OT: Bad Compaq! (wags finger)

[Active8]

I just got a free Compaq Preasario 5451 with 500 MHz AMD K-6, 88 MB
DRAM, 4x4x12 CD R/W, and 13 GB IDE HD. My neighbor's grandaughter is
going to school now and wanted a faster machine. Granny wanted the
huge box the f' out of her basement

I looked it up. First thing I found was that Compaq support is
handled by HP ( I kinda remember hearing that HP aquired Compaq ),
the same SFB AH's that released my old (13 yrs ago?) XU box knowing
full well that the Pentium chip had a floating-point hardware bug.
They also bastardized the chipset.

The bulk of the product reviews on this Compaq machine were
negative. Basically, it's a non-integrated kludge.

I won't complain about getting a POS when it's free. It's now a
pretty decent Linux box. It has an SiS 530rev3 onboard Video
controller and Linux thinks it's a 620 chip. Tried both and I get
higher resolution with it set for 620 so I'll take yes for an answer


What really blew me away was that when I fired it up, it looked like
it was booting from CD ROM. I killed that and found that it was the
Restore CD. So like most teletubby PCs, it came with bundled
software. What's wrong with that?

Well, when you load the friggin' recovery CD, it loads winders 98a,
scammer software, etc. So this is how the thing shipped and it ran
slow. My 90 MHz HP XU was in better shape.

Check device mgr... Warnings... no one ever upgraded the drivers.
All the .cabs were right there on the HD.

So I suppose most OEMs just load from that recovery disk and ship
without any further setup.

Oh well. It's got a Linksys ethernet card, too. I was surprised at
that until I saw the ADSL icon.

I'll stick with building my boxes from OEM parts when it comes to
spending money. I get better support that way
--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Nico Coesel]

Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net> wrote:

I just got a free Compaq Preasario 5451 with 500 MHz AMD K-6, 88 MB
^^^^^

Here is your problem: Anything that has an AMD CPU in it is consumer
game-crap.

I'll stick with building my boxes from OEM parts when it comes to
spending money. I get better support that way

You'll need it. Nowadays you'll really need to test wether your self
build configuration will work or not with a decent load. I've learned
my lessons and buy business and server machines only from HP (Compaq)
or Dell. I never needed their support.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

 

[Jan Panteltje]

On a sunny day (Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:21:17 GMT) it happened nico@puntnl.niks
(Nico Coesel) wrote in <4069aae5.32708892@news.planet.nl>:

Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net> wrote:

I just got a free Compaq Preasario 5451 with 500 MHz AMD K-6, 88 MB
^^^^^
Here is your problem: Anything that has an AMD CPU in it is consumer
game-crap.
HAHAHAHAHAHA Intel envy for AMD64?

How about calling Intel, AMDI?
HAHAHAHAHA
LOL
falling on the gound laughing
so funny
AMD64 RULEZ Intel bad bad bad, ;-)

 

[Active8]

On Tue, 30 Mar 2004 17:21:17 GMT, Nico Coesel wrote:

Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net> wrote:

I just got a free Compaq Preasario 5451 with 500 MHz AMD K-6, 88 MB
^^^^^
Here is your problem: Anything that has an AMD CPU in it is consumer
game-crap.

I know AMDs are favored by lamer gamers, but I don't think that
makes them bad. My friend checked it out and the AMD chips beat the
Intel chips of the same speed. This is my first AMD box.

I'll stick with building my boxes from OEM parts when it comes to
spending money. I get better support that way

You'll need it.

I mean *I'm* the support.

Nowadays you'll really need to test wether your self
build configuration will work or not with a decent load. I've learned
my lessons and buy business and server machines only from HP (Compaq)
or Dell. I never needed their support.

I check the reviews on the motherboards and how they were used and
with what.

I did some programming for a company that bought Dell servers and
workstations exclusively. No probs, really.

Maybe you didn't need their support, but I know a guy who worked
Dell's outsourced tech support so someone needed it. He told another
friend to disconnect his grandfather's USB printer over some totally
unrelated (non-USB) problem, so screw tech support. I know their
hiring practices and know from first hand experience that HP's PC
tech support is staffed with morons, so why go back?

--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[JeffM]

I just got a free Compaq Preasario 5451 with 500 MHz AMD K-6
Active8

Big props to Compaq for being the 1st to clone the IBM PC BIOS.
Beyond that, fuggetaboutit. Proprietary power supplies? C'mon.

What distro do you like?
What's the killer app--or is it just another desktop workstation?

 

[Guy Macon]

JeffM <jeffm_@email.com> says...

