Subj : Re: For you SBBS Sysops operating on *NIX, what's your flavor?
To   : fusion
From : Gamgee
Date : Fri Jun 07 2024 13:34:00

-=> fusion wrote to Gamgee <=-

 fu> On 06 Jun 2024, Gamgee said the following...

 Ga> Yes, I also recall fairly frequent problems with Xwindows and graphics
 Ga> cards back in those days.  I liked Mandrake quite a bit and then

 fu> i remember configuring XFree86 came with a giant warning about
 fu> how it could damage your monitor.. spent an awful lot of time one
 fu> year tracking down the exact specs for some chinese 19" monitor
 fu> to attempt both 1600x1200 and 75hz (iirc) paranoid i might damage
 fu> something.. that and.. the video card driver was compiled into
 fu> the X server itself? something like that. weird times :)

Ahhh yes, now that you say it I remember that too.  Defining "modelines" 
and refresh rates for certain resolutions.  Fun and annoying all at the 
same time.  :)

 fu> on the OS/2 side we just bought from a list. not on the list? too
 fu> bad :)

I never got aboard the OS/2 train.  Straight from DOS to Win, and 
eventually Linux.

 Ga> Been there, too.  Haha, yeah that stuff was painful.  I used to even
 Ga> configure and compile custom kernels (on Slackware), thinking I could
 Ga> squeeze out more "performance"...  Maybe it did, and in those days I was
 Ga> on fairly weak hardware so it helped, and was a lot of fun actually.
 Ga> But also a lot of work, and I don't bother with that any more.

 fu> i used to have to do that for an IBM server i had.. for the SCSI
 fu> raid controller.. that whole machine was a giant waste of
 fu> electricity. did feel cool the one and only time one of the power
 fu> supplies failed and i hot swapped it out. but yeah, i think i
 fu> studied the kernel config options for a while before deciding to
 fu> just use the slackware one as a template and then add the extra
 fu> stuff.

SCSI.... yes there's another big can of worms.  Don't remember having to 
do anything with that in Linux, but surely did on a CDROM disk changer 
(Panasonic, maybe?) under MSDOS that I used on my BBS in the 90's - had 
to play with a lot of command-line switches and memory stuff.  Loading order
of drivers in autoexec and config.sys, and the like.  Pretty satisfying 
to get all that working after a lot of effort.  I miss those days.  ;)



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