I've setting up Ubuntu 6.06 to run on an old pc and have run into several problems.

My system thus far:

Old motherboard ? early-mid 90s but seems to handle everything so far
360 MB RAM
new 160 GB EIDE Hard drive (put in BIOS as a smaller hd in order to be recognized, /boot mounted in small partition so BIOS can find it, no other OS)
floppy drive that came with it originally - not working
cd-rw - worked without problem
ethernet - worked without problem
old Soundblaster card - model CT4180 - no sound
old Matrox vga monitor - can't change resolution

Problems and what I've done thus far garnering info from online:

Floppy drive won't mount -

floppy icon shows up under Computer - tried to right click and mount there and got message:

Unable to mount selected floppy drive; mount: mount point /media/floppy0 does not exist

I added the last line to my fstab file:

# /etc/fstab: static file system information.
#
# <file system> <mount point> <type> <options> <dump> <pass>
proc /proc proc defaults 0 0
/dev/hda6 / ext3 defaults,errors=remount-ro 0 1
/dev/hda1 /boot ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda5 /home ext3 defaults 0 2
/dev/hda7 none swap sw 0 0
/dev/hdc /media/cdrom0 udf,iso9660 user,noauto 0 0
/dev/fd0 /media/floppy0 vfat rw,user,noauto
0 0

I checked Users and Groups. Ben (the only user account) and haldaemon are the only users listed.

I don't know where to go from here on this matter.

When I typed "sudo gedit /etc/fstab" in my terminal to edit fstab I also got:

ben@ben-desktop:~$ sudo gedit /etc/fstab
Password:
ALSA lib confmisc.c:672snd_func_card_driver) cannot find card '0'
ALSA lib conf.c:3493_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_card_driver returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:392snd_func_concat) error evaluating strings
ALSA lib conf.c:3493_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_concat returned error: No such device
ALSA lib confmisc.c:1072snd_func_refer) error evaluating name
ALSA lib conf.c:3493_snd_config_evaluate) function snd_func_refer returned error: No such device
ALSA lib conf.c:3962snd_config_expand) Evaluate error: No such device
ALSA lib pcm.c:2102snd_pcm_open_noupdate) Unknown PCM default
ben@ben-desktop:~$



Which I believe leads me to Problem 2:

No Sound

When trying to play a ogg file from Examples I get:

Totem could not start up. Could not establish connection to sound server.

When I click on the volume control icon I get:

No volume control gstreamer plugins or devices found.

In the Synaptic Package Manager I show gstreamer0.10-alsa, -plugins-base, and -plugins-base-apps are all installed as well -plugins-good and -plugins-ugly, but not plugins-bad.

Alsa-base and alsa-firmware-loaders is also installed.

What else to try?


Problem 3:

Monitor Resolution

It's an old monitor and running under a screen resolution of 640x480 a lot of my screen becomes cut off. When I ran Win98SE I had the resolution set at 800x600 and very little if anything was cut off. Under System>Preferences>Screen Resolution I am only given the choice of 640x480. I've read that all the options listed in /etc/X11/xorg.conf would show up there but that doesn't seem to be the case. Here's the file:



Section "Files"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/misc"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/cyrillic"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi/:unscaled"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/Type1"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/100dpi"
FontPath "/usr/share/X11/fonts/75dpi"
# path to defoma fonts
FontPath "/var/lib/defoma/x-ttcidfont-conf.d/dirs/TrueType"
EndSection

