IBM PS/2 troubles. (And maybe a bit of ranting)
I've got to set up Debian (hamm) on an IBM PS/2 system.
It's a 486sx with 16mb of RAM, the bus's a Microchannel (MCA) one and the
video chip seems to be a XGA-2 Display Adapter /A (directly on the
motherboard). The drive bus is SCSI, and a few other marvels I haven't
figured out. I can access a DOS prompt (linux is on /dev/hda5, which is in
turn under an extended partition, /dev/hda4). My friend has bought it
second-hand so no manuals nor any useful references are available.
Here're the questions:
- How can I get the max of information from the machine? (Model number or
such things) There are no indications on how to reach the BIOS when booting.
All I see is a memory test, and tada! it's already on the OS part of
booting.
- Where can I find useful docs about that? (except the obvious SCSI howto)
- The XServer of choice seems to be either SVGA or AGX. Which you'd
recommend? Also, the SVGA xserver (haven't yet looked at the AGX) specifies
that it's configured for XGA-2 chips on the ISA bus. Is there a workaround
to have it work on a MCA bus?
- How stable/performing is the 2.1.13x kernel MCA bus code? How much can I
rely on that code?
- How much of a performance hit can I expect on compilation jobs from a
kernel math emulator?
- Where in hell can I find a dos-working version of Emacs? The
most-recent/used and linux-version-like please. =P
----
Christian Lavoie
UIN: 947212
E-Mail: clavoie@enter-net.com
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