I installed Debian on my Pegasos yesterday but as i'm a linux newbie i still experience a few problems.

first here's my machine :

Pegasos 1 April2
512 Mb RAM
Voodoo3 3000 AGP
using onboard ethernet and soundchip
IDE0 : MorphOS 1.4.5
IDE1 : DVDROM
IDE2 : Debian 2.4.7

First i have no sound, the Pegasos AC97 soundchip seems to be detected but i have no sound under Gnome.
Second the hardrive get stucks sometimes, like the IDE freezes, sometimes it goes fine after a few mins and sometimes i have to reboot cause the whole system gets stuck. So i cannot really use Debian, as it gets pretty unstable because of this.

any ideas, suggestions ?

Regarding sound:
Make sure the sound channels (Master and PCM) aren't muted, since alsa will mute them by default. Run alsamixer from a console (use 'm' to (un)mute).

Regarding harddrive:
Make sure DMA is disabled since it is broken with the Articia. Run hdparm -d0 /dev/hda. I'm not sure how you force it to disable DMA in Debian, on a Gentoo system you would configure it in /etc/conf.d/hdparm

thanks dholm ! i'll check the alsa settings, but i don't think i use Alsa at all. Will check that.

I thought the DMA problem was fixed with April 2 revision, what if i use a PCI ethernet card instead of the built in Rhine chip ? will it solve the DMA issue ?

thanks again.

Why would changing ethernet card help? You have been reading WAY too many Amiga sites.

--
Neko

and is it a problem ?
and btw..how do you know ??? do u read some too ?

that was only a question

@dholm

i solved the DMA issue by disabling it using hdparm as you told me. It works fine, no more HD issues, but i have to disable it again everytime i reboot, i need to check that hdparm.conf file now. thanks a lot for your help.
I still haven't figured out what to do with the sound, will check later.

I think that you'r memory might be the problem. are you using a single 512MB memory module or is't 2*256MB? i got the same problem as you when i installed another 256Mb module in my pegasos.

i got 1x512Mb

the memory was tested by a Pegasos dealer (Relec, switzerland) i never had any problem with it.

I'm not sure, but i think that linux on peg1 has 380mb memory limit. Try booting with mem=380M, and with dma turned on.

so i just have to add mem=380 at the OpenFirmware prompt when I boot the kernel ?

thanks for the tip.

If it is a Pegasos 1 the limit is actually 256MB. So boot with "mem=256". If it is a Pegasos 2 there is no limit (except the number of physical slots of course .

thanks ! adding the mem=256M solved my problem.
Now i have no idea how to set up my soundcard.

just another question..

is there a website/forum with decent PPC Debian support ?

PPCZone looks like a no mans land...

you might try IRC, I do not remember exactly the channel name nor the server, but there are actually some chans about Pegasos and Morphos (where people are experienced enough to help you with whatever OS it is).

It's there that I talked the first time with Sven Luther and he helped me a lot with Debian on Pegasos.

Try finding these chans by searching this website or http://www.gogloom.com

The channel is #pegasosppc on irc.freenode.org, and i am svenl there. You can also ping me personally, altough freenode has some problems with this, so check out irc.oftc.net.

As for your problems, debian/etch beta2 and debian/sarge install just fine on pegasos, including sound working out of the box, using gnome and alsa.

The problem seems to be that there is some problem with installing on the pegasos 1 the latest debians. This is solveable, and i will provide a daily-build kernel next week which will allow installation on the pegasos 1, please watch it here (or ping me per email).

Friendly,

Sven Luther