Section "Module"
Load "i2c"
Load "bitmap"
Load "ddc"
Load "dri"
Load "extmod"
Load "freetype"
Load "glx"
Load "int10"
Load "type1"
Load "vbe"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Generic Keyboard"
Driver "kbd"
Option "CoreKeyboard"
Option "XkbRules" "xorg"
Option "XkbModel" "pc104"
Option "XkbLayout" "us"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Identifier "Configured Mouse"
Driver "mouse"
Option "CorePointer"
Option "Device" "/dev/input/mice"
Option "Protocol" "ExplorerPS/2"
Option "ZAxisMapping" "4 5"
Option "Emulate3Buttons" "true"
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "stylus"
Option "Device" "/dev/wacom" # Change to
# /dev/input/event
# for USB
Option "Type" "stylus"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "eraser"
Option "Device" "/dev/wacom" # Change to
# /dev/input/event
# for USB
Option "Type" "eraser"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "InputDevice"
Driver "wacom"
Identifier "cursor"
Option "Device" "/dev/wacom" # Change to
# /dev/input/event
# for USB
Option "Type" "cursor"
Option "ForceDevice" "ISDV4" # Tablet PC ONLY
EndSection

Section "Device"
Identifier "Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 2164W [Millennium II] AGP"
Driver "mga"
BusID "PCI:1:0:0"
Option "OldDmaInit" "True"
EndSection

Section "Monitor"
Identifier "Generic Monitor"
Option "DPMS"
EndSection

Section "Screen"
Identifier "Default Screen"
Device "Matrox Graphics, Inc. MGA 2164W [Millennium II] AGP"
Monitor "Generic Monitor"
DefaultDepth 24
SubSection "Display"
Depth 1
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 4
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 8
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 15
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 16
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
SubSection "Display"
Depth 24
Modes "1024x768" "800x600" "640x480"
EndSubSection
EndSection

Section "ServerLayout"
Identifier "Default Layout"
Screen "Default Screen"
InputDevice "Generic Keyboard"
InputDevice "Configured Mouse"
InputDevice "stylus" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "cursor" "SendCoreEvents"
InputDevice "eraser" "SendCoreEvents"
EndSection

Section "DRI"
Mode 0666
EndSection

Any other fixes for an old monitor out there?





I'm something of a Linux novice so please leave me details with your suggestions so I can try them. Thanks!

Heart

The only thing I can think of it to try to re-install the system.

I've had problems with older PCs not installing things properly.
when I installed Ubuntu 6.06LTS on my mum's (approximately) 8 year old PC I could not get Xserver to run so no graphics.

Have you had anything else installed on this PC previously? Did that previous system work OK?

You definitely seem less of a novice than me.

As far as the monitor/resolution goes try editing the DefaultDepth and change it to 16 vs 24. You can see if that helps. (I see in your example you're familiar with gedit, but I would enter another session via Ctrl-Alt-F1 and logon. Then do a "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm stop". Then "sudo vim /etc/X11/xorg.conf". After the changes are made you can then do "sudo /etc/init.d/gdm start", then Ctrl-Alt-F7 to return to the GUI session. Of course you may want to backup this file before editing it since you may end up worse than you started off.)

The floppy problem error says that /media/floppy0 doesn't exist. If you enter a terminal session and "cd /media" what folders do you see here? Try using/creating one here for the floppy. (The real question is do you really need this device?)

I've had lots of experience installing and re-installing!

Now I need to figure out how to get in there and fix it on problem at a time!

Win98 was ok beyond but I didn't have enough memory at the time. The monitor worked fine.

Yeah!!! Editing the monitor depth worked and I know longer feel like I'm looking through a magnifying glass.


I've only a little time today so I'll come back tomorrow and work on the floppy. And yes, believe it or not, I want it, I have a sload of documents on floppy that I want to get on to cd-rom.

Thanks!

Heart

As for sound... any Creative Labs card -should- work. Especially if it's an ISA Sound Blaster 16 - those work with EVERYTHING. There's some utility called alsaconf or something that could get ALSA running. I remember that for my old SB16 on a 500 MHz K6-2 OSS worked better - it was like 4x faster, plus I could get the hardware synth to work with little effort. If it's a SB16, try running 'modprobe sb' as root on a terminal and see if sound works. Also try and make sure your user account has access permissions to the sound device.