From: U001295@HNYKUN11.URC.KUN.NL (R. Schalk) Subject: STORY and warning about compatibility Date: 8 Jun 1993 16:52:29 GMT
This is a story about compatibility issues:
Here at our university we use as standard pc's Laser computers. We have a
a number of 386sx's and they're being phased out by 486SX's. Well on our
386SX's Linux would work perfectly. So was the case of the first 486SX's
everything worked great. But Laser send us newer systems after that, and
voila: Linux didn't work anymore (Oh yeah we use SLS) after the message
if you would a svga mode yes or no, everyhting was stuck. I thought well
the keyboardcontroller is broken. We also changed the zillion of parameters
in the cmos setup, to no avail. These systems ran ms-dog and ms-widows quite
ok (as far as that's possible). We tried 386bsd, same result. SCO, same result.
Hmmm this was time that we talked to the supplier, and they solved the problem
within two weeks. We got some new keyboard controllers, and everything
worked again. An important thing, I've seen more computer systems behave
exactly like this and every system used ami bios. (For the people who don't
know this: bios and keyboard controller are coupled: also in the keyboard-
controller there's a little piece of rom). So I guess that AMI has made a
slight error in their latest??? bios version, well to be exactly in their
keyboardcontroller.
Morale: if your system doesn't start linux after the video message and
the same bootdisk does work on an other system, get a new keyboardcontroller
from your supplier.
I hope that people who have trouble with this kind of problem are helped
this way. We had good luck that our supplier reacted correctly by supplying
the new controller for free, I hope every manufacturer would do the same!!!
Greetings Linux-fans,
Ronald Schalk
********************************************************************
* ing. Ronald Schalk *
* sectie COOS *
* Universitair Centrum Informatievoorziening (UCI) *
* Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen (KUN) *
* e-mail : R.Schalk@uci.kun.nl snailmail: Geert Grooteplein 41 *
* tel. : +31 80 617993 6525 GA Nijmegen *
* fax : +31 80 617979 Nederland *
********************************************************************