Congratulations on your new toy! This document lists the contents of the box with the computer, and contains a stream of consciousness collection of tips and quirks. Lynn says it is totally unintelligible to her (for a PC is not a TV). However, if I were to translate this whole document so that Lynn could understand it, it would take me months full-time. I did want to make a brain-dump, but unfortunately it does require that you have to know the stuff or be able to locate references such as books, the net, friends and willing brothers-in-law if you have specific questions or problems.
But, here is a simple quick-start:
I have both Linux and Windows installed on the system. I have two disk drives: one is 1 GB and the other is 1-2 GB (I can't quite remember). Anyway, about 600 MB is reserved for Windows and Linux has the rest. Of course, the keyboard is now in your hands so you may well buy Windows and install it over everything.
The rest of this document is a quick reference guide that discusses some of the hardware quirks (which you may never encounter) and a brief foray into Linux (if you want to see what everyone is talking about). Please rest assured that you do not have to read or understand everything to proceed, but it would be well to skim over it to see what's in here since the answer to, "Why isn't my A drive working," can be found within. I found a glossary at http://swreviews.netscape.com/Resources/Info/Glossary/ which will help.
As Lynn says, read the rest at your own risk.
On the motherboard, you have a few PCI (Peripheral Component Interconnect--the most recent bus technology) slots and a few ISA slots. Try to use the PCI slots for extra peripherals--they're faster. By the way, the bus is a thingy that ties different cards or devices together.
The SCSI (Small Computer System Interface) card allows the disks, tape and CD-ROM to talk together. SCSI kicks butt on the IDE interface. It's heaps faster and can rub its tummy and pat its head (or vice-versa) at the same time while I don't think that IDE can even tie its shoes, especially if it's chewing bubble gum. However, because IDE is cheaper, that's what you see in most computers. Because I'm more interested in performance, you've got SCSI, not IDE.
IDE has a limit of two drives on the bus. You can string at least nine devices on a SCSI bus, and you can even plug in external SCSI devices. You've got a port and cables in case you get something.
The sound SCSI bus on the sound card is not used since SCSI on sound cards isn't as good as dedicated SCSI cards.
The SCSI card and drives are plain old SCSI-2. Today they have Ultra Fast Wide SCSI which is about 8 times faster. If you find your I/O isn't good enough, I would suggest buying one of these newfangled SCSI cards (good use of your PCI slot!). You'll also need to get new disk drives too since the old and new devices are incompatible. But then you'll have screaming performance. You would leave the CD-ROM and tape drive on the old SCSI card since putting them on the new card would be like putting grandma in the left-hand lane of the autobahn.
The cooling fins were my idea to help dissipate disk heat.
By now you've undoubtedly already plugged everything together and hit the power button. Sometimes the BIOS cycles through the boot sequence one or more times before it finally engages. Since this never happened when I had the hardware plugged into the old 486 motherboard, I suspect one of the following: the motherboard has a problem, the motherboard doesn't get along with one of the devices I've plugged into it, and the BIOS is incorrectly configured.
The cheapest thing to do is to try playing with the BIOS. The first thing I'd look at is disabling all the Plug and Pray stuff. There might be other settings that may affect this too. I would suggest writing everything down so you know what a working configuration looks like.
Speaking of writing things down leads me to the next topic.
By the time you revved up your computer, you may have noticed that your BIOS backup battery was dead and that the BIOS settings reset to factory default. If you keep your machine running all the time, you don't have to worry too much about replacing the battery (I obviously didn't). If you are turning the machine on and off and finding that the BIOS resets itself more often than you'd like, you'll have to replace the battery. It's one of those quarter-sized, flat, round batteries and you shouldn't have any problem locating it on the motherboard. Battery in hand, you can wave it in front of your local druggist for a replacement.
Anyway, now that your motherboard has some fresh juice, you'll be relieved that I wrote things down. Here are the changes I made to the BIOS:
Standard screen:
BIOS screen:
Chipset:
PNP & PCI Setup:
The top floppy (A drive, /dev/fd0 on Linux) appeared to go dead recently. Maybe the cables have gone loose or maybe it needs some attention or replacement (which is most likely cheaper than attention). Since there is a second floppy, you may choose what I did and just ignore it. Use the B drive in Windows, /dev/fd1 in Linux.
I've included a cleaning cartridge for the tape deck. To use, just stick it in. After about 30 seconds of winding back and forth, the tape deck will spit it out. That's it.