Big props to Compaq for being the 1st to clone the IBM PC BIOS.

Are we sure that it was Compaq that did the clean room implementation
of the BIOS? Could it have been Ajwad or Phoenix (possibly under
contract with Compaq)?

http://steve-parker.org/articles/microsoft/ says:
|
| A company called Ajwad set up a team, and showed them IBM's source code to
| the BIOS (these people, having seen IBM's code, could not now write their
| own BIOS). This team then wrote up, from IBM's source code, a detailed
| functinal specification, stating exactly what an IBM-compatible BIOS would
| be required to do.
|
| A second team, who had never seen IBM's code, and were therefore under no
| obligation to IBM's agreement, took this document created by the first
| team, and wrote their clone. This cost around $1m at the time, because they
| not only had to do the work, they had to ensure that it was fully and
| provably documented that they had strictly followed this "clean room"
| method, and therefore not broken the agreement with IBM.
|

http://www.xs4all.nl/~matrix/intro.html says:
|
| The clone manufacturers were forced to develop their own BIOS in a socalled
| 'clean room' situation. The first company to successfully develop their own
| BIOS was Compaq Computer Corp. And it is said that a company called Phoenix
| Software Associates in Norwood has been involved with the development of
| this BIOS.
|



--
Guy Macon, Electronics Engineer & Project Manager for hire.
Remember Doc Brown from the _Back to the Future_ movies? Do you
have an "impossible" engineering project that only someone like
Doc Brown can solve? My resume is at http://www.guymacon.com/

 

[Active8]

On 30 Mar 2004 18:05:35 -0800, JeffM wrote:

I just got a free Compaq Preasario 5451 with 500 MHz AMD K-6
Active8

Big props to Compaq for being the 1st to clone the IBM PC BIOS.
Beyond that, fuggetaboutit. Proprietary power supplies? C'mon.

Yeah. I noticed they designed that mini tower so everything's
buggering it's neighbor. How the air from that weak assed fan gets
past the ribbon cables is beyond me. The PS case is a box on a
bigger box, but at least you can flip it up and if you don't want to
disconnect the mobo ( a kid's hand might fit down there ), two
screws drops it out so you can get to the drive bays. PITA, if you
ask me. I build mine in full towers regardless of the app. I fill
all the fan mounts, too.

What distro do you like?

Last boxed set I bought was RH 7.1 deluxe Workstation. I also like
FreeBSD.

You?

I think I'd like to try Mandrake. IIRC, it installs with (most?)
everything disabled so you don't have to run around shutting down
possible security holes.

What's the killer app--or is it just another desktop workstation?

This one will be for developement, but I may also use it for a
server and turn the old server into a diskless LRP box. C++, python,
PHP, some CAD maybe, that kind of stuff. If I can run the CADs I
have on the winders box under WinE (connect a shared drive) so much
the better. Never tried since the old linux box won't run X windows.
Onboard AMD ethernet chip (though disabled in CMOS) throws constant
errors to the console, so after install, the monitor goes on the
shelf and I SSH into it from another machine. I need to try
disabling that POS with ifconfig and if that works, keep it from
starting in the first place. I thought I tried that, though.

Oh hell I just remembered. I have Scott Dattalo's gpsim. WTF am I
talking to you for? I gotta get that Cat5 cable fixed so I can
move gpsim to the new box

--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Paul Burke]

Nico Coesel wrote:

You'll need it. Nowadays you'll really need to test wether your self
build configuration will work or not with a decent load. I've learned
my lessons and buy business and server machines only from HP (Compaq)
or Dell. I never needed their support.

I had a customer's IT department on to me about this recently. My PCI
boards use PLX9052s, and they have a wierd bug when used with the Compaq
EVO range- the BIOS recognises them, but doesn't allocate them any
resources. PLX support think that the BIOS isn't allowing enough time
for the 9052 to boot its settings from EEPROM, Compaq simply ignore
emails. Anyway, the IT department want to standardise on Compaqs, my
boards can't use them and I can't give them a workaround, and they would
like a list of all computers that my boards won't run on, please. So I
have a little task ahead of me this week, acquiring one of every model
of computer and running a test on it.

Paul Burke

 

[Active8]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 08:08:12 +0100, Paul Burke wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:

You'll need it. Nowadays you'll really need to test wether your self
build configuration will work or not with a decent load. I've learned
my lessons and buy business and server machines only from HP (Compaq)
or Dell. I never needed their support.


