Subj : Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
To : fusion
From : Gamgee
Date : Fri Jun 07 2024 01:34 pm
-=> fusion wrote to Gamgee <=-
fu> On 06 Jun 2024, Gamgee said the following...
Ga> Yes, I also recall fairly frequent problems with Xwindows and graphics
Ga> cards back in those days. I liked Mandrake quite a bit and then
fu> i remember configuring XFree86 came with a giant warning about
fu> how it could damage your monitor.. spent an awful lot of time one
fu> year tracking down the exact specs for some chinese 19" monitor
fu> to attempt both 1600x1200 and 75hz (iirc) paranoid i might damage
fu> something.. that and.. the video card driver was compiled into
fu> the X server itself? something like that. weird times :)
Ahhh yes, now that you say it I remember that too. Defining "modelines"
and refresh rates for certain resolutions. Fun and annoying all at the
same time. :)
fu> on the OS/2 side we just bought from a list. not on the list? too
fu> bad :)
I never got aboard the OS/2 train. Straight from DOS to Win, and
eventually Linux.
Ga> Been there, too. Haha, yeah that stuff was painful. I used to even
Ga> configure and compile custom kernels (on Slackware), thinking I could
Ga> squeeze out more "performance"... Maybe it did, and in those days I was
Ga> on fairly weak hardware so it helped, and was a lot of fun actually.
Ga> But also a lot of work, and I don't bother with that any more.
fu> i used to have to do that for an IBM server i had.. for the SCSI
fu> raid controller.. that whole machine was a giant waste of
fu> electricity. did feel cool the one and only time one of the power
fu> supplies failed and i hot swapped it out. but yeah, i think i
fu> studied the kernel config options for a while before deciding to
fu> just use the slackware one as a template and then add the extra
fu> stuff.
SCSI.... yes there's another big can of worms. Don't remember having to
do anything with that in Linux, but surely did on a CDROM disk changer
(Panasonic, maybe?) under MSDOS that I used on my BBS in the 90's - had
to play with a lot of command-line switches and memory stuff. Loading order
of drivers in autoexec and config.sys, and the like. Pretty satisfying
to get all that working after a lot of effort. I miss those days. ;)