How often? The new drives have a light that comes on when they think they need cleaning, which is probably more often than you really need to increase cleaning cartidge sales. I use the drive every day and use the cleaning cartridge about once a month. I think the cartridge has an hourly recommendation.
Rather than use the on-board serial plugs, I use a separate serial card for the modem and the printer, I think (hence the disabling of the on-board devices in the BIOS above). I found that the on-board serial connector had trouble with my external modem driven at high speeds.
Feel free to use the on-board serial connections if they work with your serial devices. Remember to enable them in the BIOS.
You thought I'd never finish with this mundane stuff and get down to business, eh? When you turn on the power button, there will be a small explosion, the stock market will crash, and a tornado will have turned a trailer park upside down. Actually, that these happened was probably a coincidence and probably would have happened anyway so do not be alarmed.
As I said before, you may have to endure several cycles of the BIOS before you actually get the "LILO boot" prompt. Most likely, you'll be staring in awe and may miss this brief message before the Windows 98 screen comes up and makes you nauseous.
For instant relief of your symptoms, the next time you see that LILO boot prompt (or any time before if you keep missing it), hold down one of the control, alt or shift keys. This will cause the system to pause at the "LILO boot" prompt and wait for your response. Hit the TAB to see your choices which include Windows, Linux and Linux.old (I think). The one listed first is the default, but you can type any by name followed by a carriage return. Try typing Linux.
Lilo (Linux Loader) is the Linux program that handles the initial booting sequence and gives you a choice of system to boot. There will be more mention of it elsewhere.
80% of the world uses this system. God help them. As mentioned in
the previous section, by default the system will boot Windows. If you
are one of the enlightened and want to boot Linux by default, simply
edit /etc/lilo.conf, swap the the Linux and the Windows
stanzas and run lilo. This sounds simple, and it is, but
you'll want to read that Linux book and the following section on Linux
first to cover the basics.
So you decided to enter Linux at the LILO prompt and enter a new world. The first word of advice is this:
The second word of advice is this:
Without forgetting the first word of advice, the second word of advice is pretty important under Linux. The reason is that every letter you type does not go to the disk a letter at a time like Windows. Because of this, you can't just turn the system off willy-nilly like Windows. Because of this, the I/O is blindingly fast unlike Windows.
So, now you've booted into Linux and you're greeted by a smiling, cheerful "login" prompt. At this point you have two choices: you can enter the old familiar CTL-ALT-DEL salute to shutdown in an organized fashion and reboot. The second choice to actually log in. Actually, there is a third choice: you can run out of the house screaming and yelling with your arms flailing all around. But, I hope it doesn't come to that.
If you tried the CTL-ALT-DEL sequence described in the previous section, you may have found that it doesn't work. Now, I do not advocate violence, but the guy who put the Caps Lock key where it is deserves all the violence in the world. But since I'm a peaceful man, I simply rebound the keys. The Caps Lock key is now the CTL key and the Ctrl keys are now ALT keys. If you learn how to use Emacs, you will see the beauty of this arrangement.
Thus, if you go by the keycaps, the CTL-ALT-DEL sequences becomes Caps Lock-Alt-Del.
This is only for Linux. Under Windows, you'll still have that miserable Caps Lock key in the way.
Before proceeding, might I suggest having the Linux book nearby. To
the login prompt, enter root and to the password prompt,
enter btakq. Note that this completely random password is
coincidentally the initials of everyone in your family from the top
down.
To log out, type exit or C-d (hold the Ctrl and d keys
down at the same time). To reboot, either use the old CTL-ALT-DEL
(Caps Lock-ALT-DEL, remember) salute, or the more sophisticated
shutdown -r now.
Now, Tammy might not like the order of the initials, so she can
change that password with the passwd command. Enter
passwd and a carriage return and the program will ask you
for the old password and the new password twice. That's all there is
to it.
I'm not going to cover all of the Linux commands and details
here--the Linux book will do this. Here's enough to allow you to paw
around: to list the contents of the directory, use ls, to
change directories, use cd. The root of the filesystem is
/ so try cd /, cd /root (root's
home directory), and cd /home/wohler. To look at a file,
use less. Old-fashioned Unix documentation is viewed with
man (try man man) while newer documentation
is viewed with info (try info info to learn
how to use info and info emacs to learn
about Emacs which is the best editor on this planet). Also try
echo $PATH to see which directories are searched for
executables so that you can use cd to go into those
directories and ls to see which executables you have at
your disposal.
The very next thing you should do is read about giving yourself your own login. You can do this with
useradd -c "Brice Lautz" -m brice
Do this for everyone using the system. Typically people use their first names, their last names, their initials, or pretty much anything at all for their logins. Since it is your system and you aren't controlled by an ISP or business, you can do whatever you want.