I had a customer's IT department on to me about this recently. My PCI
boards use PLX9052s, and they have a wierd bug when used with the Compaq
EVO range- the BIOS recognises them, but doesn't allocate them any
resources. PLX support think that the BIOS isn't allowing enough time
for the 9052 to boot its settings from EEPROM, Compaq simply ignore
emails. Anyway, the IT department want to standardise on Compaqs, my
boards can't use them and I can't give them a workaround, and they would
like a list of all computers that my boards won't run on, please. So I
have a little task ahead of me this week, acquiring one of every model
of computer and running a test on it.

Paul Burke

That's funny. better check ebay. This compaq box has a brother whose
current bid was under $50 a few hours ago

What do use use for driver developement? I used WinDriver from those
pricks at Jungo for the PLX 9080s The big DMA transfer wouldn't
work. Never again with WinDriver. They can't even comprende enough
English to understand the problem, yet swear all their APIs work
with the 9080.

The PLX 9080 (or the board it was on) has a weird bug of it's own.
The card's Frame line glitches when you initialize the transmitter
and causes a garbage word to get sent and it ends up in the Rx FIFO.
You have to init the Rx after the Tx, IIRC, it's been 3 yrs. You'll
be lucky to find any of the original PLX engineers around, too.
Well, actually, it's the guys from the company that made the PCI
cards that split. I got lucky and spotted a hint of the bug in an
email from a guy that knew WTF. I can't remember the damned name of
the company that stuck the PLX chips on the board either. They had a
proprietary CPLD on them. One of the big flat packs had a pin bent
under and it wouldn't do shit so we got an exchange. $3000 cards.

BTW, I've been checking on those compaqs. I think it was at
wimbios.com or something I found out some of the friggin' BIOS chips
have been crippled. Sometimes you can't install a secondary IDE
drive and stuff like that. In fact, I think winders fixed that cause
I had a 255 MB secondary running and the Linux install hung on it.
Some don't have flash BIOS either but there's a non-dos partition
(I'm reasonably sure I deleted it before partitioning for Linux -
must now use recover disk and all.) where all the tuning and
tweaking code is hidden. Something like 10 MB. Maybe that secondary
will run if I restore that.

This compaq machine is possesed. It may be a program running on
Linux, but the CD R/W tray pops out and goes back in from time to
time - like 5 times in the past half hour. I think it's hungry.
--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Paul Burke]

Active8 wrote:

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 08:08:12 +0100, Paul Burke wrote:

What do use use for driver developement? I used WinDriver from those
pricks at Jungo for the PLX 9080s The big DMA transfer wouldn't
work. Never again with WinDriver. They can't even comprende enough
English to understand the problem, yet swear all their APIs work
with the 9080.

I don't do much complicated with PCI- just basic targets- and I've
always used what used to be Vireo Driver::Agent, then got taken over by
NuMega and renamed DriverAgent, then was dumped. I believe they no
longer support it. These days, I'd probably use TVicHw, which for $300
gives you a royalty- free driver for all your PCI products. That's less
than a days work if you value your time. You can try it out free, too.

<http://www.entechtaiwan.com/dev/pci/index.shtm>

They also do some useful things for other W98/2000/XP.

I really don't know much about Windows drivers, and don't want to or so
far need too!

This compaq machine is possesed. It may be a program running on
Linux, but the CD R/W tray pops out and goes back in from time to
time - like 5 times in the past half hour. I think it's hungry.

You could get a Creationist to excorcise it.

Paul Burke

 

[Active8]

On Wed, 31 Mar 2004 11:11:24 +0100, Paul Burke wrote:

http://www.entechtaiwan.com/dev/pci/index.shtm

They also do some useful things for other W98/2000/XP.

tnx for mentioning price. WinDriver was $1500 for 1 seat.

I really don't know much about Windows drivers, and don't want to or so
far need too!

I've looked at the DDK hard. I think without a real good book, it

may be hopeless.

This compaq machine is possesed. It may be a program running on
Linux, but the CD R/W tray pops out and goes back in from time to
time - like 5 times in the past half hour. I think it's hungry.

You could get a Creationist to excorcise it.

I'd rather get a female to excersize it. The CD R/W, OTOH,... I need
to look at crontab. I did change the BIOS clock between CD tray
episodes.
--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[JeffM]

I think I'd like to try Mandrake.
IIRC, it installs with (most?)everything disabled
so you don't have to run around shutting down possible security holes.
Active8

What? You don't like the M$ way?

Leave EVERY port open--you may need them some day.

Last boxed set I bought was RH 7.1 deluxe Workstation.
I also like FreeBSD. You?

