Computer again.

As I wrote about in Getting there… and Upgrade still not going well… and So how *does* one de-upgrade a computer?, I’m not having much luck with Linux 2.6 and Fedora Core 3 on this machine.

In the past couple of days, I’ve tried jumpering all my drives to “Cable Select” instead of straight Master/Slave. I’ve tried moving the second hard drive to the slave position on the first controller instead of master on the second. I’ve tried unplugging the CD-ROM. All along I’ve been trying SMP and non-SMP kernels. No dice. I’ve verified that hdparm -I reports the same on both 2.4 kernels and 2.6 kernels.

Luckily I’ve got a working Knoppix 3.6 CD now, which includes both kernels. So I can boot in 2.4 and run my test and verify that it works, then boot with 2.6 and verify that it still fails.

Ok, I’m nearly out of ideas. But not entirely. A couple of things:

  • The TYAN web site has a BIOS upgrade for my machine. The cryptic change log says that it fixes “IRQ Routing”, whatever the hell that means. I’ll try flashing the bios. Hey, it couldn’t hurt right? (Famous last words – I’ll probably kill the motherboard dead with this.)
  • I’ve got another machine here – I’m going to try the drives in it with the Knoppix disk, and try its drive in this machine with the Knoppix disk. That way I can tell if it’s the motherboard or the drive that doesn’t like the 2.6 kernel.
  • As a last resort, I suppose if somebody twisted my arm I could buy a SATA card and a big honking SATA drive and put that in instead of the drive that’s giving me problems. 200Gb SATA drives are only $100 or so, and a card would cost, what, $30 or so?

One thought on “Computer again.”

  1. It’s a hideous and unpleasant thought, and as I really admire and respect what you do for us, Paul (NO SARCASM!), I have refrained from voicing it until now, but frankly, you would not have had this much hassle with Windows 2000.

    (Always assuming you had pre-downloaded SP4 and all the patches for remotely-exploitable vulnerabilities then installed them before you even thought about entertaining the gist of the inkling of a notion of contemplating the act of considering the idea of expressing an inclination to go online…)

    (…as opposed to NT4, or XP, or anything else from the House of Gates…)

    (…and assuming there’s not something fundamentally screwed about your mobo…)

    (…and – oh, fuck it! Good luck and God Bless.)

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