EnigmaOne
04-24-2004, 02:16 AM
This isn't one of those euphoric "How I Did It!" posts. Rather it's just something that I discovered last week about a new motherboard that I installed in my primary system earlier this year.
It's also an admission of something that I've done that gives me no small measure of shame and humiliation. However, in that my actions are justified in the altruistic pursuit of domestic tranquility (namely, mine), I have confidence in your forbearance and forgivness in advance.
My wife loves to play Disney's ToonTown, and I prefer to haunt the Linux boards and NGs...mainly because I'm not much on games at all. She had been trying to get me to play the game with her for sometime; while enduring my retorts of her being a Redmondite and waving bunches of garlic in her face--in a vain attempt at warding off the evil spirits obviously inhabiting her body. She's a very tolerant woman, well-qualified for sainthood.
BUT...my wife did continue in her campaign of persuasion until I relented--swearing her to absolute secrecy--installing w98se on a scrap drive, doing the myriad of updates and reboots necessary to get an insecure pseudo-OS almost running enough to load up the ToonTown client. My skin is still crawling, and I nearly went insane! (Give me a one-reboot, 3-CD install of Linux any day.)
Once this was installed and sort-of working (the best you can expect from ms), I played a few rounds of ToonTown with my beloved, using a second account. Okay. It was fun...sort of. Switching drive cables gave me my Linux install back for normal use. Switch again, and I'm playing ToonTown for another evening. Nope. I don't want to add w98se to my grub configuration to dual-boot. It's a passing thing, you know.
Anyway, I got into it a bit more and discovered that it's only fun because she likes it, and that makes me happy too. But swapping IDE cables will soon become a real pain, and I really don't want a true, software dual-boot machine that has windoze on it.
Last week I noticed that, on this particular motherboard:
MicroStar International, Inc., KT4AV-L, MS 6712-080 Motherboard
American Megatrends, Inc. BIOS Release 03 October, 2003
A6712VMS V5.1 100303
62-1003-009999-00101111-040201-VIA_K7-1AARK204-
AMIBIOS NewSetup Version 3.31a
the following line comes up after POST:
"DEL:Setup F11:Boot Menu F12:Network Boot TAB:Logo"
Ok....hit F11, and a nice, big, blue, character cell dialogue appears, containing every detected boot-capable device attached to the system.
Cool! How did I miss that these past few months?
Linux boot drive is hda (IDE0/Pri-M)
Linux swap/file storage drive is hdb (IDE1/Pri-S)
CD Writer is hdc (IDE2/Sec-M)
I added the w98se drive as hdd (IDE3/Sec-S)
Booting to Linux is a simple power-on and let the machine boot.
Playing ToonTown is power-on, hit F11, arrow-down 3-times, hit enter, scream in agony as ms takes over my hardware.
I'll keep doing this until I can figure out how to get the Internet Exploiter/Flash/DirectX/Shockwave combination running under wine/winex, or until Disney gives up and starts supporting Open Source browsers.
I'm hoping for the latter, but I'm not holding my breath.
For those of you having the need to dual-boot (something asked about fairly frequently around here), check your BIOS boot options to see if boot device selection is supported similarly.
Your "problem" may already be solved.
It's also an admission of something that I've done that gives me no small measure of shame and humiliation. However, in that my actions are justified in the altruistic pursuit of domestic tranquility (namely, mine), I have confidence in your forbearance and forgivness in advance.
My wife loves to play Disney's ToonTown, and I prefer to haunt the Linux boards and NGs...mainly because I'm not much on games at all. She had been trying to get me to play the game with her for sometime; while enduring my retorts of her being a Redmondite and waving bunches of garlic in her face--in a vain attempt at warding off the evil spirits obviously inhabiting her body. She's a very tolerant woman, well-qualified for sainthood.
BUT...my wife did continue in her campaign of persuasion until I relented--swearing her to absolute secrecy--installing w98se on a scrap drive, doing the myriad of updates and reboots necessary to get an insecure pseudo-OS almost running enough to load up the ToonTown client. My skin is still crawling, and I nearly went insane! (Give me a one-reboot, 3-CD install of Linux any day.)
Once this was installed and sort-of working (the best you can expect from ms), I played a few rounds of ToonTown with my beloved, using a second account. Okay. It was fun...sort of. Switching drive cables gave me my Linux install back for normal use. Switch again, and I'm playing ToonTown for another evening. Nope. I don't want to add w98se to my grub configuration to dual-boot. It's a passing thing, you know.
Anyway, I got into it a bit more and discovered that it's only fun because she likes it, and that makes me happy too. But swapping IDE cables will soon become a real pain, and I really don't want a true, software dual-boot machine that has windoze on it.
Last week I noticed that, on this particular motherboard:
MicroStar International, Inc., KT4AV-L, MS 6712-080 Motherboard
American Megatrends, Inc. BIOS Release 03 October, 2003
A6712VMS V5.1 100303
62-1003-009999-00101111-040201-VIA_K7-1AARK204-
AMIBIOS NewSetup Version 3.31a
the following line comes up after POST:
"DEL:Setup F11:Boot Menu F12:Network Boot TAB:Logo"
Ok....hit F11, and a nice, big, blue, character cell dialogue appears, containing every detected boot-capable device attached to the system.
Cool! How did I miss that these past few months?
Linux boot drive is hda (IDE0/Pri-M)
Linux swap/file storage drive is hdb (IDE1/Pri-S)
CD Writer is hdc (IDE2/Sec-M)
I added the w98se drive as hdd (IDE3/Sec-S)
Booting to Linux is a simple power-on and let the machine boot.
Playing ToonTown is power-on, hit F11, arrow-down 3-times, hit enter, scream in agony as ms takes over my hardware.
I'll keep doing this until I can figure out how to get the Internet Exploiter/Flash/DirectX/Shockwave combination running under wine/winex, or until Disney gives up and starts supporting Open Source browsers.
I'm hoping for the latter, but I'm not holding my breath.
For those of you having the need to dual-boot (something asked about fairly frequently around here), check your BIOS boot options to see if boot device selection is supported similarly.
Your "problem" may already be solved.