I've dipped in my toe with Knoppix,

but I'm still mostly at the reading/listening stage.
I like the Debian philosophy
but now that other folks have ported apt, and
YaST has been open-sourced (still waiting for Portage), I'm thinking again.
That's the problem with having Real Choices(tm).

What's the killer app ?
developement, but I may also use it for a server

I read about a guy who has a "compile server".

I reckon you've got to have a lot of boxes
and/or do a lot ot OS tinkering
and be *very* demanding in the Performance area to justify that.

:::This compaq machine is possesed. It may be a program running on Linux,
:::but the CD R/W tray pops out and goes back in from time to time
:::--like 5 times in the past half hour. I think it's hungry.
:
"Feed me, Seymour".

WTF am I talking to you for?
I gotta get that Cat5 cable fixed so I can move gpsim to the new box

Don't let me slow you down. Rave on!

 

[Nico Coesel]

Paul Burke <paul@scazon.com> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:


You'll need it. Nowadays you'll really need to test wether your self
build configuration will work or not with a decent load. I've learned
my lessons and buy business and server machines only from HP (Compaq)
or Dell. I never needed their support.

I had a customer's IT department on to me about this recently. My PCI
boards use PLX9052s, and they have a wierd bug when used with the Compaq
EVO range- the BIOS recognises them, but doesn't allocate them any
resources. PLX support think that the BIOS isn't allowing enough time

Are those computers by any chance equiped with PCI-X slots? They say
these slots are backwards compatible with PCI 2.0, but I have my
doubts about it.
At my employer we have had a rough time with our Xilinx based PCI
design in computers with PCI-X slots. IIRC, we had similar problems as
you describe. Luckily we could fix it by upgrading to the latest
Xilinx PCI core.

Anyway, what happens if you disable the board from windows and
re-enable it? Windows should re-assign resources to it.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

 

[Paul Burke]

Nico Coesel wrote:

Are those computers by any chance equiped with PCI-X slots? They say
these slots are backwards compatible with PCI 2.0, but I have my
doubts about it.
At my employer we have had a rough time with our Xilinx based PCI
design in computers with PCI-X slots. IIRC, we had similar problems as
you describe. Luckily we could fix it by upgrading to the latest
Xilinx PCI core.

Anyway, what happens if you disable the board from windows and
re-enable it? Windows should re-assign resources to it.

Hadn't thought of that one. I'll try it out, thanks. But the problem
does seem to be at BIOS level, as by booting the computer with DOS, and
writing to the PCI config registers directly (thanks here to Ralf
Brown), I could get the thing to work OK.

Any idea what it is about PCI-X that causes the f*up?

Paul Burke

 

[Active8]

On 31 Mar 2004 09:48:05 -0800, JeffM wrote:

I think I'd like to try Mandrake.
IIRC, it installs with (most?)everything disabled
so you don't have to run around shutting down possible security holes.
Active8

What? You don't like the M$ way?
Leave EVERY port open--you may need them some day.

Last boxed set I bought was RH 7.1 deluxe Workstation.
I also like FreeBSD. You?

I've dipped in my toe with Knoppix,
but I'm still mostly at the reading/listening stage.
I like the Debian philosophy
but now that other folks have ported apt, and
YaST has been open-sourced (still waiting for Portage), I'm thinking again.
That's the problem with having Real Choices(tm).

What's the killer app ?
developement, but I may also use it for a server

I read about a guy who has a "compile server".
I reckon you've got to have a lot of boxes
and/or do a lot ot OS tinkering
and be *very* demanding in the Performance area to justify that.

Yes. I wouldn't want to run a heavily loaded server *and* try to do
a full build on a large program, like hell, wxWindows takes a fairly
long time to build. In this case, The server will be for CVS and
Apache/MySQL/PHP for testing pages. That won't slow down my compile
time at all.

:::This compaq machine is possesed. It may be a program running on Linux,
:::but the CD R/W tray pops out and goes back in from time to time
:::--like 5 times in the past half hour. I think it's hungry.
:
"Feed me, Seymour".

WTF am I talking to you for?
I gotta get that Cat5 cable fixed so I can move gpsim to the new box

Don't let me slow you down. Rave on!

A quick reconnectorization fixed it. I had that cable wired for
crossover.


--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Ken Smith]

In article <cvj9y8o767c5.dlg@news.individual.net>,
Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net> wrote:
[...]

Linux, but the CD R/W tray pops out and goes back in from time to
time - like 5 times in the past half hour. I think it's hungry.
[.....]

