setting up new hardware

[Timothy Wilson <wilson@visi.com>]

Hey everyone,

I got some new hardware recently, and I wonder if some of you have advice
about getting working with my Debian linux system. I've been using old
hardware so long I hardly know what to do with this nice stuff.

I purged all ISA devices from my system. So now I've got:

1. A 56k USR modem (not winmodem). Win98 puts it at COM5. Where does it go
in Linux?

2. A Creative Live! sound card. There's a driver for it in the 2.4 kernel
config without getting into the OSS sound modules. It plays CDs and all, but
XMMS can't play any MP3s because it doesn't have the right output
plug-ins. The one listed refers to libOSS.so. Should I compile my kernel
with those instead? I generally fairly clueless about setting up sound
hardware.

3. A 30 GB IBM ATA-100 disk. I need to apply the ATA-100 kernel patches to
get this thing running at top speed in Linux. Does anyone know why that
patch isn't included in the latest kernel? Do I have to do any deep hdparm
voodoo to get this disk really cookin'?

<plug type="unsolicited">
I picked up my new goodies at Tran Micro last weekend. It must say that I
was very impressed. They installed everything for me at no charge and even
invited me to bring in any old components that I planned on reusing so they
could install those too. They flashed the BIOS on the M/B to the latest
revision and treated me like an extremely valuable customer the entire
time. I will definitely go back. BTW, I picked up another 128 MB PC133 DIMM
on Monday for $79!! They're having a bit of a pricewar with General
Nanosystems.
</plug>

-Tim

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