boot system and Quote:dd if=bootsector of=/dev/hdb count=1. I have a W98 system and Knoppix so I can provide that file if you've uninstalled Windows or something... Mitä minä todella sanoinEdited by: Ari Rahikkala at: 11/5/03 3:00 am

[Kaiser Erik]

Well, I install win98 on my test machine (another comp I have to experiments.. ).. so I can get the files needed..Quote:dd if=/dev/hdb of=backup.bootsector count=1So this tells Linux to copy the boot sector on hdb. To back it up... but does this mean it's looking at sector 1? "Count=1"..?Oh!Maybe I should make something clear..I have to hdd installed.. a 100 and a 30 gig drive.. the 30gig is set to master, 10gig set to slave. Linux and XP are on the 30gig and 98 owns the entire 100gig. So.. Linux is on hda and windows is on hdb... or hd1,0 to Grub... hd0,0 has linux hd0,1 had XP.. those might be revereced.. Kaiser Erik of Shireroth.Duke of BrookshireNot dead yet...

[Kaiser Erik]

OK.. 3 steps...1 backs up bootsector of hda (the one grub works out of? or Linux/WinXP?)2. would put a new bootsector into place for hdb...3. not sure....I reveresed hda and hdb in your code.. since hda1 has linux.. and hda2 (or was it 5?) has win XP..and hdb1 has win 98.. the 100gig hd is a single partition.. although it has about... 20gig of free space.. not partitioned... not sure why...I'de reclaim it.. but I don't wish to fuck that hd...and lose data..hmmm....LiveCD=bootable CDrom?Just out of curiosity.... and so I know.. what does "dd" do? along with if and of... Kaiser Erik of Shireroth.Duke of BrookshireNot dead yet...

[Ari Rahikkala]

OK... I've done a little research into how x86 boxes boot and... hm... I've become confused. Earlier I just didn't know what I was talking about... hum. Quote:So this tells Linux to copy the boot sector on hdb. To back it up... but does this mean it's looking at sector 1? "Count=1"..?Yes. It begins reading at the beginning of the device - that's sector one. count=1 means reading one record, and by default, one record for dd is 512 bytes - which is the traditional size of one sector in the x86 world.Quote:(19:33:47) ok.. hda is where linux and XP and grub are... just so you know..(19:33:53) so do I want hda instead?No. Your MBR is fine. That's where grub's stage1 is stored. Quote:(19:34:36) LIveCD.. as in.. a bootable CDrom?Yes. Those are pretty useful, you know...So... now... let's go through the lengthy explanation of what is what... I'm just explaining this stuff to myself, really...First, there's the MBR, or the Main Boot Record. There's only one of these per hard disk. It contains the table of primary partitions and the master boot code. The MBR is always the very first thing on a disk. Since it's the very first thing on your HD that gets executed, it's the place where bootloaders install their first-stage code. The MBR is traditionally always one sector (512 bytes) long (theoretically it could be bigger, but the point is that the BIOS reads the 512 first bytes of the first sector into memory and transfers execution to their beginning).Between the MBR and the beginning of the first partition there's a few kilobytes of space. I don't have the slightest idea of whether some software uses this for something or not.After this come the partitions. Each partition consists of a boot record and data. The boot records of the filesystems that old versions of DOS and Windows used were one sector long, but more modern stuff needs more space (for example, the FAT32 boot record is three sectors long, while the NTFS boot record is currently 7 sectors but has 16 allocated in the filesystem structure). I don't really know how, say, Linux filesystems handle this, but I'm assuming that they, too, set aside some space for a boot record...Now, let's see what you have where. In (hd0), aka /dev/hda or "the very beginning of the first IDE disk" you have grub's stage1. It has only 512 bytes of space to live in, which isn't a lot, so I guess it's got more code somewhere else. Perhaps in the free space after the main boot record or wherever. It doesn't really matter since we know that it works anyway. If it loads up Linux, control never gets passed to the boot record of any of the partitions you've installed Linux on - it just goes directly to the kernel. If, OTOH, you decide to boot Windows XP, it uses chainloading which, in a more technical way than you described, loads the boot sector of the Windows partition into memory and passes control to its beginning.You probably knew pretty much all of that... Now, let's see what happens when you're trying to chainload Win98's bootloader... OK, the "root" command is simple. Chainloader is a bit more complex than you probably thought. It uses grub's blocklist syntax:Quote:How to specify block lists========================== A block list is used for specifying a file that doesn't appear in thefilesystem, like a chainloader. The syntax is`[OFFSET]+LENGTH[,[OFFSET]+LENGTH]...'. Here is an example: `0+100,200+1,300+300' This represents that GRUB should read blocks 0 through 99, block 200,and blocks 300 through 599. If you omit an offset, then GRUB assumesthe offset is zero. Like the file name syntax (*note File name syntax::), if a blocklistdoes not contain a device name, then GRUB uses GRUB's "root device". So`(hd0,1)+1' is the same as `+1' when the root device is `(hd0,1)'.If I've understood your description correctly, it's here where the problem lies... there's some crap where the boot record is supposed to be. This should be fixable from inside Windows (with fdisk) if you were able to boot inside it even once... hm... I'll cut this post here, it's too long already... Quote:Just out of curiosity.... and so I know.. what does "dd" do? along with if and of...dd simply copies data. It's useful since you can define *what* data you want to copy pretty carefully. The syntax of its commandline arguments is a kind of an ancient in-joke - as you might have noticed, they're completely different from the arguments of your normal everyday UNIXy apps... if= sets the input file, of= the output file. count= sets how many records to copy, and the normal size of a record (configurable with the bs= argument) is 512 bytes. Mitä minä todella sanoin

