Hi, I have an HP Pavilion a1203w that came with Micro$haft XP, which has worked fine for the year and a half (or so) that I have had it. Almost every Linux that I put on the second hard drive (160Gb) either "freezes up," won't load, goes flakey and craps out on me within the first two weeks in some way or another. I have been able to run 3 distros without problems as long as I don't try to upgrade them ..... Libranet 2.8.1 - 2.4.21 kernel (Jon Danzig passed away and his son, Tal closed the doors) ..... Beatrix @005 - 2.6.7 kernel(Stephen Watsky went into Diabetic something and is now in a nursing home somewhere in the US) ....... SimplyMepis 2004 - don't remember the kernel ( Warren used a modified Debian kernel which can no longer be upgraded). What I have on it right now is Beatrix (Ubuntu Clone), but I have never been able to get any Ubuntu to work i.e. freezups, etc.
My box has a Semperon 3000+ processor, 512Mb RAM. I will show you what "lspci" says .... I don't understand it at all .....
I'm providing all this info and asking these questions because I have been told on several forums that this box has a hardware problem, and I am trying to track it down. I have the 40Gb hard drive (with the M$ XP) completely disconnected, so that the only drive is the one which seems to cause me all the grief.
Code:
# lspci
pcilib: Cannot open /sys/bus/pci/devices
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 760/M760 Host (rev 02)
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SG86C202
0000:00:02.0 ISA bridge: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS964 [MuTIOL Media IO] (rev 36)
0000:00:02.5 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 5513 [IDE] (rev 01)0000:00:02.7 Multimedia audio controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] Sound Controller (rev a0)
0000:00:03.0 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.1 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.2 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 1.0 Controller (rev 0f)
0000:00:03.3 USB Controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] USB 2.0 Controller0000:00:04.0 Ethernet controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] SiS900 PCI Fast Ethernet (rev 90)
0000:00:05.0 IDE interface: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS]: Unknown device 0180 (rev 01)
0000:00:09.0 Communication controller: Conexant: Unknown device 2f20
0000:00:0b.0 FireWire (IEEE 1394): VIA Technologies, Inc. IEEE 1394 Host Controller (rev 80)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 NorthBridge
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: Silicon Integrated Systems [SiS] 661FX/M661FX/M661MX/741/M741/760/M760 PCI/AGP
I don't know what mother board is in it, nor do I remember the name of the hard drive (which I can take out and get numbers off of if need be ....). I guess what I'm asking for is a little handholding to show me how to figure out what I have and how to check for compatibility in the HCL.
I have no "/sbin/lspci."
I tried
Code:
gedit /sys/bus/pci/devices
but found nothing at all in /sys ?? which I would think would have had at the very least /bus which would have had /pci ... and so on. this is using the Beatrix with the 2.6.7 kernel and 2.8 Gnome. If I try to upgrade it wipes it out .... especially if I try to use "hoary" backports (it was based on Hoary).
Also, just about every Live Linux CD I try (Knoppix 5.11 included, Mandriva One, SimplyMepis 6.5 etc.) either freezes up or won't load, as well ..... the exceptions are the old Beatrix and Mepis mentioned above, but I have had success with PC-BSD 1.2 loaded on the hard drive and FreeSBIE 3.0 as a live CD. Needless to say, I am very confused, as BSD is supposed to be light years behind Linux, from some of the commentary I've read, but I don't have the problems noted above when I run BSD :?
TIA for any good advice I get.
Motherboard and memory questions
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