63 new of 290 responses total.
re #227: there's nothing particularly awful about ndiswrapper and it's very, very useful in cases where the manufacturer (I'm looking at *YOU*, Broadcom..) won't release details necessary to implement a native driver. The Dell laptop I use for work has a built-in broadcom wireless chip that isn't supported by Linux except through ndiswrapper. However with the hardware emulation mode that ndiswrapper provides it works very well (better, seemingly, than it does in Windows, as odd as that may be..)
Re: #226. Sorry, I've no idea how much memory ndiswrapper takes up, as I'm not using it at the moment. But my comments on the subject were addressed to ball. Re: #227. More hideous than running UN*X under VMware? More hideous than having no net access or not running UN*X at all? Re: 228, Broadcom: Let's look together. re: 228, ndiswrapper: Hah. Hahah. Hahahah. Oh, I larfed.
Somebody with ndiswrapper please let us know its memory usage before I bother with it. DSL (50MB of Debian on live CD) may support it if you download an extra package of applications. Ubuntu Live might support it too, but we don't have 128MB of RAM on our laptops to run that huge GUI in (it won't run at all with less, not sure if DSL will accept 32MB). I will try the card once in Win98 at the public library. My 2.4.31 kernel won't work at all with USB - crashes with uhci. I modelled it on something that works and just added usb-uhci (as module) and removed a bunch of things that did not look essential (various USB scanners, cameras, serial adaptors, ISDN modems). My kernel config is at http://keesan.freeshell.org/bl/2.4.31/configsy.431 - all help appreciated. And when I tried using this setup to compile rtl8180 it would not compile anyway and INSTALL says I need to hack Makefile for 2.4, and 2.6 is easier. 2.6 takes too much RAM and is ridiculous for a 100MHz laptop computer.
Re #229: More hideous than finding natively supported hard- ware, although in some cases (such as hardware built into laptops) I can see that's not always practical.
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> And Running Unix sucks. As opposed to what? Windows?
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I suspect Plan 9 has more scant hardware support even than NetBSD ;-)
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Out of interest though, what makes Plan 9 good?
Having more than one machine spare! And sorry, but they got the Plan 9 windowing system VERY wrong, unless they now believe in dictating policy as well as implementation. In which case, both the windowing system and they are wrong.
Re #238: ?
?[3~[3~
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> they get it in their heads that the way Linus et al do it is the One > True Way This is probably because Linux is the first unix-like operating system these people have ever used. It was pretty much that way with me.
Hey, at least Linux and X11 are actually used by lots of real people to get useful stuff done. Plan 9 seems to be mainly a platform for generating superior attitudes and academic papers on operating system design.
Re #241: I'm not so sure about Linux, but I like X. I like the ability to run a client program on whatever machine happens to be most appropriate and have its output display to (and keyboard/pointing device input from) whatever machine happens to be in front of me. I also like the fact X makes no attempt to dictate my choice of window manager. I imagine X predates Linux and it's developed by different people.
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X works for me. It's nice that it's cross-platform too. Is Plan 9's windowing system confined just to Plan 9?
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I think there's also an X11 wm that's meant to look like rio. You're right, Dan. X11 DOES suck. And so does UNIX, whatever flavour. The trouble is, they're SO much better than That Other System in SO many ways, and Plan 9 is SO little known, that its suckiness is (almost) irrelevant. Now, if I'm wrong about the window manager thing, then fine. But don't assume I'm just some ignorant Linux fanboy. I also use (and happen to prefer) FreeBSD on one machine. I can also see lots of areas where linux went wrong, like kernel module support. But I suspect that unless you're a kernel programmer (which I'm not), and/or you have a few machines kicking around that you can power constantly just to have a distributed OS (which I don't), then Plan 9 really wouldn't look much more attractive to you than Linux/BSD. (As an aside, imho Plan 9 still doesn't do device management correctly: /dev/dev/ and /dev/devctrl is certainly an improvement over /dev/dev/ and ioctrl, but the OS should include facilities for decoding whether what's written to /dev/dev is a command or data, instead. As for the bad old days; point taken. But I know that lots of people prefer, and always have preferred, developing for UNIX rather than Windows, and developing for Mac OS Classic (especially early versions) sounds like a nightmare. Let's face it, aside from some shining lights (now sadly mostly dimmed), programming graphical applications on just about ANY platform in the eighties must have been the GUI equivalent of batch-mode-only OSES. Did I mention it sounds painful?
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Is Plan 9 free software?
Re: 249. OK, maybe that ouldn't work! Re: #250. What's your definition of "Free software"?
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Re: #252. "Approved by the OSI" does not mean that it is approved by Richard Stallman and the GNU/Free Software Foundation people. The OSI-approved software stack *includes* (all?) software approved by the FSF, but the reverse is not necessarily the case.
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And I quote: "...There was a shakey start with Stallman and the OSI people..."
r#253: thankfully RMS hasn't got the right of veto for software worldwide.
