Hi
Well I installed Slackware 10.2 on a Dell Inspiron 3500 and have a few
problems.


First: If I start X and then switch runlevels them my screen dims.

Second: my computer came with a lucent winmodem and I would like to get
that to work on Slackware.

Third: my sound card(Neomagic 256) does not work even though I ran
alsaconf and installed it.

Also when my computer starts up it usually spends a long time at
"starting hotplug activation"? or something like that.
I was wondering what that was useful for and if someone could tell me
how to make it not boot with hotplug....

Thanks for the help

--Daniel

danielmaxson wrote :

> Third: my sound card(Neomagic 256) does not work even though I ran
> alsaconf and installed it.

Then run 'alsamixer' and make sure the soundcard is unmuted, and if you
get sound working the run 'alsactl store' to save the setting you made
in alsamixer.
--
Thomas O.

This area is designed to become quite warm during normal operation.

"danielmaxson" <daniel.maxson@gmail.com> wrote:
> Well I installed Slackware 10.2 on a Dell Inspiron 3500 and have a few
> problems.

Are you using the default 2.4 kernel or the test 2.6 kernel?

> First: If I start X and then switch runlevels them my screen dims.

Switching to another runlevel should probably kill the X process. Reasons
to switch to another run level is to shutdown the computer, reboot the
computer or startup the computer.

Which runlevel do you switch to when the screen dims and what do you mean
by "dims"? Does the screen get completely black?

> Second: my computer came with a lucent winmodem and I would like to get
> that to work on Slackware.

If you are lucky the information at http://www.linmodems.org/ might help
you.

> Third: my sound card(Neomagic 256) does not work even though I ran
> alsaconf and installed it.

Did you unmute the card in the mixer settings? The term "does not work" is
not very descriptive. Please try to elaborate what does not work as
expected and what you have tried to do to make it work.


> Also when my computer starts up it usually spends a long time at
> "starting hotplug activation"? or something like that. I was wondering
> what that was useful for and if someone could tell me how to make it not
> boot with hotplug....

To boot without hotplug you could do "chmod a-x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug".
However, hotplug is rather useful as it is responsible for detecting the
hardware in the computer and load kernel modules (drivers) for the
hardware it finds. It detects hardware both during bootup and hardware
that is later hotplugged into your machine like USB devices.

If you disable hotplug you will have to manually make sure that all
modules for hardware is loaded in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules. If you don't load
the modules things like network- and sound-cards will not work.

I can't say for sure, but to me it seems as if hotplug gets a lot slower
with a 2.6 kernel.

One more piece of advice... There are spambots which search the net for
email addresses to send spam to. Placing an email address on a web page or
somewhere else on the net where it is easy to find will most likely result
in that you get a lot of spam to that address. When posting to usenet news
it would be wise not to use a good email address as the sender.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc8(at)uthyres.com Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@variousus.net root@localhost

"danielmaxson" typed:
> Second: my computer came with a lucent winmodem and I would like to
> get that to work on Slackware.

I had been[0] using the ltmodem[1] driver on Slackware-9.1.0. The
ThinkPad I use at home has a mini-PCI modem card, which has a Lucent
chipset.

Notes:
[0] I switched to DSL from Dial-up (finally) last month. :-)
[1] http://www.heby.de/ltmodem

--
Ayaz Ahmed Khan

Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment as her
incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy,
acceptance, and peace. "'Bye for now," she said warmly.
-- Thea Alexander, "2150 A.D."

Hi Hendrik

Thanks I fixed the screen dim thing but still have problem with the
sound here is the output in dmesg:


nm256: no ac97 is found!
force the driver to load by passing in the module parameter
force_ac97=1
or try sb16 or cs423x drivers instead.

