On Fri, Dec 13, 2002 at 12:42:34AM +0000, Steve Fosdick wrote:
On Thu, 12 Dec 2002 21:41:18 +0800 "NuTTeR -- Not Entered --" uknutter@graffiti.net wrote:
If your bying new hardware you shouldnt need to set IRQ's, DMA's or ioports's. Most pci and agp cards self configure so unless you still have a isa card youll be fine. Debian's a good distro but Mandrake is your easy as hell to install if you want the easyer then windows 98 install path.
I would be very surprised if a new PC contained any ISA cards so IRQs etc probably won't be a problem.
many ISA cards are P'n'P compatible anyhow so most don't cause any problems, the last time I had "fun" with ISA on new hardware was a modem about 4 years ago.
Unless things have changed since I installed it Debian woody doesn't do graphics chip detection when setting up XFree86 so it will be useful to know what chipset your graphics card uses and also what the maximum permitted H & V sync rates are for the monitor you are using.
As I have said elsewhere lspci can help you identify your gfx chipset if you are not sure what it is (and most cards should work with vga I think). To get the refresh rates for your monitor you can install the package read-edid and then use the command get-edid | parse-edid to see what your monitor thinks its specifactions are (should work on most recent monitors).
If you want to re-compile your kernel to make it leaner then you will also want to know which motherboard chipset you have.
lspci is your friend again here too :)
Adam