Date: Thu, 27 Aug 1998 12:59:24 -0700 (PDT) From: "Georgiana S. Trigg" <gtrigg@rocketmail.com> To: Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com>, FreeBSD <freebsd-questions@FreeBSD.ORG> Subject: Re: FREEBSD/COMPAQ COMPATIBILITY Message-ID: <19980827195924.14041.rocketmail@web4.rocketmail.com>
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Hello Greg, ---Greg Lehey <grog@lemis.com> wrote: > OK. This still sounds a bit vague, but I think you're saying "Will > FreeBSD run on Compaq?". If so, the answer is a qualified "yes". > I've heard of a number of problems, but most times it works fine. I was hoping actually that someone out there could say "Oh, yeah. I installed it to my Compaq and had this problem or that problem." Or "I installed it... It works fine." > Well, Windows products don't work well, period. Yeesh! Tell me about it! I want a UNIX box! :-( If they're doing > particularly badly on your machine, you might have problems which > affect operating systems, such as FreeBSD, as well. It's probably > worth your while to mention what machine you have, and what the > problems with Microsoft are. If you instist... :-) I have a 4764 model. I've had it for 18 mo.s or so. It has 166 MHz processor, 32 MB RAM, and a 2.5GB HD, just to name a few things. I'm going to have to yank off the case cover and probe and dig to get more specific. Compaq's documentation leaves something to be desired. I believe the machine must have come with Ver. A of '95. I've seen more freezes, blue screens, and illegal operations than any one human being should. I completely reformatted my hard drive before I did a full install of '98. The major problem with that was it wouldn't pick up my internal modem on COM2. There were no jumpers to reset on the modem/sound card, and even after applying a patch from the Compaq site, I STILL can't get into the set-up. I considered detaching the HD to boot directly into BIOS, but totally detaching your HD is just BEGGING for misery sometimes... I'm running an external modem I borrowed from work on COM1, and I REALLY don't want to go out and buy an external to try to patch up that problem. Now it works okay, but it will do weird things... My icons on my bar at the bottom right of the screen will all disappear except the volume icon and I have to reboot. After I tell it to reboot (yes, I hit Start, Shut Down, Reboot), I still have to do 2 Ctrl-Alt-Dels to get it to finish. Everything disappears but the wallpaper and it hangs. My warranty is up, and even before it ran out, Compaq tech support was USELESS. Any time I had a problem, their solution was simply to blame it on the last piece of software I had installed. *sigh* My last-ditch effort will be quick-restoring my hard drive and upgrading the Win '95. It's very possible that Win '98 just DOES NOT like my hardware. It's probably pretty cheap stuff, anyways. I'm sure my internal modem isn't the best on the market, especially since it's one of those modem+soundcard in one wonders... Needless to say, I am going to BUILD my next box and make it generic as possible! Regards and thanks, Georgiana _________________________________________________________ DO YOU YAHOO!? Get your free @yahoo.com address at http://mail.yahoo.com To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-questions" in the body of the message
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