Re: round 2

[Peter Evans <peter@example.com>]

Jake (primarily):

In principle, I don't mind configuring things so that they work they way
I want them. So having to use xmodmap to get my keyboard right is fine
with me. (It's not as if I have anything better to do with my time,
wince groan smiley emoticon.)

> SuperProbe may be useful for figuring out settings. 

The installation routine has already used this, no? Worse, expert mode
let it ask me what the refresh rates are, but it then seems to have
ignored one of my answers. Well, I've resigned myself to editing the
file. (Now all I have to do is dig around my thousands of pages of Linux
books for an editor and how to use it. pico sounds promising.)

>> Sure enough, a look at the logfile revealed no modes.
>> I wanted (and had attempted to set) 800x600, but read
>>
>> "SVGA mode '800x600' needs hsync freq of 48.08 kHz. Deleted."
>>
>> Well, hey, sorry, but I specified 37.8 kHz; as this is what both
>> the manual and
>> http://www.fmworld.net/product/former/bi9706/nu/spec.html
>> (note 3) say.  Why should 800x600 need 48.08 kHz -- or how might
>> I tell X that it doesn't need this?

> Post the logfile, it may give us some clues.

I'd love to. But, um, how? I saved it as /tmp/x.txt to a computer that
may or may not be connected to the LAN, but figuring out how it's
connected (if it is) would no doubt take another three days.

Ah, sneakernet to the rescue! I can copy it to a floppy and bung the
floppy in *this* machine.

Right-ho, a new adventure: How To Copy A File To Diskette. Volkerding
and Reichard tell me that COPY is cp. But what's the floppy drive? Some
other book tells me that the first one is /dev/fd0

So in /tmp I optimistically type

cp x.txt /dev/fd0/x.txt

and read

cp: accessing '/dev/fd0/x.txt': 

and a stream of gibberish that's pretty obviously Japanese in the wrong
character set but anyway completely incomprehensible.  So I try

cp x.txt /dev/fd0

and read

cp: cannot stat 'x.txt': 

and a longer stream of gibberish.

Maybe it's a problem that this is a DOS-formatted diskette.  (If it
weren't, I don't suppose this doze machine would be able to read it.) Volkerding
and Reichard talk of fdmount (for Slackware). I try that but am told
that no such proggie exists.

Is this difficult, or am I just thick?