I'd rather get a female to excersize it. The CD R/W, OTOH,... I need
to look at crontab. I did change the BIOS clock between CD tray
episodes.

Resetting or "re-initializing the drive" and popping the CD out and back
in is something CD writer software does sometimes. Are you using
Konqueror?

--
--
kensmith@rahul.net forging knowledge

 

[Nico Coesel]

Paul Burke <paul@scazon.com> wrote:

Nico Coesel wrote:

Are those computers by any chance equiped with PCI-X slots? They say
these slots are backwards compatible with PCI 2.0, but I have my
doubts about it.
At my employer we have had a rough time with our Xilinx based PCI
design in computers with PCI-X slots. IIRC, we had similar problems as
you describe. Luckily we could fix it by upgrading to the latest
Xilinx PCI core.

Anyway, what happens if you disable the board from windows and
re-enable it? Windows should re-assign resources to it.


Hadn't thought of that one. I'll try it out, thanks. But the problem
does seem to be at BIOS level, as by booting the computer with DOS, and
writing to the PCI config registers directly (thanks here to Ralf
Brown), I could get the thing to work OK.

That problem sounds familiar. PCI-tree is a handy tool for debugging
PCI hardware by the way. It even works perfectly under the latest
Windows versions.

Any idea what it is about PCI-X that causes the f*up?

You should compare the specs for PCI-X and PCI 2.0 (these can be
downloaded for free if you look in the right places) if the computer
has PCI-X slots. IIRC the timing is changed slightly. Also the time
allowed for startup is shorter.

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

 

[Active8]

On Thu, 1 Apr 2004 14:06:46 +0000 (UTC), Ken Smith wrote:

In article <cvj9y8o767c5.dlg@news.individual.net>,
Active8 <reply2group@ndbbm.net> wrote:
[...]
Linux, but the CD R/W tray pops out and goes back in from time to
time - like 5 times in the past half hour. I think it's hungry.
[.....]

I'd rather get a female to excersize it. The CD R/W, OTOH,... I need
to look at crontab. I did change the BIOS clock between CD tray
episodes.

Resetting or "re-initializing the drive" and popping the CD out and back
in is something CD writer software does sometimes. Are you using
Konqueror?

It's installed and I used it once. That's a browser, no?

5 times in a half hour? There was no CD in the tray and it didn't
pop right back in, though it did seem to stay out for less time
after the first couple of times.

I'll be retoring the winders 98 system to see if that non-dos
"tweaks" partition comes back. Then I'll install a minimum system
with X windows, upgrade the kernel, and download the latest packages
for all the good stuff.
--
Best Regards,
Mike

 

[Nico Coesel]

jeffm_@email.com (JeffM) wrote:

I think I'd like to try Mandrake.
IIRC, it installs with (most?)everything disabled
so you don't have to run around shutting down possible security holes.
Active8

What? You don't like the M$ way?
Leave EVERY port open--you may need them some day.

Last boxed set I bought was RH 7.1 deluxe Workstation.
I also like FreeBSD. You?

I've dipped in my toe with Knoppix,
but I'm still mostly at the reading/listening stage.
I like the Debian philosophy
but now that other folks have ported apt, and

Hmm, I've been using Debian for the past 6 or 7 years, but their
package management (which was one of the things I liked about Debian
Linux) system has grown into a real pain in the ass. Too many dummy
packages, too many tiny packages that contain only 1 file, so called
'incompatible packages', packages that are really picky about library
versions and packages that have a cross dependanies (for which you
really need the override switches in dpkg to get it installed). Apt is
totally useless unless you install a release. If you want to update an
individual package, apt won't work because it always sees a package
which doesn't belong in the release and then just quits like a genuine
Microsoft product (if minor_problem>0.1 then exit). No way to override
and I don't dare to let apt 'fix' it automatically (I assume
minor_problem *= 100). So, what is the point of having a package
management system when you can't really use it?

--
Reply to nico@nctdevpuntnl (punt=.)
Bedrijven en winkels vindt U op www.adresboekje.nl

 

[The Real Andy]

"JeffM" <jeffm_@email.com> wrote in message
news:f8b945bc.0403310948.4ca37cbb@posting.google.com...

I think I'd like to try Mandrake.
IIRC, it installs with (most?)everything disabled
so you don't have to run around shutting down possible security holes.
Active8

What? You don't like the M$ way?
Leave EVERY port open--you may need them some day.

Actually, the amusing thing is that MS are commencing to ship with ports
closed and firewalling (MS have some fancy name for it) enabled by default.