Older cptrs

[Gregory J. Neumann]

Hi, JJ!

GREAT Idea!
I have some old ISA & VLB VGA cards, but don't expect to run X very well.  Are the 
boards are ISA or >GASP!< VLB??  Some DEC Etherworks3 ISA NICs ... not much other 
hardware.  Maybe some 4 Meg 72 pin SIMMs ... LOTS of 30 pin 1 Meg SIMMs!  (Remember 
them??)  Maybe a 40 MEG HD, but nothing larger, and only 5.25" floppy drives, not 
very helpful in that department.  :-(  I'll bring the 10baseT hub again.

BTW, speaking of old hardware ... I found a "gotcha" in the Mandrake 8.1 install 
... The DEFAULT monitor is a High Frequency Super VGA monitor, well, that's NOT 
what I have, and because it's Xwindows, you CAN'T easily change it if you blindly 
accept it!  The default video mode drives older SVGA monitors berserk and may very 
well blow them out!  I'm not impressed w/ an install that can seriously do damage 
to hardware just by accepting the default.  Good thing I was working on the other 
computer (which also has an incompatable monitor!) while my daugher was running the 
install and rescued things before any damage was done.  A rank newbie would just be 
appalled and confused and SOL if the monitor blew.  I tried to fix things using 
xf86config, but Mandrake blissfully ignored any changes I tried to make!   Just one 
of the "hazards" of installing the newer distros on older hardware I guess.  It's 
back to good ol' reliable :-D Slackware! :-D for my daughter and me!  By the time 
she shows up for the next meeting, she'll be a "Slackware Babe"! ;-)

-Greg

> I have two smaller tower cases that have MB and ~P75 chips and a little memory, they
> have video (1 does) and I can slap on some ISA nics.  THey need floppy drives and
> hard drives.
> 
> I will brig them Sunday and donate them to teh group for people the use and
> practive on.  If anyone has strange hardware or old hard drives they can doante
> bring them along, sound cards old speakers etc will also be welcome...
> 
> 
> JJN
> 
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