FIC PA-2007 V1.09CD12, USB, & KNOPPIX

[rec9140]

The old clunker I would like to dedicate to Linux, specifically KNOPPIX I've found to have a problem with USB support.

After finally disabling USB support in the BIOS I've found I can now realiably boot,start, and use KNOPPIX under KDE.

Previsouly it just crashed at various points to working till I started a program or did something.

So any one have an idea as to the problems with USB on the FIC PA2007 & Knoppix and/or Linux in general?

PA-2007 is old, but reliable, I've used it till just recently as my main wimpdoze system. Specs:

Award BIOS V4.51PG
FIC 2007 BIOS V1.09CD12
160MB RAM
Acer 32x CD
Acer 6206 CD-RW
NEC 253 4 CD Changer
WD 13GB HD
K6-350 @ 337 (As thats all the BIOS jumpers support.)
Trident TGUI9660 8MB
Yamaha YF724 based PCI card
Acer ITU/2 56K HARDWARE modem

While not a big deal as I have never used the USB ports on the machine anyway, I would like to have support and option at least if I can.

Thanks in advance.

[David Douthitt]

The old clunker I would like to dedicate to Linux, specifically KNOPPIX I've found to have a problem with USB support.

After finally disabling USB support in the BIOS I've found I can now realiably boot,start, and use KNOPPIX under KDE.

Previsouly it just crashed at various points to working till I started a program or did something.

So any one have an idea as to the problems with USB on the FIC PA2007 & Knoppix and/or Linux in general?

PA-2007 is old, but reliable, I've used it till just recently as my main wimpdoze system. Specs:

Award BIOS V4.51PG
FIC 2007 BIOS V1.09CD12
160MB RAM
Acer 32x CD
Acer 6206 CD-RW
NEC 253 4 CD Changer
WD 13GB HD
K6-350 @ 337 (As thats all the BIOS jumpers support.)
Trident TGUI9660 8MB
Yamaha YF724 based PCI card
Acer ITU/2 56K HARDWARE modem

While not a big deal as I have never used the USB ports on the machine anyway, I would like to have support and option at least if I can.

I have a motherboard with a label on silk-screened on it: "PA 2007"; would that be the same?

I've had Knoppix working on it, but the USB is flaky. It works, then suddenly the device "disappears" and USB stops working. A friend of mine said that USB on these boards was unreliable; my experience seems to bear that out.

I might get a ISA or PCI USB card and put it in and disable the USB ports.

My setup (from memory):

No-name case
PA-2007 (who makes this anyway?)
64M
CompUSA MultiCard Reader (USB)
- SecureDigital, CompactFlash, MemoryStick, etc.
Cyrix 6x686MX
Panasonic (?) 4X CDROM

This box was running Solaris 8 from hard disk (without problems) but I never enabled USB under Solaris.

Only problem I have is that Knoppix doesn't like to run any decent window managers in 64M of memory (with no swap).... but one can run WindowMaker if you don't use the Knoppix built-in scripts...

[rec9140]

I have a motherboard with a label on silk-screened on it: "PA 2007"; would that be the same?

More than likely.

said that USB on these boards was unreliable; my experience seems to bear that out.

I've heard this before, and unfortunately I've never found a use for USB until of late. I never used them when it was my main machine, but wimpdoze seemed to find the hardware and set them up fine.

PA-2007 (who makes this anyway?)

FIC
http://www.fic.com.tw/ or
http://www.fica.com/

When booting KNOPPIX on CD via this machine, text/level 2 is fine, but if I want to use KDE then BOTH USB & APM must be DISABLED.

USB must be disabled in the BIOS or it still hangs using nousb.

I spent a better part of a week figuring that out APM & USB needed to be disabled to get KDE to boot, and that if it freezes during boot of KDE that it needs a COMPLETE power off to try to boot again, not just a soft reset.

I think there are issues with:

1) Junky Trident TGUI9660 VGA card. When booting using XF_SVGA & vesa mode, letting KNOPPIX decide, it causes hashing of the screen and then just freezes at some point. The point varies boot to boot, but it will freeze at some point. Using XFree86 and vesa will work fine, causes a first screen of garbage to display before the main knoppix background, but then its fine. This could be what cause intermittent boot failures as well.

Does the option of xserver=XFree86 xmodule=trident work in Knoppix? I'll find out soon enought, but right now I letting it run for now.

I got a cheap newer Geforce PCI card to replace and will see if that helps things as soon as it gets here.

2) BIOS could be the problem with the USB & APM, and it also could be a problem with the K6. The K6-350 3D Now! has some features that needed setk6 to enable for dos/wimpdoze that the 1.09CD12 BIOS didnt support. I think the Linux kernel handles this fine, but it could be a problem. Also this BIOS wrongly reports the processor and speed as this BIOS didn't know about these chips at the time. This is also why I can only run it at 337 v. 350.

I think I've found a old 4GB drive in the parts closet to put this whole mess on HD v. CD and give it a whirl.

[Loper]

<snip>
So any one have an idea as to the problems with USB on the FIC PA2007...
</snip>

That board uses the VIA Apollo VP2 chipset. I looked, but didn't see any consistent problems with USB and the VP2. You might compare your version of the BIOS (use the numbers at the BOTTOM of the initial screen, a long string) to see if there's a later version:

ftp://ftp.fica.com/BIOS/motherboards/Socket7/pa-2007

You might also check the "legacy" USB setting in the BIOS. This can sometimes affect how the function is accessed; try toggling it.

If all else fails, PCI USB adapters are cheap...