I think I should network my next home with Ethernet (probably a combination of 10baseT, 100baseTX and perhaps 1000baseT over cat-5e and RS-485 (over Cat-3?)
)
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Re: #259. I see. For one, your original statement implied, or at least I took it as implying, that RMS and the OSI were "intimately connected" in the way that RMS and the FSF are. I didn't realize that the OSF had merely "taken his side". For another, RMS/FSF advocate free software, not merely "Open Source", which the OSF is "responsible" and which looser definition merely *includes*, but is not restricted to, free software. Re: #256. Why should Stallman, or anyone, give anyone the right to use, modify, and distribute software they've distributed *with source*, without requiring them to either (a) give credit to the original authors, (b) distribute either the original, or their modified, source under the same conditions as the source they got in the first place, (c) pay up, or (d) some combination of the preceding? Might as well work one's rear end off to buy a High Definition, Widescreen, Digital Television, then give it to the nearest beggar, complete with generator. The only people who really want to have the right not to distribute source are those who are interested in getting something for nothing and charging for the privilege.
Charging others for the privilege, that is.
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The Linksys wireless card works in Windows (I think, we have no signal to test it on but the driver CD installed drivers and found the card). A neighbor lent us a Netgear card to try with linux, but it needs the same linux module. I got the source code at Driverguide (Realtek's links are broken) but can't compile it - I get lots of warnings and then an error. I downloaded the Win98 driver for it (about 100K) and unzipped to get a .sys and a .inf file. Obviously this is not the self-installing type of driver. How do we feed it properly to Win98? I want to test it before returning it to the neighbor so he will know if it works. (He sleeps until late afternoon). We also found a Yahoo camera setup exe that installed itself somewhere or other but we have no idea where. Jim fixed the camera somehow. .1 MP. Serial cable, not working with our DOS Photopc download software.
Is that a Webcam? What make & model? I recently got one that works with NetBSD (probably Linux too). Mine is a Logitech Quickcan Chat. Once I have DSL, I will try video- conferencing with it.
Tiger Direct Yahoo Digital Camera. Blue and yellow, 320x200, stores 20 low res photos. We installed the software (ran the .exe file) and I have no idea where it was put. An online review said to reboot to use it so we plugged in the camera and 10 min later got back into Win98 and still had no idea how to download a photo. 1.1MB .exe file, no instructions for use. We took the laptop computer with wireless card to the library. A librarian helped us fill in the same long number on two lines and we still have no connection. Jim plugged in his USB memory stick to a computer there and it does not work. The library said they will fix that eventually. There is a floppy drive but we can only get small files onto it and the whole point was to download things like kernel source. Win98 would not work with the USB stick so we used a 1-floppy linux to transfer 2.8MB of file for the other wireless card from my linux download. Win98 says it cannot find some files it needs. We seem to have Win98FE. The first card is said to have worked on a friend's computer, I wonder how. I am going to get out some paper books and go home now.
In case this helps, I found a few random pages on the Web that seem to suggest that uses the STM STV680 chipset. I don't know whether Linux drivers are available, but if the camera supports a removeable flash card (like my cheap digital still camera, which uses Smartmedia cards), you may be able to mount those cards in a suitable reader and read that way the pictures you take.
The card has about 100Kbytes of built-in RAM, not a flash card. The only mention I found for it for linux was that nobody had any idea whether it worked and to let them know if it did. My expensive Olympus digital camera uses Smartmedia cards (for which I have a reader that works in linux but not DOS) and it also comes with a serial download cable that works in linux or DOS (40K, fits onto a book disk). Can you find linux software for the camer? It apparently takes nighttime photos via infrared flash and Jim wants to try it for fun. A grexer gave it to us. It is reviewed under 'toys, other'.
My wife recently bought an Olympus digital camera. I suspect (althought I have yet to confirm this) that it supports the umass standard and should work directly with systems like NetBSD and Linux. I'll look for open-source drivers for your Yahoo Digital Camera.
The Olympus camera I bought 4 years ago worked as a USB mass storage device, as does the one I bought earlier this year. I'm sure yours will as well.
Nice job Olympus! ;-)
Mine is never going to work as a USB mass storage device because it only comes with a serial cable. The card reader is mass-storage. I found STV0680.c linux software but it seems to be for USB. I also found two other Win98 drivers to try next with the Yahoo camera. The camera is said to also need Video4Linux (maybe to act as a webcam? Maybe to take single photos while acting as a webcam?). Someone using it with Windows said just to plug it in and reboot to download photos, which is all we are after. Lots of other cheap cameras (spycam, pen camera) use this chip.
I don't know if this helps...
http://gkall.hobby.nl/stv680-aiptek.html
...or if it supports the RS-232 cable option.
Have you tried sane or gphoto?