this is what it says when I try loading the alsamixer:

alsamixer: function snd_ctl_open failed for default: No such device

Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
> "danielmaxson" <daniel.maxson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > Well I installed Slackware 10.2 on a Dell Inspiron 3500 and have a few
> > problems.
>
> Are you using the default 2.4 kernel or the test 2.6 kernel?
>
> > First: If I start X and then switch runlevels them my screen dims.
>
> Switching to another runlevel should probably kill the X process. Reasons
> to switch to another run level is to shutdown the computer, reboot the
> computer or startup the computer.
>
> Which runlevel do you switch to when the screen dims and what do you mean
> by "dims"? Does the screen get completely black?
>
> > Second: my computer came with a lucent winmodem and I would like to get
> > that to work on Slackware.
>
> If you are lucky the information at http://www.linmodems.org/ might help
> you.
>
> > Third: my sound card(Neomagic 256) does not work even though I ran
> > alsaconf and installed it.
>
> Did you unmute the card in the mixer settings? The term "does not work" is
> not very descriptive. Please try to elaborate what does not work as
> expected and what you have tried to do to make it work.
>
>
> > Also when my computer starts up it usually spends a long time at
> > "starting hotplug activation"? or something like that. I was wondering
> > what that was useful for and if someone could tell me how to make it not
> > boot with hotplug....
>
> To boot without hotplug you could do "chmod a-x /etc/rc.d/rc.hotplug".
> However, hotplug is rather useful as it is responsible for detecting the
> hardware in the computer and load kernel modules (drivers) for the
> hardware it finds. It detects hardware both during bootup and hardware
> that is later hotplugged into your machine like USB devices.
>
> If you disable hotplug you will have to manually make sure that all
> modules for hardware is loaded in /etc/rc.d/rc.modules. If you don't load
> the modules things like network- and sound-cards will not work.
>
> I can't say for sure, but to me it seems as if hotplug gets a lot slower
> with a 2.6 kernel.
>
> One more piece of advice... There are spambots which search the net for
> email addresses to send spam to. Placing an email address on a web page or
> somewhere else on the net where it is easy to find will most likely result
> in that you get a lot of spam to that address. When posting to usenet news
> it would be wise not to use a good email address as the sender.
>
> regards Henrik
> --
> The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
> hc8(at)uthyres.com Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
> root@variousus.net root@localhost

"danielmaxson" typed:
> Thanks I fixed the screen dim thing but still have problem with the
> sound here is the output in dmesg:

Unless I have overlooked any post in this thread, may I know who you
managed to fix this problem?

--
Ayaz Ahmed Khan

Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment as her
incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy,
acceptance, and peace. "'Bye for now," she said warmly.
-- Thea Alexander, "2150 A.D."

Hi Ayaz,
By looking on the web in other forums I found out that my depth for my
moniter was not right so I changed it from 24 to 16.


Ayaz Ahmed Khan wrote:
> "danielmaxson" typed:
> > Thanks I fixed the screen dim thing but still have problem with the
> > sound here is the output in dmesg:
>
> Unless I have overlooked any post in this thread, may I know who you
> managed to fix this problem?
>
> --
> Ayaz Ahmed Khan
>
> Then, gently touching my face, she hesitated for a moment as her
> incredible eyes poured forth into mine love, joy, pain, tragedy,
> acceptance, and peace. "'Bye for now," she said warmly.
> -- Thea Alexander, "2150 A.D."

"danielmaxson" <daniel.maxson@gmail.com> wrote:
> nm256: no ac97 is found!

That seems like a bit of useful information that could be given to google:

http://www.google.com/search?q=nm256...7%20is%20found!

I have no experience from that hardware myself, but other seem to have
problems with that sound card and ALSA. Some seem to have had success with
the card using OSS drivers instead. Assuming that you are using the
default 2.4 kernel you could probably try the OSS drivers as described on
the web.

regards Henrik
--
The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
hc8(at)uthyres.com Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
root@variousus.net root@localhost

Hi Hendrik,
I downloaded the oss drivers from their website, but I have to compile
something what packages do I need to compile?

-Dan

Henrik Carlqvist wrote:
> "danielmaxson" <daniel.maxson@gmail.com> wrote:
> > nm256: no ac97 is found!
>
> That seems like a bit of useful information that could be given to google:
>
> http://www.google.com/search?q=nm256...7%20is%20found!
>
> I have no experience from that hardware myself, but other seem to have
> problems with that sound card and ALSA. Some seem to have had success with
> the card using OSS drivers instead. Assuming that you are using the
> default 2.4 kernel you could probably try the OSS drivers as described on
> the web.
>
> regards Henrik
> --
> The address in the header is only to prevent spam. My real address is:
> hc8(at)uthyres.com Examples of addresses which go to spammers:
> root@variousus.net root@localhost