How do I deal with multiple hardware setups?

Lincoln Peters lincoln_peters at hotmail.com
Wed Oct 31 15:43:29 PST 2001


(Note to everyone who was helping me with the xfs problem: I've found that 
everything works perfectly unless I run red-carpet or someone forgets to log 
out.  As long as neither of those happen, everything runs smoothly. That has 
bought me some time to focus on other things.)

I have the netbooting system at RCHS working well enough that I was willing 
to let a computer-illiterate person use it today.  But I have run into a 
dilemma concerning the hardware that the school is using.

There are essentially two lines of computers that I want to support (for 
now): the Dell Optiplex GX1 and the Dell OptiPlex GX110.  The GX110's 
already work fine; I used them exclusively for testing and configuration 
after the server left my garage.  The older GX1's (which are far more common 
on the campus) are very similar, nonetheless they don't work when I try to 
use them in anything other than text-only mode.

First, here's what I do NOT need to worry about:
CPU: Although the GX1's are PII systems and the GX110 are PIII's, the kernel 
was compiled for 386's. No problems there.
Memory: Both lines of computers have 64MB of memory and no usable swap.  
It's meager, but at least it's consistently meager.
NIC: Although the GX1's use a 3Com "Cyclone" card and the GX110's use a 3Com 
"Tornado". they both work with the same driver.


What does concern me is that the GX1's are equipped with two video cards 
apiece, neither of which matches the single video card in the GX110's.  
However, each GX1 has a single monitor; I don't know why.  So, on the GX1's, 
I need to be able to use an different configuration for XFree86 than what 
the GX110's use, and I need to be sure that the correct video card is used.  
How do I do that?


_________________________________________________________________
Get your FREE download of MSN Explorer at http://explorer.msn.com/intl.asp



More information about the talk mailing list