I have SANE set up for a scanner. I deleted the qcam parts, which I think are for webcam. I read about gphoto - it is about a 5MB download with dozens of dependencies, and most things won't compile on my system. Today we tried three Win98 drivers and they all installed but there are no instructions about what to do next. This camera has a serial cable. Jim just wants to play with it a bit and take infrared flash shots and I am not going to knock myself out trying to compile a huge program, one little bit of which downloads images from this toy camera. How does one use a camera that is not USB in Windows? It installed a couple dozen files, I think. The third of these Win98 packages is 1.1MB. It put files stv* into c:\windows\system : cfg, dll, sys, drv. Ten files. Maybe the batteries ran down? It has stopped beeping when we reboot.
It's some time since I saw a digital camera with a serial interface. That was an old Apple QuickTake (I forget which model, but perhaps all of them had serial ports). If the supplied software doesn't work with your camera, I don't know what to suggest, since I doubt there's a serial equivalent of umass.
It probably does work, we just don't have any instructions how to use it. Our other two serial cameras work with 40K of Photopc software in DOS or linux, for downloads, or to list what is on there, remove it, rename it, etc. I don't know what the 1.1MB of Windows software is supposed to do, or how. umass - usb-storage? I will look into qcam (SANE).
I am about to try compiling a PCMCIA kernel to use with the 133MHz laptop and the wireless card. Can someone give a simple summary of how to go about this? I have kernel source code in /usr/src/linux-2.4.31 (linked to /lib/modules/2.4.31/build) and I think I put the pcmcia-cs package there and unpack it and run a make config on that package as well as for the kernel.
Re resp:222: Good luck finding a USB wireless adapter that works with MacOS. I never did. I found one D-Link model that was supposed to, but the drivers were terrible and made MacOS unstable. Re resp:248: Actually, I think a problem with X11 is that there *are* so many options. Instead of having one or two window managers that are really good, and one or two sets of widgets and interface standards to support, there are dozens of half-baked ones. The network-oriented operation of X also made it slow, which has since inspired three or four direct rendering methods, all of which are (of course) incompatible with each other.
Better dozens of half-baked ones to choose from than one half-baked one you're forced to use.
Jim mentioned to people that we were trying to get PCMCIA and modems working so someone in his Dawn Ducks group gave him two external 56K (probably v92) and a router with an Airwire 330TX Maxgate. Maxgate is made by Umax and I could not find any drivers for it there. I could not find Airwire 330TX on the web. I found Addtron AEF-330TX which uses the same chip as Accton EN1217 according to BSD, and the Macronix 98713 chip, which is supported by tulip but may need something special done during compilation. I will try it anyway, precompiled module from Slackware. This card plugs into a PCMCIA slot in a box that also has a printer port and two ethernet ports labelled PC and hub and one wider WAN? port. What gets plugged into each of these? Do we plug something from the ISP (if we have DSL) into one port and a hub into the other into which we can plug several computers (if we don't want to use wireless)? I presume we can take this same wireless card and put it into a laptop computer to take to the library. What is the WAN used for and how?
Re #277: I was really hoping to use NetBSD, but my iBook's firmware wouldn't boot from an ffs partition. I tried OpenDarwin, but it was dismal. Perhaps I'll try putting the NetBSD kernel on a small Darwin partition and making the rest of the disk ffs. Failing all that, I'll need to find MacOS X Panther on CD. Re #279: What is the make and model of the mystery box?
MaxGate UGate-3300 Wireless Sharing Router with Print Server.
UMax has links to linux drivers for its routers, but they are broken. I tried to write them and they returned my mail. THey use sorbs blacklist.
Re #277: http://www.macwireless.com/html/products/11g_11b_cards/11bUSB.php
Re #281: http://www.homenethelp.com/web/review/ugate-3300.asp
Re resp:283: Wow! That's steep! I think the D-Link model (which works fine with Linux, but not with MacOS) cost $60.
When compiling a PCMCIA kernel, if I am going to use precompiled modules do I answered N or M to CONFIG_PCMCIA? I tried both ways. If I don't have APM and PNP and I get messages about them being unresolved symbols while using precompiled modules, do I need to answer Y to them or compile my own modules?
I think you need CONFIG_PCMCIA to provide the framework the other PCMCIA modules work with. I'm not totally sure, though. I don't compile many kernels from scratch anymore.
I had to answer N in order to compile directly within the downloaded pcmcia package instead of using the precompiled modules. It works now except Cardbus has a bus and does not work. The precompiled modules for some reason did not work with the precompiled kernel so I had to compile kernel and modules in two steps. Answering Y would have compiled drivers into the kernel, M would have NOT compiled any drivers, N lets you compile them yourself afterwards. Very confusing, and now I need to learn to use /sbin/hotplug and maybe some other scripts in order to use regular PCI modules with Cardbus cards.
HACKED BY GNAA LOL JEWS DID WTC LOL
My networked home now has an 802.11g LAN in addition to a small 10baseT LAN in the study. The wired LAN connects via the wireless LAN and then DSL to the Internet. AT&T DSL registration requires access to MS Windows.
You have several choices: