http://www.osnews.com/story/1145/ Exploring the Future of Computing en-us Copyright 2001-2009, David Adams adam+nospam@osnews.com Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:00:52 GMT http://www.osnews.com/images/osnews.gif http://www.osnews.com http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I was really looking forward to buying one of these guys to revive my BeOS system. Oh well :-( Thu, 30 May 2002 21:01:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BeOS works fine after you get into the trouble and apply all these patches, but you may need to add a supported sound card and a better supported graphics card afterwards.

But please, do not think that if you buy a Pentium 4, you will get BeOS working on a modern machine. Because of another bug in the BeOS kernel, you will need to go the exact same pain to install another kind of patch ( http://www.beos.ru/files/p4kBeOS.zip ) and then add a supported sound card and graphics card.

Officially, the last supported CPU by BeOS is the PIII at 1.4 Ghz. All the new stuff were never supported, neither tested with, so expect these kinds of problems. Thu, 30 May 2002 21:06:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BTW, personally, I suggest you apply the available patches for AthlonXP and Pentium4 to your *working* BeOS machine, and then transfer the hard drive to the new machine, boot to that BeOS, run the Installer to install BeOS to the new hard drive and then remove your old hard drive and boot your new one.

Applying the patches to a machine that has a working BeOS, is easier than trying to install BeOS in a non-supported machine, because you will get the chicken and the egg problem. The patches that applied to a working machine, are small to download and the whole work is about a 2 minutes job.

But applying the patches to a machine that does not have BeOS in it, it is a pain, as I described in the article. But it is totally feasible if you know what you are doing. Thu, 30 May 2002 21:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Correction:

The web site is in Russian, not Ukrainian. This site is one of the most popular hardware sites in Russia. I read it all the time.

Besides, Ukrainians can't afford to even buy a hard drive Thu, 30 May 2002 21:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Thanks Eugenia, great for somebody to do the leg work, I am sure the BeOS fixes would apply to any similar mobo with that chip set, but the last suggestion of cloning a repaired running image is surely the easiest way to go, besides you can then move all the BeOS proven PCI cards along with it. Thu, 30 May 2002 21:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > I am sure the BeOS fixes would apply to any similar mobo with that chip set

The patches for AthlonXP/MP and Pentium4/Xeon-SMT will work on any hardware that carries these CPUs. Thu, 30 May 2002 21:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? When i bought BeOS and Gobe productive, BeOS was at version 4.5, so i only had it running on my 200MHz laptop. Obviously no modem or sound card support, but the 800x600 display worked nicely. My next computer after that was my trusty Cube, and I don't have a PC right now. So I was looking for one to put BeOS and Linux on. That was why I was sort of amped up about getting BeOS running under VPC (but didn't of course). If I get some spare change, I might buy one of those machines and turn them into a relatively nice BeOS box. I'll keep this article as reference if I do. Thu, 30 May 2002 22:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Does anyone know if the BIOS has the ability to turn the machine back on after a power outage? If it does then this may be a good machine for a firewall / web server etc. for the home users.

-Scott Thu, 30 May 2002 22:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I just checked it out. It has some options like:
Resume on PME#, resume on Ring, resume on RTC Alarm, Soft-off by PWRBTN, PM control by APM, Doze mode, suspend mode, IPCA function, and POWER ON AFTER POWER-FAILURE (under the 'Integrated Peripherals' menu).

So, yes this model supports that! The default behaviour is to have this OFF, but with a quick visit to the BIOS, you can change that easily. Thu, 30 May 2002 22:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Please note, the PC comes with two modems! The one is integrated to the VIA chipset and it is off course a WinModem, therefore it only works with Windows. MicroTel PCs now inlcude a PCI hardware modem card, which works with Linux (instructions on how to install its driver under Red Hat is included). The on-board winmodem was disabled by the BIOS when I got the machine.

So, if you plan to use this machine as Windows-only, you can use its onboard modem and use the PCI modem card on another PC. :-) Thu, 30 May 2002 23:52:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I'm never gonna buy another computer again (except for laptops), as I much prefer building my own.

If you do research, you can find all the right components you need for optimal usage under the OS of your choice. Put that all together, and you have a solid machine, for BeOS, Linux, or FreeBSD depending on what drivers you want to use.

It will also (if you shop around for components) be cheaper. You can also choose a cool-looking case, low noise power supply, fans, hard drive, etc.

IMHO, building your own is the only way to go, even if you run Windows. Fri, 31 May 2002 00:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eric, I too build my machines by hand, component after component. But not everyone has the ability to build his own machine, and also, you can never know which exact BIOS version you get, so you can't know beforehand if you will be able to load BeOS out of the box or not.

My husband bought an A7V266-E AthlonXP motherboard for his work, two months ago, and he was sent a slightly modified version, the A7V266-E/PA/RAID. In fact, the version he was sent (for the money of the basic model), was a better and more expensive one: it had audio and RAID on board.

Now, that sounds good if you want to run Windows. But if you want to run weird OSes, like BeOS, where even the slight change in a sub-model or versioning, or BIOS version makes a difference, it gets tricky, even if you build the machine all by yourself. Fri, 31 May 2002 00:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? If it needs a driver, then it's not a hardware modem. Real modems have a regular serial port. Linux already has drivers for those. So what's the deal? Fri, 31 May 2002 00:24:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > If it needs a driver, then it's not a hardware modem.

What I meant was, how to setup it under Red Hat Linux. No extra driver is required. The printed paper has a step by step instruction on how to connect. The new PCI modem card has been fully tested for Linux compliance. Fri, 31 May 2002 00:27:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? By the way, I was installed the QNX RTP on machine and it works fine. I haven't tested the modem becuse I'm on a cable modem:) Fri, 31 May 2002 00:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I've been an Abit purist for some time now, and I will ineviatably (sp?) get one of the new MAX (legacy free) boards in August/September. Does anyone know if BeOS patched / Dano are even bootable on these babies? I will use the 'install via moving hard disk over' option.

On a side note, I have decided to get serious with the component/tool_server prototype as discussed on GE, hence I need a working BeBox. In 6 months, we shall see if the concept is *sweet*.

Stay tuned. Fri, 31 May 2002 01:29:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Does anyone know if BeOS patched / Dano are even bootable on these babies?

Possibly not. Even if you get passed the AMD AthlonXP/Pentium4 problem by using the patches, you will get possibly stopped by the USB-only option. BeOS only had official USB support for the BX and PIII chipsets only. The rest, either they were extremely flaky and semi-working (sometimes depending on how much... power a USB device was requiring!), or they did not work at all. Fri, 31 May 2002 01:40:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Well, my current system has a USB mouse (which works under BeOS), and 2 years back I had a liquid spill on the keyboard, so I temporarily hooked up the iMacs USB keyboard which also worked under BeOS. The trick to get the keyboard working was to set USB keyboard controlled by BIOS, not OS (from the ABit BIOS).

The 'feature' with the new Abit AT-7/IT-7 MAX motherboards is that they have no PS/2 ports, hence I'm assuming that they provide a BIOS based emulation option for those 'quirky' OS's. They've done this in the past, and for such a radical new board (MAX), I'd expect them to have even more 'compatibility options'. Of course, all these tweaks are only temporary, until the forked NewOS kernel boots A-O-K on these babies. Fri, 31 May 2002 02:34:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Nice review! I hate it that you need to patch BeOS to get it to work on AthlonXP machines... i should complain to AMD (not that it will help much)

And as for the samsung harddrive... yeah, there weird. eMachines also has weird harddrives (who the heck is trigem?). Hehe, personally, i'd replace the harddrive... get a maxtor or ibm (7200 rpm would be nice).