What have you accomplished? You have just inoculated yourself from all the computer viruses known to man. Since you are logged in as brice, not root, you don't have write permissions to system files. You, or some friendly virus, can therefore not wreak havoc on the system.
Of course, in order to do system maintenance, you do have to log in as root. At that time, you can shoot yourself in the foot.
Note that you can look to ~wohler
(/home/wohler) for examples for bash, Emacs and other
application startup scripts.
The system logs are in /var/log. The system also sends
out various emails regarding the state of the system. Currently, the
wohler account is getting all of these messages, but since I won't be
logging on to your system, this probably doesn't do anybody any
good.
Now that you've learned Emacs, edit /etc/aliases and
exchange brice (or whatever login you gave yourself) for wohler. When
you save this file and exit Emacs, run newaliases in
order to rebuild the aliases database. That's all there is to adding
aliases. You can use the other aliases for examples on adding your own
aliases, and of course, you can always run man aliases
for the man page.
I've got a rudimentary backup system in place. If you leave your
system running under Linux, the system will get backed up each night
around 03:00. But first, you need to initialize the backup system. To
do this, insert a blank tape and run newtape. This script
allows you to edit a file (you'll have to learn rudimentary Emacs
first) that keeps track of how many times you've used a tape for one
thing (the importance of this will become clear in a moment), do a
full backup, spit out the tape and allow you to insert a fresh tape
for the incremental backups (which only backs up those files which
have changed since the last full backup).
So, you've run newtape which did a full backup and now
the incremental tape is in the machine. At this point, nightly backups
are performed automatically until that dark day when the tape fills
up. You'll get this cryptic email (assuming you've swapped wohler for
brice in /etc/aliases) that says there is an I/O error in
/dev/nst0. What is this magical file? The
/dev directory is where all the pseudo-devices are
found. In this example, nst0 indicates the first (0) SCSI
(s) tape (t) device that doesn't rewind (no rewind or n).
Since you've been keeping track of how many times you've used each
tape (ah, now I see!), and by experience, you know that the tapes crap
out after about 10 uses, you can suspect the tape if the tape has been
used about 10 times. Otherwise, that email with the I/O error simply
means the tape is full and it is time to go through the
newtape sequence again. I rotate through three pairs of
tapes so I can go back a few months if I need to.
One simple test to determine whether the tape is bad is to run
tar -tvf /dev/st0. If you get that I/O
Error, you should probably chuck the tape.
The newtape script, in addition to a handful of other
local hacks can be found in /usr/local/sbin. In fact,
anything that doesn't come with Linux by convention should be placed
in /usr/local. I'd suggest that you take a look at the
newtape and backup as a start. They are
written in shell script. You'll also see Perl (another scripting
language), and you may also see C, and Java as well as a host of
others.
Earlier, I mentioned that backups happen automatically at
night. This is performed not by black magic but by the lowly
cron command. Use man to read about both
cron and crontab, the program that is used
to update personal cron files. You'll also want to run
man 5 crontab to read about the format of the
crontab files in section 5 of the manual.
You can create your own personal crontab file and tell
cron about it with the crontab command. See
/home/wohler/lib/crontab.gbr for an example. The system
crontab file is in /etc/crontab. You do not
have to run crontab on this file though.
By reading the man pages for crontab in section 5 of
the manual, the /etc/crontab file, as well as the man
pages for the commands in the crontab file, you'll pretty
much know what will get executed when. Note my own personal hack in
/etc/cron.daily/daily.
CVS, or Concurrent Versioning System, is used to keep a history of
files that you change. I removed all the CVS information for the files
that I changed to simplify things for you, but if you find yourself
wanting to go back to an older version of a file, try info
cvs to get started.
CVS is very cool. We use it at work and I even use it to track changes to my environment files (you'll learn about those in the Linux book). Since CVS is a client/server system I can make a change to my environment at home, and then simply update my environment at work, or download our company's source code in the opposite direction. But, I would get familiar with other stuff first. I just mention it so you'll look for it in the future.
By now you've probably realized why Unix is not mainstream. There are a lot of commands, but once learned, the system actually makes a lot of sense and is actually easier to maintain (no more crashes, rebooting after installing simple software, or reinstalling the operating system, to name a few).
Enjoy your new toy. If you have any problems or questions that this overview didn't cover (or raised ;-), don't hesitate to send an email or give a call. My rates are $500/hour, but in-laws are exempt.
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