Hi,
I have managed to get a working installation of Redhat v9 on a dell 170L PC, BUT the only thing I have not managed to get working is the USB?
I am hoping that I can copy some stuff either onto a Memory Stick or a ext USB hard drive?
Thanks Hattersman

Hello and welcome to LQ. Hope you like it here.

Unfortunately there is sonething you have to do and it's rather important you do so as soon as possible:

Probably not what you want to hear but since running GNU/Linux is all about performance, protecting assets and providing services in a continuous, stable and secure way you must know Red Hat Linux maintenance and errata support ended on April 30 of 2004 for all YES ALL Red Hat Linux releases (not RHEL). The version you installed is obsolete, no longer maintained and unsupported. This means you miss out on all the new technology that's been around for ages, all the bug fixes and all the security updates. Unless you have the knowledge and time to maintain this setup yourself to keep it from (doing) harm, keeping your machine attached to the Internet makes it a hazard not only for you but for the whole community.
So please plan your migration and make it soon. If you like the effort Red Hat puts into certification, ISV acceptance, support longevity and stability of RHEL but don't want to pay for it you could run CentOS (stable is at 5.1 right now). If you like what RHL provided but want all bleeding edge tech, insane release cycles and want to support the community by testing software then you could run Fedora (prerelease is 9 right now). Else check out the many "choose a distro" threads here.

Hi,

Thanks for that.
I am aware of the changes to Redhat etc and probably should have gone down another route, BUT I have seen people who have supposedly had USB (1) running on some older versions of redhat.
So there must be away??

So what you're basically saying is that, while you understand that you should back off from running an unsafe deprecated setup, you really dont care.

Upgrading to a recent 2.4 kernel should get your USB devices working provided they are supported and provided you satisfy all the dependencies involved. Comparing the time it will take you to transplant, revive and troubleshoot the "heart" of your distro a few times over with installing a current one from scratch the choice should be easy.

Much like unSpawn, I can't understand why anyone would choose to run RedHat 9 in this day and age.

You have already been told that there are newer, better options which will work with USB straight out of the box.

Why not take this advice? Why persist with trying to polish that turd?

RedHat 9's kernel is version 2.4.20. This version doesn't support SATA and it's level of USB support could be compared with Windows 98 (i.e. possible but painful).

And then once you work out how to use your USB devices, there is every chance that you'll come back here asking why your burner won't work. That's because disc burning under the 2.4 series kernels was one huge mess.

Things really are much better now. Why torture yourself? Would you install Windows 98 on any machine these days? Seriously?

New stuff are good. I know it. I tried to meddle with RedHat 7.1 lately and it is a nightmare but i have to do it. I struggle to do some stuff on 7.1 where all i need to do is to click next, next and next in RHEL 4

We all want the easy way out but let's face it, sometimes people don't have a choice. And if really it is unable to work, then forget about it, tell the guy who want you to make it work and say IT CANNOT NOT WORK !!! IT'S FREAKING OLD TECHNOLOGY and look for a alternative.

Why is it that so many people start out on some old version of red hat from 2003 or 2004?