Re: [Sheflug] A potential Linux user needs help to get started

["Craig Andrews" <nospam [at] fishbot.free-online.co.uk>]

A chipset and a card are totally seperate entities. For instance, the S3
Virge chipset was very popular a couple of years ago, and many cards based
on it were produced.

Although the Virge chipset has a driver (X_S3) the individual cards may not.
This is OK though, as the generic -CHIPSET- driver will work.

If you have a card with an unsupported chipset, you are stuck till a driver
appears. However, if you have an unlisted card, with a  supported chipset,
use the chipset driver.

In short, a card is based upon a specific chipset, and the chipset driver
should be used in preference of the card driver if any problem or
uncertainty exists.

For instance, I have a Creative Blaster Riva TNT2, but there is no driver
for this card. However, the generic TNT2 driver (in X_SVGA) works perfectly.

For a system, try the PC shop on London Road, or Sheffield Computer Services
at Hillsborough.

Best o' luck,

Craig


-----Original Message-----
From: Matt Fairtlough <m.fairtlough [at] dcs.shef.ac.uk>
To: sheflug@vuw.ac.nz <sheflug [at] vuw.ac.nz>
Date: Friday, July 07, 2000 12:10 PM
Subject: Re: [Sheflug] A potential Linux user needs help to get started


>Many thanks to everyone who responded so quickly to my queries.  Several of
>you have suggested that the shop in question don't know what they are
talking
>about, and certainly that seems to be the case for linux systems.  And they
>are offering me such a good price, too :-( The main problems with the
system
>suggested would seem to now be the graphics card/chipset which is not
listed
>as linux compatible by SuSE and the hard disk which isn't mentioned either.
>As far as I can see, the SB PCI128 sound card _is_ compatible, provided you
>use ALSA (which I guess is supported by all Linux distributions??).
>
>Sorry to ask further, but I don't understand the graphics card/chipset
issue.
>Can anyone point me to a guide to this?  What is the difference between the
>card and the chipset?  Is there a real choice of chipset?
>
>Finally:  can anyone recommend a local shop who CAN build a
linux-compatible
>system with reasonably high-spec components?
>
>---------------------------------------------------------------------------
>Matt Fairtlough m.fairtlough [at] dcs.shef.ac.uk
>Verification and Testing Group Room 115
>Department of Computer Science
>University of Sheffield
>Regent Court, 211 Portobello Street
>Sheffield  S1 4DP Tel: (0)114-22-21826
>UK Fax: (0)114-22-21810
>WWW: http://www.dcs.shef.ac.uk/~matt/
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