Hehe. Don't get a trigem. Mine broke after a year of use.
:( Fri, 31 May 2002 02:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I see now -- thanks! It is a real modem after all. Good to know. Fri, 31 May 2002 03:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I actually had my eye on this machine for awhile thinking what Hank was thinking on the idea of running BeOS and Linux on it. I had heard that they went away from the Win-Modems supposedly due to incompatibilities with other operating systems.

Well at least Wal-Mart is willing to sell a system with no OS installed, which gives the consumer the option to install their own. Fri, 31 May 2002 04:03:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? My AST Century City ( Intel 810/Celeron 500/No floppy drive/USB only ) ( No PS2/serial/parallel ports ) will not boot BeOS at all and this is a PC designed in 1999. Fri, 31 May 2002 05:57:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BeOS WILL boot (after patching the kernel, of course) on my machine, which is:
- a ECS mobo with the Sis735 chipset (a VERY GOOD mobo)
- A Duron 1200 (XP core)
which is a machine of 2002.

By the way, thanks to the work of Axel Dorfler and Marcus Overhagen, integrated ethernet and audio works fine. Fri, 31 May 2002 09:11:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Unfortunately, no USB support (too bad). Fri, 31 May 2002 09:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Eugenia, would you mind doing a few more of these multi OS tests on mobos that are out of the ordinary, like for instance SpaceWalker sv24,sv25, esp ss40,ss50 & the Via mini ITX board or even that Danish looks like a discman job.

Of course Toms Hardware & Anand & all the others do these tests all the time, but they ignore every OS except bloody Windoze, well of course Windoze will run on every thing so I never learn anything from them except game scores.

The Via board is a 7" by 7" fully integrated (no FW) fanless 7W baby. Including C3 at 1G (sept) or 800 or 666 it won't be as fast as an Athlon or P3 but would be more than useable & with cpu is still $100 or so. They come in shoeboxes 1/4 size of 3bay atx case or even micro slim cases 1/8 size. Cases are around $70 at
http://www.caseoutlet.com/ .. see barebones section
They also have a FreeTech socketed P3 tualatin ITX board.

I am contemplating packing 3 or 4 of the ITX mobos with a stripped down 4port usb kvm switch so I can keep all my OSs up all the time. I will probably give each board a 2.5 HD to keep noise & heat & power level down. Only video & 1 usb port will be needed. If I ever learn networking multi OSs, then a hub or router will go in as well.

I can recomend the MiniView 4 port usb kvm switch, $120, the video mux can go upto 1900 res. I am using one with a single reg Athlon box swapping OSs on external drives. Hence the interest in adding some extra cpus to the other 3 ports. Just wish the kvm was USB2.

I can also recommend the new rounded cables, I just replaced 4 or 5 ribbons with equiv rounded cables, jeez I can see through them now. They are a little expensive $7..$20 depending on type instead of the 50c usual. The rounded scsi are esp good if mixed with ide since they are normally the hardest to get into place. This is just a nice stop gap till SATA drives takes over.

I have also found using USB on BeOS to be iffy with older K6 mobos boards when USB was on a plugin, but fine on several Athlons. USB is def the way to go if you want to share peripherals with multi cpus.

Cheers Fri, 31 May 2002 10:12:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? look at their catalog, nothing advance. The most advance is the fact they use Athlon Xp, boo hoo :-( Fri, 31 May 2002 10:22:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Forgot to say the recomended kvm also included 4 6ft combi vid+usb cables, as well as 4 usb inputs, mouse+kb+x+y. Already took it apart, 3 long pcbs stips, one for video mux, one for 4port usb hub+demux, plus front panel led/btn strip. Repacking with 4 cpus should be easy, but now I need super short cables. Fri, 31 May 2002 10:47:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Hi! I was wondering if anyone else can verify that the Asus P4B266 motherboard with a newer Pentium (I guess this means the "Northwood" version) *will* work without the P4 patch. Please see Zephyr's posting at:

http://forums.begroovy.com/showthread.php?s=7670317e1f393dd4dd8d8ab...

and

http://hardware.frizbe.net/info.php?product=1048&category=3&...

and

http://hardware.frizbe.net/info.php?product=585&category=3&...

