These are some notes on the setup of my desktop Linux workstation. It is meant as my own documentation and if it helps someone else I'm all the more happy.

I bought the workstation from DALCO in October 2002. In the mean time the motherboard has been replaced due to some problems with the VIA chipset. Here are the technical specification:

• AMD Athlon XP 2000+ (single CPU)
• MSI motherboard, K7N2 (MS-6570) / nVIDIA nForce2 SPP (north bridge) + nVidia nForce2 MCP2 (south bridge)
• 1 GB RAM (2 x 512MB, DDR memory)
• 2 x 80 GB Harddisks, IBM Deskstar 120GXP (U-ATA 100). Now, after IBM sold their hard disk manufacturing to Hitachi Global Storage Technologies, look at Hitachi's page to find the technical specification.
• Matrox Millennium G550DH 32MB DDR AGP graphics card
• 3 1/2 Floppy Disk Drive (1.44M)
• Toshiba DVD-ROM/CD-RW Combo Drive (SD-R1202)
• 3Com 3C905TX-M 10/100MBit Fast-Ethernet ("Tornado")
• Hauppauge WinTV-PVR PCI card
• Hauppauge WinTV-DVB-c PCI card

The information on these pages is meant to describe the current system. I present the "correct" solution and mention problems where I don't want to forget what I have learned. In case I need to reinstall the system there is no point in repeating all the detours. The navigation on this page presents the needed steps roughly in order. Most of the later steps can be rearranged as needed.

Note: as of this writing (April 30, 2003) it looks like the nVidia nforce2 chipset is not fully supported by stock kernels. The 2.4.19 kernel (predating the chipset) I am using right now, allows to set DMA on the IDE devices. However, it seems the implementation is not quite correct. The system feels a little jerky at times. Some more modern kernel versions will not boot (2.4.20 or 2.5.68) or will not allow setting DMA modes in IDE (2.4.21-rc1). As I try to find out more, I will keep some notes on a separate page.

Start with the basic setup.

Information as given by Linux (you can use Knoppix to find this information before installing):

cat /proc/cpuinfo

processor       : 0
vendor_id       : AuthenticAMD
cpu family      : 6
model           : 6
model name      : AMD Athlon(tm) XP 2000+
stepping        : 2
cpu MHz         : 1666.438
cache size      : 256 KB
fdiv_bug        : no
hlt_bug         : no
f00f_bug        : no
coma_bug        : no
fpu             : yes
fpu_exception   : yes
cpuid level     : 1
wp              : yes
flags           : fpu vme de tsc msr pae mce cx8 apic sep mtrr pge mca cmov pat pse36 mmx fxsr sse syscall mmxext 3dnowext 3dnow
bogomips        : 3322.67
  

/sbin/lspci using the /usr/share/misc/pci.ids file from http://pciids.sourceforge.net/ (updated Feb. 11, 2003)

00:00.0 Host bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01e0 (rev a2)
00:00.1 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01eb (rev a2)
00:00.2 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01ee (rev a2)
00:00.3 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01ed (rev a2)
00:00.4 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01ec (rev a2)
00:00.5 RAM memory: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 01ef (rev a2)
00:01.0 ISA bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 ISA Bridge (rev a3)
00:01.1 SMBus: nVidia Corporation nForce2 SMBus (MCP) (rev a2)
00:02.0 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:02.1 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:02.2 USB Controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 USB Controller (rev a3)
00:04.0 Ethernet controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 Ethernet Controller (rev a1)
00:06.0 Multimedia audio controller: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AC97 Audio Controler (MCP) (rev a1)
00:08.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation: Unknown device 006c (rev a3)
00:09.0 IDE interface: nVidia Corporation nForce2 IDE (rev a2)
00:1e.0 PCI bridge: nVidia Corporation nForce2 AGP (rev a2)
01:06.0 Ethernet controller: 3Com Corporation 3c905C-TX/TX-M [Tornado] (rev 78)
01:07.0 Multimedia video controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Video Capture (rev 11)
01:07.1 Multimedia controller: Brooktree Corporation Bt878 Audio Capture (rev 11)
01:08.0 Multimedia controller: Philips Semiconductors SAA7146 (rev 01)
02:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA G550 AGP (rev 01)

/sbin/lspci -n

00:00.0 Class 0600: 10de:01e0 (rev a2)
00:00.1 Class 0500: 10de:01eb (rev a2)
00:00.2 Class 0500: 10de:01ee (rev a2)
00:00.3 Class 0500: 10de:01ed (rev a2)
00:00.4 Class 0500: 10de:01ec (rev a2)
00:00.5 Class 0500: 10de:01ef (rev a2)
00:01.0 Class 0601: 10de:0060 (rev a3)
00:01.1 Class 0c05: 10de:0064 (rev a2)
00:02.0 Class 0c03: 10de:0067 (rev a3)
00:02.1 Class 0c03: 10de:0067 (rev a3)
00:02.2 Class 0c03: 10de:0068 (rev a3)
00:04.0 Class 0200: 10de:0066 (rev a1)
00:06.0 Class 0401: 10de:006a (rev a1)
00:08.0 Class 0604: 10de:006c (rev a3)
00:09.0 Class 0101: 10de:0065 (rev a2)
00:1e.0 Class 0604: 10de:01e8 (rev a2)
01:06.0 Class 0200: 10b7:9200 (rev 78)
01:07.0 Class 0400: 109e:036e (rev 11)
01:07.1 Class 0480: 109e:0878 (rev 11)
01:08.0 Class 0480: 1131:7146 (rev 01)
02:00.0 Class 0300: 102b:2527 (rev 01)