[plug] My new PC - a little disappointed...

[vk6ksj]

Hi Blake,

Good morning from Broome !
Sorry I can't help with any of those problems, that's definately not
a good start for a new machine though, it wouldn't a new user any
confidence with the OS that's for sure !

I'm guessing the same machine has Windows on it (eXPensive or
Vistuffed ?) which works no worries ?

Cheers
Kai

---- Original Message ----
From: blake.munro at gmail.com
To: plug at plug.org.au
Subject: [plug] My new PC - a little disappointed...
Date: Sun, 20 Jul 2008 01:44:35 +0800

>Hi all,
>
>Well my tax refund came in and it's been about 4 and a half years
>since I
>spent any money on my poor old desktop PC, so I headed down to my
>local PC
>store and got all the parts I wanted to build myself a nice new
>machine. The
>specs are:
>
>Gigabyte M750SLI-DS4 mainboard (with Nvidia chipset)
>AMD 64 AM2 dual core 6000+ (3000mhz)
>4gb Corsair DDR2 1066mhz (these babies have their own heatsinks and
>fan
>cooling system attached!
>ASUS Nvidia 9600 GT 512mb DDR3 PCIe video card
>36gb WD Raptor 10,000rpm (system boot)
>2x 500gb WD 7200rpm (planned to set up in a RAID mirror)
>Thermaltake Case with 430w PSU
>ASUS Dual layer DVD writer
>TP-Link USB Wireless G adapter (Ralink chipset)
>
>So, I get home on Friday after a long day at work and spend a couple
>of
>hours carefully building the box.
>
>My nightmare started after a smooth installation of Ubuntu Hardy
>8.04.1,
>32bit x86 edition.
>
>Firstly, the mainboard has a Realtek ALC889A sound chip on board. The
>audio
>was extremely distorted and crackly, thus rendering it as useless as
>an
>ashtray on a motorbike. Ok, so this appears to be a known bug. Some
>may call
>it a bug, others may call it "brand new hardware, give it time for us
>to
>build in support! (see
>https://bugtrack.alsa-project.org/alsa-bug/view.php?id=3765). A mate
>of mine
>had a surplus Creative Audigy 7.1 PCI laying around which he gave me,
>great
>- audio problem solved!
>
>Now, the biggest issue of all - and the only thing stopping me from
>being a
>happy person right now is that for the life of me I can not get my
>Nvidia
>9600 GT to work. After a fresh Ubuntu install, it uses the VESA
>driver and
>gives me a good resolution, but I can not make use of any of the 3D
>features
>due to driver problems.
>
>Firstly, I tried the restricted drivers package by enabling the
>nvidia-glx-new package from System > Administration > Hardware
>drivers.
>After a reboot, I get a blank screen. Google confirms that Ubuntu is
>using
>an older Nvidia driver and there is no support for my card.
>
>Next step, I tried EnvyNG. Envy does not detect the card straight off
>the
>bat and suggests that I may manually force the install at my own
>risk, just
>to see if it works or not. Well, I can assure you that it does not
>work :(
>
>Final step, and I thought I was seeing some light at the end of the
>tunnel
>with this one, was to download the binary package from nvidia.com and
>manually install the driver, get it to compile a module etc and all
>would be
>sweet. Not so. The Nvidia package says that my card is supported,
>others on
>various forums I have googled have had some success with this method,
>but I
>still keep running in to dead ends, like a lot of other people it
>seems. The
>module compiles and installs, but same as step 1, when I reboot, I
>get a
>blank screen and Gnome does not start.
>
>This is all making me quite frustrated at the moment, i've spent
>about the
>last 48 hours at home like a hermit with about 40 firefox tabs open
>at any
>one time, reading forums from all around the globe trying to get this
>damn
>graphics card to work.
>
>So my question to fellow pluggers - does anyone have one of these
>cards, and
>did you get it to work with the correct driver? If so, could you
>please give
>me some advice?
>
>I have since also found out that my mainboard only has fake raid, and
>have
>not even attempted using dmraid or any of those tools to set that up,
>i'm
>just taking it one step at a time.
>
>It appears to have bitten me in the ass by going out and buying brand
>new
>hardware. I tried to stick with good, popular brands but it appears
>that
>Ubuntu is still a little bit behind in terms of bleeding edge
>hardware.
>
>Any help would be very appreciated.
>
>-- 
>Regards,
>
>Blake Munro
>+61 8 6363 5680
>blake.munro at gmail.com