Unusual issues switching from Slamd64 to Slackware
I obtained Slamd64 10.1 shortly after it was released and while I was generally very pleased with it, I did have a few issues with some stubborn programs that refused to compile or run, so I decided to try a version of original Slackware instead.
Two days ago, I recieved my copy of Slackware 10.2 and had no problems with the installation itself, but when I tried to configure my modem and graphics card a few new problems revealed themselves.
Before installing the modem, I used the cat /proc/pci command as usual to get the port and IRQ, but unlike before, no IRQ was listed in the results for that device ( the IRQ under Slamd64 was 209; memory address however remains 0xa000 for both ). I did manage to use the setserial command ( with auto-irq this time ) and get the modem to be recognised, yet while the "connected at" speeds are the same as before - around 49000 to 52000 - the actual transfer rates of literally anything I download are almost exactly half of what I had earlier; the absolute maximum is 2.8K as opposed to 5.4K. Now, I actually had this problem once before with Slamd64; however, changing the modem from ttyS3 to ttyS4 managed to fix that, while this time I have the modem already on ttyS4 and cannot get it to connect at all with any other setting.
The other main issue besides the 50% connection speed and missing IRQ is that at times, merely scrolling through text, switching between programs, and switching between tabs in Konqueror and Opera is very awkward and unresponsive - the programs visibly lag just to scroll a line of text, and switching pages make the system appear to freeze up for over a second ( not unlike the Pentium Pros I remember using at a local library, but this is not normal behaviour for an AMD 64 4000+ ). In KSysGuard I noticed that the program "X" at the top occasionally used over 40% of the system on its own, and KSysGuard showed itself as running over 20%. The CPU Load is sometimes normal ( near zero ) and other times up to 80% regardless of what I am running, while the amount of memory is reported incorrectly ( it usually says something along the lines of "886,284 KB used, 18,156 KB free", while I have 2 GB of RAM in my system, which was recognised accurately before ).
Has anyone experienced any of the above glitches with Slackware 10.2, or did I just recieve two very strange defective disks?
Aside from the aforementioned 4000+ processor and 2 Gb of memory, the computer has two Nvidia 6800 GT cards and a Multitech MT5634ZPX-PCI hardware modem. With both distros I used the Nvidia 8178 drivers, while I used the sata.s kernel before and the sata.i kernel now.
Last edited by Dymitry; 02-12-2006 at 05:42 AM.
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