Re: Sound Card

[Jeff Licquia <jeff@luci.org>]

On Wed, Jun 09, 1999 at 03:28:47PM -0500, Steven Pritchard wrote:
> 
> > It is my understanding that zImage kernels are almost officially a
> > thing of the past with the 2.2 kernels.  The uncompressed kernel (plus 
> > necessary data areas, LILO space, etc.) no longer fits in 640K of RAM.
> 
> Sure it does.  I haven't seen a need to go to bzImage.  In fact, I
> think the footprint of my kernels have gotten smaller, since more of
> the kernel is modular than in 2.0.x.
> 
> If your kernel won't work as a zImage, you probably have too much
> stuff compiled in.  You should think about modularizing or eliminating
> a bunch of drivers.

I haven't compiled a zImage kernel since I started with 2.2.x.  The
reason I went to bzImage was to correct an error where the kernel was
described as being too big.  I can't remember where the error was;
it's been a while.

Now, granted, I haven't tried zImage kernels for a while, so I won't
discount the possibility of a bug.  But I modularize wherever
possible on all my kernels, and I've seen the problem.

Maybe you've just been lucky. :-)

> > bzImage kernels shouldn't be a big deal.  If your LILO doesn't support
> > them, it's *really* old, and you should upgrade anyway.
> 
> There are also some machine that just don't like bzImage kernels.
> (Those machines are broken, of course, but they are somewhat common,
> at least in older machines.  Something about a broken A20 gate...  A
> quick search of any linux-kernel archive should explain the problem.)

My Dell laptop has this problem.

The problem is a bug in the A20 handler in the chipset.  A flag isn't
set to where it needs to be set, so the switch to protected mode hangs 
the system.  

2.2.x contains a workaround, so bzImage kernels are safe again on all
computers.  (I have a bzImage kernel now on the laptop.)

2.0.x kernels have weird booting problems on these machines even with
zImage kernels.  Debian contains a "Tecra" boot disk with a patched
kernel on it.  The hassle is that you then can't upgrade the kernel
package or build a custom kernel without tweaking the bug, as Debian
doesn't supply kernel source or kernel packages with the "Tecra"
patch.

The best solution: stick with 2.2.x and you can't go wrong.

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