Re: Shit Happens...

On Sun, 2 Mar 2003, Tyler Dauwalder wrote:

[...]
> > I mentioned in an earlier mail, that I have another box (a dual
> > PIII-500)
> > which is unstable. In fact it's much worse than just unstable. Some
> > days
> > ago I tried to transfer an ISO image via network to it, which always
> > ended
> > up with a wrong MD5 sum. Finally I split it into some 100 1MB pieces
> > and
> > transferred those. For about 20% of the files a wrong check sum was
> > reported. Interestingly, when the check was run a second time, the bad
> > files weren't the same ones. This happened with different HDs, so I
> > suspect some controller (PCI or IDE) is broken. I wonder, if one can
> > still
> > get those mainboards with BX chip set.
>
> Boy, I bet obsolete dual processor boards are tough to dig up. Even a
> single processor board would be better than nothing, though, I suppose.

Well, I'll first check whether it is really the board, and if so, I guess,
at least second hand is not too bad a chance. I'm a bit sceptical buying
hardware components second hand, though.

> > I'm writing this mail on my last box, a sturdy, old PPC machine. I
> > don't
> > think, I will do any OBOS development on it, since 1) the build system
> > does work with gcc only -- that could perhaps be fixed (at least for
> > the currently interesting stuff), though I couldn't even check
> > whether I
> > break the gcc build with it
>
> I'd be happy to help check/debug this from the gcc end, though.

Thanks.

> > -- 2) the machine is simply too slow for
> > our
> > build system (I suspect the mere startup of Jam (reading Jamfiles +
> > header
> > scanning) would take a minute or longer),
>
> Don't know how it'd compare, but I've done work on my parent's
> PII-233... It kinda sucked, but I just learned to really make builds
> count. :-)

:-)

> > and 3) I somehow suspect the
> > disk_scanner module code not to be endianess aware (at least the
> > partition module isn't).
>
> Argh. Mine isn't either. It didn't occur to me at the time, I'm sad to
> say (though it'd be fairly easy to fix).

Earlier or later we should definitely fix it. But I suspect, there is
little chance, that there will be any alternative processor to x86
compatibles till R1. So it's not critical for the time being.

> > To cut a long story short, I will either need to get my desktop
> > machine
> > running again or get a new laptop before I will be able to continue to
> > contribute. Unfortunately my financial situation isn't so great, that
> > I
> > wouldn't need to think about it.
>
> Well, I hope you manage to get something worked out, but certainly
> one's financial priorities must come first. If there's anything I can
> do to help get things working, let me know.

Thanks. I think, I made up my mind, and I will buy a new machine rather
soon. I'm actually a bit surprised how much the prices for laptops have
dropped. One can get quite a hell of a machine for like 1500 bucks. My old
one including a network adapter and a modem was almost twice as expensive.
So, I'll investigate some days and scratch the money together in about a
week or two at the latest.

> > BTW, any hints regarding compatible laptop hardware? AFAIK the Radeon
> > mobility is well supported,
>
> Radeon support is wonderful, even for funky resolutions (e.g. 1450xXXXX)

That's what I heard, too. :-)

> > but e.g. soundwise I've no idea.
>
> Mine doesn't work, so I'll look it up tomorrow and let you know (it's
> terribly late at the moment...). My wireless card is unsupported as
> well.

My old sound card, a ESS Maestro 2e, didn't work either. There was even a
driver, but it crashed and Daniel Berlin never cared to answer my requests
for the source code. :-(
So at least it wouldn't be worse, if the sound card wasn't supported, but
I hope for an improvement, of course. :-P

CU, Ingo