To make a short story long, I am going to continue to list what works in my punny crappy Ubuntu box.
PCI USB 2 and Firewire combo card. Two in one card with plenty of ports for your PC's ass.
Today, I bring you the mighty PCI card that's manufactured by my fellow Chinese men somewhere in China or Taiwan. As far as USB 2.0 goes, I have been living under a rock for the past five years or so. I have never experienced the blazing 480 mbps speed until now.
Without much ado, I introduce you the SYBA PCI USB 2.0 & FireWire/1394a combo card Model SD-COMBO-02. The chips as read from the card directly are VIA VT6214L (USB2) and VT6307 (FireWire).
Here is what I got from lspci after booting up
00:0f.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
I/O ports at cc00 [size=32]
Capabilities:
00:0f.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 61) (prog-if 00 [UHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 5
I/O ports at d000 [size=32]
Capabilities:
00:0f.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 63) (prog-if 20 [EHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at cfffde00 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=256]
Capabilities:
00:0f.3 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80) (prog-if 10 [OHCI])
Subsystem: VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller
Flags: bus master, medium devsel, latency 64, IRQ 11
Memory at cfffd000 (32-bit, non-prefetchable) [size=2K]
I/O ports at d400 [size=128]
Capabilities:
With this comforting lspci output, even without any exhaustive testing as if I know any, I am quite confident that this piece, this fine piece of crappy PC HW will work perfectly with my crappy box.
Display
HP w2207. This is a nice display with some big footprint. The base is so big that it's almost like having a CRT monitor. I wonder if one could accidentally knock it over. The native resolution 1680 x 1050 is unattainable here. With no skill whatsoever, I only manage to configure it to 1600 x 1000 and make it stick. So 400 pixels are missing in action. The text is a bit fuzzy which I think it's the OS' fault. It has a couple of USB 2 ports and a pair of puny speakers which I never tested.
If one knows how to make that 400 pixels appear or how to make text sharp or both, let me know. Thank you.
UPDATE on 5/16/08: I got all my pixels back, just use the VGA port, and under Hardy Heron or Ubuntu 8.04, all my pixels are back.
UPDATE: To make Firewire, video capture work in Ubuntu 7.10, please see here. I got mine work following the howto post.
it's totally out of my knowledge, just like reading Da Vinci's Code, I am your big fans, put something more interesting than Ubuntu or Linux
ReplyDeletehey LCL snowdrops here pls help my laptop crashed yesterday with horrible bluescreen about 'unmountable boot volume' whenever Windows xp pro tries 2 load. My tech helpline is off during wkends n am now browsing on my crappy mobile internet service, just come across another of ur ubunto post n thought u might b able 2 tell me if that error msg is life-threatening or not? my life (aka my phd) depends on it. Am going 2 bring it 2 uni tech service first thing 2moro and hav been trying not 2 go into hyper panic
ReplyDeleteI am no expert. But sounds like the you can't boot up the operating system, that's you may have a bad master boot record (MBR) or simply the harddrive is dying. Let the tech support or some expert take care of it. Probably they can boot it up from the DVD-ROM/CD-ROM or from a floppy then try to get your PhD paper out from the Harddrive. Or maybe they can boot the OS using safemode. Don't panic, do no harm to the harddrive, chances are they can get the paper out the harddrive....
ReplyDeleteGood luck.
By Safemode, I mean press F8 while the laptop is booting up. If the HD is bad, perhaps it won't boot up either....
ReplyDeleteBut I would say the harddrive is still probably "good" in the sense that the document is still intact, just needs to find some data recovery folks to get it out. So don't trash the harddrive yet.
LINK
ReplyDeleteQUOTE
One unfortunately common problem is data corruption on a hard drive and the dreaded "Unmountable Boot Volume" error. While the easiest thing to do may seem to be to format the drive and start from scratch, there is a better way of doing it, as long as you have a Windows XP installation disk handy. Read on to learn more.
Computer hardware wears out over time, it’s a fact. Your hard drive works constantly reading and writing data, and this (among other factors) may cause errors on certain parts of your system.
If you receive the "unmountable boot volume" error and have an installation disk, you still have a chance to save your system.
1. Insert your XP installation disk into an optical drive and boot up your computer.
2. When you see a welcome screen, hit the R key on your keyboard. This will enter you into recovery mode with a DOS prompt.