[Ari Rahikkala]

Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention a couple of important things among all that rambling...First, I'm not so sure anymore if the first instructions that I gave are so useful... you see, as I mentioned, both the MBR and the partitions' boot sectors contain not only the boot code, but also partition and filesystem information... and that would likely be different between different hard drives, so it's not necessarily safe to just copy boot sectors over.Perhaps... hm... if you booted off a Win98 CD, perhaps with the Linux+XP drive taken out, you could safely recreate the MBR and the first partition's boot sector... the former is done with fdisk /mbr, I don't know about the latter.Second... er, I forgot what else I had to say... Mitä minä todella sanoin

[Ari Rahikkala]

... in fact, if you use fdisk /mbr, you should *definitely* have only the Win98 drive connected, just for safety... or you could fdisk /cmbr... but hey, I don't want to destroy your data... Mitä minä todella sanoin

[Kaiser Erik]

Well.... if I boot win98 with a startup disk.. I can use the sys command to put the system files back in place.. so booting from the floppy at the A:> propt I'de type in "Sys C:" And it would put things back.. but.. it doesn't tell me where. It puts good copies of the core system files back.Now, the interesting thing, is I can go into the Bios and tell it to boot from the slave instead of the MAster... and it will load 98 fine.. with no hitch...I looked at fdisk but couldn't see how to see, or fix the MBR...Quote:How to specify block lists==========================A block list is used for specifying a file that doesn't appear in thefilesystem, like a chainloader. The syntax is`[OFFSET]+LENGTH[,[OFFSET]+LENGTH]...'. Here is an example:`0+100,200+1,300+300'So... if I use that offset length thing.. I can basicly tell Grub.. "Look somewhere in there for the boot sector"? If not.. how can I? Kaiser Erik of Shireroth.Duke of BrookshireNot dead yet...

[Ari Rahikkala]

Quote:Now, the interesting thing, is I can go into the Bios and tell it to boot from the slave instead of the MAster... and it will load 98 fine.. with no hitch...This isn't merely interesting, this is strange... the only difference between Quote:root (hd1)chainloader +1 and telling the BIOS to boot off the slave instead of the master disk *should* be that grub's loaded (and summarily overwritten) at one part... except that... hm, try out this command sequence in grub:Quote:map (hd0) (hd1)map (hd1) (hd0)root (hd1)chainloader +1 Mitä minä todella sanoinEdited by: Ari Rahikkala at: 11/5/03 12:13 pm

[Kaiser Erik]

What does fdisk /mbr and fdisk /cmbr do? reset the mbr? I'll go into the hardware and disconnect the 30giger..and what DOES,Quote:map (hd0) (hd1)map (hd1) (hd0)[quote Kaiser Erik of Shireroth.Duke of BrookshireNot dead yet...