By the way, does anyone know what using the "don't call BIOS" boot option affects? I was told that it means power management won't work, but was wondering what other consequences it may have. (I'm not really sure what support is like in BeOS for power management anyway, can anyone comment?).

I'm a BeOS newbie who would like to upgrade, and was hoping I could gather more testimonials for the Asus P4B266.

--- Francis Fri, 31 May 2002 14:09:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I forgot to ask - Does anyone have details on what exactly the P4 patch from the russian site does? Is it a script that sets boot options? Is it easy to "undo"?

If I apply a patch to a working BeOS installation on a PIII,intending to move the hard drive to a P4 mb/CPU, but find there are too many problems and decide to move it back to the PIII mb/CPU, can I "undo" the P4 patch I applied? Of would it simply be safer to create another BeOS installation on the P3 machine, apply the patch to that, and boot that one on the P4 mb/CPU? I ask because I'm running out of disk space, so if you can run BeOS with the patch applied on P3 hardware stably enough to "undo" it, I guess I'd rather do that.

Eugenia - can you verify that the "newer" P4's are indeed less of a problem? I'm not sure what "newer" means, I don't know if this means the Northwood P4's vs. Williamette P4's or something else.

Thanks for any details! --- Francis Fri, 31 May 2002 15:02:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Eugenia, would you mind doing a few more of these multi OS tests on mobos that are out of the ordinary,[...]Of course Toms Hardware & Anand & all the others do these tests all the time



I'll gladly run such tests on the first motherboard that gets given to me (complete with CPU, memory, and power supply _if_ it requires something unusual) - nothing less than a 1GHz CPU will be accepted - hardware won't be returned. Tom's Hardware and the rest of the hardware sites do not buy the products. They are sent to them, for reviews. If these companies want a review, they should send us a review unit, there is no way I will or can buy any of this stuff.



> I forgot to ask - Does anyone have details on what exactly the P4 patch from the russian site does? Is it a script that sets boot options? Is it easy to "undo"?



Yes, it is very easy to undo. When you unzip the file, it just has another kernel file (with a different filename, on the same directory /boot/beos/system/). All you have to do is to press spacebar when BeOS boots and select which kernel you want. But no matter which kernel you pick, both of them will work with PIII. It is just that one of them will work with P4. And if you don't need it anymore, just delete the P4 kernel and use from then on the older kernel to boot.



> Eugenia - can you verify that the "newer" P4's are indeed less of a problem?



No, I can't. I do not have a P4, neither I know anyone who has one. However, 99% of the situations I heard on forums, BeOS failed to boot on P4s. With the use of the patched kernel, it works though.

However, someone else had indeed reported success with some P4s and an unpatched BeOS - but this would depend on the version of the microcode patch in the motherboard BIOS.



There is a bug in the BeOS kernel, this is why it does not work with P4s. One of the engineers miscounted the fixed-ranges MTRRs in the PPro documentation, there are 11 of them, contiguous, and he setup a loop to clear them... with 12 loop counts. So, he overwrote a few extra registers, which were unused in the P6, but are used in the P4. Therefore, P4 is failing to boot.

Problem is, the bug was fixed for the 5.0.4 Update that Be wanted to ship at the end of 2000. But they never released it.... Fri, 31 May 2002 15:59:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Thanks very much for your reply!



[i]Problem is, the bug was fixed for the 5.0.4 Update that Be wanted to ship at the end of 2000. But they never released it....



Damn!!



Anyone have any info on what is going on with Yellowtab's BeOS NG? (they are still alive according to their website). If BeOS NG is released, can I assume it has a patched version of the kernal? I heard that it would include a "fixed" media kit? (I also read somewhere that yellowtab had an agreement with Be and can legally do this.)



