Tony’s Cafe

Remember those TV shows in the 70s and early 80s which depicted a videophone that we’d all be using in the near future? You know, the one where a person could pick up the telephone receiver, and see the person on the other end via a little screen? Well, that’s what I wanted to build. With Linux. GnomeMeeting is an open source H.323 video confencing program used primarily in Linux. It is very similar to Microsoft’s NetMeeting, but much more versatile. Gnomemeeting has everything you wished NetMeeting had. Initially I was going to use OpenH.323‘s ohphone, but GnomeMeeting has more features, more support, and a larger user base. As far as the rotary phone, well, I couldn’t be talking about anything but your 1980s-era real-bells rotary dial telephone.

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I have an OpenVPN server running and I’ve been meaning to get my Powerbook (running OS X 10.3.7) to connect as a client. I haven’t been able to find anything comprehensive on getting OpenVPN running under Mac OS X…. so, I decided to pool my notes together and write something. These instructions are my rough notes for getting OpenVPN running as a TAP client on Mac OS X 10.3. I’m only concerned with TAP devices, as my OpenVPN server functions as a way to place all remote clients on the same virtual segment. This document also assumes you already have an OpenVPN server running and configured for your client, with a shared SSL key.

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In a previous post, I had troubles getting the Composite Out on an ATI video card to work in Linux. I even tried framebuffer support (even though I shouldn’t have to) but that didn’t work either. I ended up purchasing a nVidia card with Composite Out, since nVidia has better Linux support. So, the nVidia MX4000 card with composite output arrived today from NewEgg. After replacing the ATI PCI video card with the new nVidia AGP video card, the composite video on boot already looks sharper and clearer.

First, I made sure my kernel was compiled with AGP support as a module, with NVIDIA support enabled. (I am using the 2.6.10 kernel — I was having problems with the 2.4.28 kernel with getting X Windows to run with Video for Linux enabled.) Then, I downloaded the Linux drivers from nVidia, and ran the installation file. The installation file would try to install the nvidia module it compiled, but, it wasn’t able to insert it. I kept getting the following error:

./usr/src/nv/nvidia.o: init_module: No such device

After much digging, I checked in my BIOS… the “Assign IRQ for VGA” was disabled. I must’ve disabled it a long time ago on my ABIT BP6 motherboard in an attempt to conserve IRQs. Oops! (I completely wish every device in my computer could share one IRQ, and I know Doug will have a field day with that comment.)

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After all the stuff I went through to troubleshoot getting X Windows and a video card’s composite out to work under Linux, I better write this post! I have an old ATI Rage 3D (Mach64 chipset) PCI video card that has composite out (and S-Video out) which currently resides in my Debian Linux server at home. I want to get the composite out working with my old Commodore 1702 monitor, which has a composite input. Why, you may ask? Well, since most of the stuff on this website is pure geek, it’s because I want to be able to videoconference, using my Linux server, with the Commodore monitor as my video display.

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Why install Linux on an IBM P70? Besides the geek factor, it’s to make it useful again. A computer that you can lug around and do ssh, dial-up, text browsing, e-mail, etc. (In my case, I am probably going to run LambdaMOO [more info] on the P70… but again, just for the geek factor…

Here are some general instructions for installing Debian Linux on an IBM P70 with an ESDI HDD and a SMC Ethernet MCA card. The version of Debian we’ll be installing is Woody (3.0) and the kernel version (for more efficient use on a 386 CPU) is 2.2. Usually the P70s came with an ESDI hard drive, but some had SCSI drives. You will need a Linux box handy beforehand so you can compile the kernel and make the installation disks for the P70.

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