3. Now type chkdsk /p and hit Enter. This will launch a utility which will check for errors on your hard drive.
4. After the process is done, type fixboot and hit Enter to repair any damaged boot files which may have become corrupted. When asked to say yes or no, type the Y key on your keyboard.
5. Type exit and press the Enter key to reboot your computer.
If all went well, you should now be able to boot back into Windows without a problem!
Good luck!
UNQUOTE
fROM ms
ReplyDeletems link
1.The file system is damaged and cannot be mounted.
2.You use a standard 40-wire connector cable to connect the UDMA drive to the controller instead of the required 80-wire, 40-pin cable.
3.The basic input/output system (BIOS) settings are configured to force the faster UDMA modes.
Back to the top
RESOLUTION
If it be the connector cable problem then replace the 40-wire cable with an 80-wire UDMA cable.
If it's a BIOS settings problem then load the 'Fail-Safe' default settings, and then reactivate the most frequently used options such as USB Support.
If it's a damaged file system case then:-
1.Insert the Windows XP CD-ROM into the CD-ROM drive, and then restart the computer.
Click to select any options that are required to start the computer from the CD-ROM drive if you are prompted.
2.When the "Welcome to Setup" screen appears, press R to start the Recovery Console.
3.If you have a dual-boot or multiple-boot computer, select the installation that you must access from the Recovery Console.
4.When you are prompted, type the Administrator password. If the administrator password is blank, just press ENTER.
5.At the command prompt, type chkdsk /r , and then press ENTER.
6.At the command prompt, type exit , and then press ENTER to restart your computer.
This takes a bit longer, but the system should boot back into Windows.
Thank you sooooo very much LCL for all your info and links and advice and moral support, you're a star! I brought my laptop to the College I.S. Services this morning and (you'd love this) the guy helped me boot into the system using Ubuntu!!!!!! I was then able to access all of my files which I immediately copied to my external hard disk so I have no loss of data, thank GOD!!!!!! I actually now have an Ubuntu 7.0 disc that I was given to use in case I need to access any more files from my banjaxed laptop, but I'm going to have to get my laptop replaced from the manufacturer itself (Thank the Lord also for giving me the foresight to pay up for the full 5-year cover plan when I bought my laptop - which was only 2.5 years old as I got it in May 2005!).
ReplyDeleteHowever, even though I've been given Ubuntu by the tech guys, this is only as a stop-gap measure, as I've been advised to still stick with Windows XP because most of my research software would not likely to be able to work with Ubuntu... oh well...
Actually, the new information you gave about using the XP installation disk to reboot the computer is not something the tech guy mentioned at all this morning (he nonchalantly states as a matter of fact that my hard disk cannot be saved but I might be able to recover data from it, and didn't bother to run any tests to find out what went wrong but just bunged in the Ubuntu and then let me copy the files)... So I'm really tempted to give it a try, especially if the shop won't be able to repair/replace the existing laptop anytime soon, I may as well see whether I could still repair and reboot my poor laptop to see me through at least until my looming chapter deadline at the end of this month!
Sincere thanks again for all your help :)
You are welcome.
ReplyDeleteIf the most important data, i.e your thesis, is out, I think it won't be a bad idea to just try to boot up XP from your installation XP CD, that is if you happen to have one. Just do NOT format your harddrive no matter what.
If you have a gmail a/c just send the research paper to yourself so you have a backup in the "cloud." I don't do backup or run any virus protection 'cos I like the idea of living dangerously, but then you sometimes pay for it.
Hardware failure sucks but it happens.
Ubuntu version goes by year and month, so Ubuntu 7.10 is 2007 October release. I think that's what the tech support gave you.
Now get back to work now.
Yes on second inspection actually the disc says Ubuntu 7.10 rather than 7.0.
ReplyDeleteAnd thanks for your advice re: not formatting the disk... which the tech guy suggested I could do as he suggested that I could try reinstalling XP (which WILL reformat my hard disk)... but I think I'd rather take your advice when I try to reboot it, and also see what the shop's tech support can do first...
And yes I AM going back to work (more accurately, am going to back up my back up now, unfortunately I can't afford to live a life more exciting than a little old lady's, at least where my computer is concerned...).