Has there ever been a mention of a ballpark figure on how much NG would sell for if released?



Oh well, hopefully OpenBeOS won't be dreadfully obsolete by the time it's bootable. They'll start working with their NewOS kernal soon, so more interesting developments are on the way! Fri, 31 May 2002 16:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I notice that not only was OS/2 not tested on the machine(or eComStation),but there were NO comments from OS/2 users!
Perhaps you should let scoug.com know about these new computers offered with no operating systems so they can test them with OS/2 and/or eComStation!
Type either one on an internet search engine;I'm NOT going to do your work for you!!!! Fri, 31 May 2002 19:44:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Put a sock in it, and don't freaking mess with me.

>I notice that not only was OS/2 not tested on the machine
>(or eComStation),but there were NO comments from OS/2 users!

Here are the comments: Video and audio are not supported by OS/2 or eComStation. You will be without sound and hopefully with SciTech's VESA driver. Not even SciTech has support for that specific versio of the chipset.
I have no clue if OS/2 supports the RealTech 8139 or this specific PCI modem.

>Type either one on an internet search engine;I'm NOT going to do your work for you!!!!

Then don't.

I do have the eComStation CDs around, but after our house move, I can only find back one of them, so I can't install OS/2 atm. On top of that, the version of eCS I have here, has expired 5 months ago, because eCS sent me a time-limited version of their OS, for the OS/2 review I wrote for OSNews.

Bad for them. I would have used their OS for further tests on other articles, and giving some exposure to their product at the same time.

If you think we are rich over here and we can buy whatever, you are severly mistaken. Fri, 31 May 2002 19:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BeBits seems to be down... did it close up shop after Be did? I remember it stuck around for a while...

Just temporary? Sat, 01 Jun 2002 03:04:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? BeBits down? No, it works for me:
http://www.bebits.com/

After installing the Athlon XP BeOS patch on my BeOS partition my 1900+ runs fine. What the patch does is to replace the second occurance of the text "Genuine Intel" with "Authentic AMD" and leaves the SSE working.

-Scottmc

www.bedrivers.com Sat, 01 Jun 2002 03:25:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Does anyone produce a laptop w/o an preinstalled OS or even one with Linux/BSD instead of windows? Sat, 01 Jun 2002 12:35:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I actually wonder what the point is in testing BeOS on this kind of hardware with no new software being released, no updates to the OS, troubles acquiring a copy of it and the fact that I wonder what good it does to run it on even faster hardware while I perceived no noticable performance increase when I updated my BeOS box 1,5 years ago to the then maximum. Sat, 01 Jun 2002 13:36:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? There is some faith in the BeOS community that something wonderful could happen with any of the 3 or 4 attempts to create an alternative to the closed BeOS. If none of these succeed then it is all over, but as long as they continue it's worth testing BeOS on the newer HW. The XP & P4 issues seem to be understood & can be patched, its always worth knowing what the newest HW is doing to unsettle R5 so those problems can be addressed in these projects.

The real issue seems to be the ever changing peripheral landscape, USB2, FW replacing legacy stuff & minimal support for these newer devices. If Linux can get open src drivers written for these, then so too can BeOS if somebody wants to do the work. Sun, 02 Jun 2002 04:37:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? >>Does anyone produce a laptop w/o an preinstalled OS or even one with Linux/BSD instead of windows? Sun, 02 Jun 2002 06:43:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? and what good does it do in the light of BeOS clones which haven't even reached alpha stage and due to not being the same OS will have next to no similarity hardwarecompatibility wise with the now tested BeOS R5? Sun, 02 Jun 2002 13:41:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? actually I would check the boot order in the bios. It sounds like its trying to boot off the network card before the hard drive. Just my 2 cents. Sun, 02 Jun 2002 19:05:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? No, I checked this out. It is the floppy as the first device and then the hdd. Sun, 02 Jun 2002 22:49:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Cal wrote:
Does anyone produce a laptop w/o an preinstalled OS or even one with Linux/BSD instead of windows?

