paying for tech support

Hi Don;

I'm not sure if you mean "hands-on" help, if so you need to ask around in your neighbourhood...

But you can always get technical support, if you post your problem in our forum, for free!

We're all here to help and advise...

And if you really like to put your fee in a good place, go here: http://www.mepis.org/store

Ruud

Hi Ruud,
I have received good help from the forum in the past, but I'm stuck on a problem now. In the past I have dealt with companies that offer Tech Support by phone for $30 per incident, or something like that. This is what I'm really looking for. It wouldn't have to be specifically for MEPIS. What I really need now is someone who understands how hardware is detected at startup.

You mentioned looking around in my neighborhood. I'm in Oaxaca Mexico and the tech people here all insist on knowing whether my Linux computer is running windows 98 or XP. They can't conceive of a computer without Windows because they've never seen such a thing.

Thank you for your time,
Don

Hi Don;

This might be something for you:

http://ubuntumex.neoanthares.net/?q=forum

http://counter.li.org/reports/place.php?place=MX%3AOax

You may ask one of these Linux-users to get over to your place in Oaxaca, and give you some "Hands-On" help?!?

Ruud

Hi Ruud,
That's a great link, thank you very much,

Don

Don
Hi Don;

I'm not sure which of the links you're refering to, but you're welcome!

I hope you'll find the "Linux-Geek" to help you out!

Although you think you're a third world country (and maybe you are?), you're in Mexico, you're very lucky Don!
People in Mexico are happy with their way of living...

What kind of work do you do Don?
If you help developing Mexico to a better economic level, you're sure to find any help from another,
that's what people gets around, not money,
even when that sounds like a contradiction...

Ruud

Hi Ruud,
Yes, I feel extremely luck to live in oaxaca, mexico.

I've been retired here for 6 years now. I worked in Electronic Prepress in printing plants before, so I have a good computer background, but it was all Macintosh. When Apple started with OS X, I moved to Linux at home.

Thanks for your help,

Don

Don, I understand your hankering for support that will solve your issues instantaneously. Pardon me for saying so, but this is not equivalent to paid tech support. My feeling is we live in a world where 'paid for' means as much as 'quality guaranteed'.... Let me assure you from my own experience that this is a fallacy.

You are experiencing a problem that you need solved asap.... Maybe someone at the forum here can help you, maybe not... does that mean someone could solve it for you who was paid to do so??? I am not so sure.....

So, I can add two things. A possible solution:
- add irqpoll to the grub boot line. Occasional recognition sounds like an irq issue to me. Another possible solution might be adding pnpbios=off

A definite solution:
- forget about the modem you have, and buy a true hardware modem that is Linux compatible. It might cost you some $ 50, but you will know for sure that it works with Linux, now and in the foreseeable future. You spend on hardware, but you save on support, a so-called break-even solution....

cheers

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

I've been retired here for 6 years now. I worked in Electronic Prepress in printing plants before, so I have a good computer background, but it was all Macintosh. When Apple started with OS X, I moved to Linux at home.

Thanks for your help,

Don

Hi Don;

You're welcome Don, I've been working as a Desktop Publisher/Electronic Prepress operator for the past fourteen years or so and now for about two years as a Creative Designer at the same company. I never changed from OS-9 to Linux, at work I'm still with/at a Mac OSX (10.4.7) at home I work with a PC with both Mepis and M$ Windows XP (my wife uses the latter).

Well, again I hope you'll find someone to help you over there!

Bye, Ruud.

Hi Carlops,
I posted an answer to your reponse a few days ago, but it seems to have disappeared, so:

This sounds promising, but I'm not sure how to do it. I have a boot directory at the root level with a grub directory in it. In that, i find a file named "menu.lst" which has this in it: (these are the two choices I get at startup):
-----
title MEPIS at hda1, kernel 2.6.15-26-386
root (hd0,0)
kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 root=/dev/hda1 nomce quiet vga=791
boot
title MEMTEST
kernel /boot/memtest86+.bin
-----
Can I add the arguments you mentioned here?

Actually I tried this twice, with two different modems. Both said "Linux Compatible" on the box. The installers couldn't find either one of them. they were both PCI modems and i have read that Linux often doesn't like PCI modems, so I went back to the original modem which does sometimes work. This modem also worked flawlessly, 100% of the time with my Mepis 2004 installation.

Thank you very much for your time,
don Jungk

You can add the lines to the grub boor line when in the grub startup screen. Just start typing and you'll see it will be added to the line in the text bar at the bottom of the screen.

Once you have tested it and found it works, you can add it permanently to the corresponding line, indeed in menu.lst (this one: kernel /boot/vmlinuz-2.6.15-26-386 root=/dev/hda1 nomce quiet vga=791)

About the modems.... If you really depend on a modem I think the best choice would be an external serial modem. It works via the standard tty ports and therefore it cannot fail. But maybe my suggestions will work.....

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question

Hi Carlops,
Thank you for pointing out that I can change the boot instructions each time and not permanently. I didn't know that was there.

Unfortunately, this time it didn't seem to have any effect.

As far as the external modem, I'm going to look for one, but I'll probably wait until the next time I reinstall the system to use it. That seems to be the best way to get hardware recognized.

Thanks for your help,
don

too bad....

Another option: the BIOS may have a setting for PnP OS. Make sure to set that to 'NO'. That way the BIOS will assign irq addresses, so the OS cannot be confused.

Newbie or not Newbie, there's always a question