KDS Valiant 6481CiPTD followup

From Eugene Chudakov (echudakov at home dot com) on August 28, 2001

A fortnight ago I bought this laptop. Thanks for  your instructions
on the video configuration!

I would add a short hint for those who (like myself) installed
Linux from the net (nfs):
Ethernet card: RealTek RTL8139 Fast Ethernet.
                Installing RH 7.1 I used the "bootnet" image and
                the "drivers" image for the RTL8139 driver.

The problems you mentioned:
- I have not seen the problems with video.
- The standard RH 7.1 configuration tools for modems failed to
  recognize the modem.  I did not try anything beyond this tool.

 However I have experienced two other problem.
 (I am using kernel 2.4.2-2 from the standard RH 7.1)

a) dmesg reports an error every 5-10 min:
  " probable hardware bug: clock time configuration lost - probably
    a VIA686a."

  I found a discussion of this problem in the kernel mail group.
  There was a reassuring message from Alan Cox from Mon Feb 26 2001
   - 22:57:47 CST :

  >Small number of VIA 686 boxes randomly jump from 100Hz back to
  >the DOS 18Hz timeout. We dont know if its hardware or maybe
  >APM bios bugs. The kernel puts the timer back and life appears
  >happy again

  So, it seems that with this nearly omnipotent kernel one can
  ignore such petty problems.

b) From time to time mounting/reading floppies would hang up the
   floppy drive on endless buzzing while all the rest is frozen.
   Hard reset is the remedy.
   It seems it only hangs up that badly when GNOME is running (at
   least I did not manage to hang it using an infinite
   mounting/reading/unmounting sequence running from console
   in absence of GNOME. However, GNOME or no GNOME, something
   wrong happens, leaving messages like:

   Aug 19 14:06:53 localhost kernel: floppy0: unexpected interrupt
   Aug 19 14:06:53 localhost kernel: floppy0: sensei repl[0]=80

   or even long ones with a lot of information.

   I found questions in kernel mailing lists archives on this
   particular messages but failed to find any explanation on
   the problem localization (drive, cable, motherboard etc).
   For the moment it does not look too serious, since it so far
   never hung up on booting from floppy, and using floppy
   otherwise is rare.

 All the rest seems fine with this laptop.

 Eugene