Besides IBM, EmperorLinux sells laptops with Linux preinstalled:

http://www.emperorlinux.com/ Mon, 03 Jun 2002 14:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Is the network card a separate PCI card, or is it soldiered to the motherboard?

Normally, PCI network cards come with a ROM socket into which a BIOS extension is inserted if network boot is desired. Examples include the PXE boot BIOS.

Because the extension BIOS is normally in a socket, you can just rip the extension BIOS chip out with a chip puller or a screwdriver, and then you won't get a boot delay. The BIOS extension isn't really needed anyway unless you intend to boot over the network, and PCI networking chips are normally designed to cope if the extension ROM part suddenly disappears.

If the network device is actually soldiered to the motherboard, there won't normally be a separate ROM socket. Instead, the image should be stored on the main BIOS Flash part along with the system BIOS.

You might be able to defeat this mechanism by getting a BIOS update from the manufacturer or by hacking a BIOS update yourself (if one does not exist). You can corrupt the 0x55, 0xAA header on the network option ROM in the system BIOS binary, and the system BIOS should then reject that image.

If you are lucky, the network option ROM won't be data compressed and you won't have to go digging around for a utility that will un-archive all the files in the system BIOS image. Otherwise, you could be faced with using a vendor specific BIOS utility to select which option ROMs are part of the system BIOS image. Fri, 07 Jun 2002 00:39:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? > Is the network card a separate PCI card, or is it soldiered to the motherboard?

Unfortunately, it comes with the motherboard.

> Examples include the PXE boot BIOS.

Yup, PXE! That's the one that it is using! Fri, 07 Jun 2002 00:55:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? As I stated, if there is a PCI networking card (plugged into the motherboard), you could just yank the ROM chip out of it.

However, this does not sound like it is the case.

The only PXE boot ROM that I know that announces itself as such is the Intel PXE extension ROM. This image does not work with any networking chips other then Intel chips, unless someone has gone to a lot of trouble to add network drivers to it for some other part manufacturer. I don't think Intel would like that very much, since it is their IP, so you probably have an Intel network chip somewhere on that motherboard.

If you are lucky, there will be an extra Flash or ROM socket somewhere on that board that has the PXE network boot image on it. If so, just remove the ROM part.

You might also be able to download a configuration utility for it from Intel that would let you configure the networking device for different behavior. Most Intel networking chips have a configuration area stored in EPROM inside the chip, and I believe that PXE also allows you to update that configuration over the network or with a local utility. You might be able to turn off network boot by configuring the network chip with a vendor specific utility.

>> Examples include the PXE boot BIOS.

>Yup, PXE! That's the one that it is using! Fri, 07 Jun 2002 01:21:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? Why not just put a dummy DHPC server somewhere on your network? So long as it answers *something*, the BIOS should be happy and resume the boot. Then Linux (or another OS) can happily ignore whatever result came from the dummy server, and install the correct values itself.

(I mean, one kludge deserves another...) Fri, 07 Jun 2002 03:46:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments http://osnews.com/thread? http://osnews.com/thread? I tested one of these about a week ago for a friend who wanted a new eCS system and the price was right so. . .

Anyway, the system booted off the CD with no problems. The "unsupported" video was detected and worked great. The RTL 8139 NIC drivers installed fine. After about ten minutes and two reboots I had the VIA chipset sound (also "unsupported"?) working.

I didn't bother testing the modem because my friend is using a cable modem and has no need for it.

So if anyone is interested in a system with a modern, actively developed OS (Read: Not Dead. . .sorry, that leaves BeOS out) then you may consider eComStation running on one of these Wal-Mart OSless PCs. . .My friend is very satisfied with hers. Fri, 07 Jun 2002 14:54:00 GMT donotreply@osnews.com (Anonymous) Comments