SATA vs PATA

I always use to wonder what is the exact diffrence between Serial Adavance Technology Attachment and Parallel Advance Technology Attachment. The only thing I knew was SATA is better than PATA and its wire is really small. They can be attached to only those motherboards which has SATA port.

Well everytime we think that parallel transmission is faster since there are more bits transfered but this is little confusing here SATA provides more faster output. For more information and clear idea between SATA and PATA please visit this page hope they keep the website for long time. It is not good to copy someone's elses material hence just giving the link here.

http://www.directron.com/patasata.html

Ubuntu Dapper Drake from Badger Breezer

1st June 2006 Ubuntu released its new version Dapper Drake. It was almost 1-2 months after I had installed and set up my Badger Breezer on my machine. I was not in a mood to again order for new cd's or download its ISO on the cd. So thought of reading articles about upgrading directly the entire Operating System. Yes I got few positive articles. Even people who did it. It was quiet simple.

Had to find my source.list file (/etc/apt/sources.list) which had all the sources listed from where it generally downloads or installs the packages. This file had to be modifed. The word "breezy" was replaced with "dapper" everywhere. The problem I faced with was the first source. It was the cdrom. Now since I did not have the cdrom of the new version I was not sure what to do. This source also mentioned the version number hence I got more confused with which source to use. What if I change cdrom source to dapper and it prompts me to insert the cd labled with dapper. Hence I kept it untouched.

Once I saved the modified file. I had to run two commands in root mode.

$ sudo apt-get update
$ sudo apt-get -y dist-upgrade

This did my job but then since my internet had 150 MB limit I had to do it only in the night. Downloading took me 3 days since one of the day my internet package expired so the rest of the software wasn't downloaded and the computer was left on unnecessarily since I was deep asleep.

After those 2 commands the system got downloaded but it did not get installed so had to run those 2 commands again. I don't know what happened but on second time those downloaded packages got installed it took long time but it was fun looking at the changes happening live when the system was getting upgraded.

But latered figured out new problem. Sound was missing. It was soundless. I was like nooooo. Since system without no sounds is like no songs and it becomes bit boring. I posted it on techtalk since I tried few things by adding myself to the audio group, playing with the mixer settings and trying to setup sound card again.

Later on tecktalk someone asked me for lsmod this gave the list of modules present and lspci which gave me the list of components on my board


sid@nimkar:~$ cat /etc/issue
Ubuntu 6.06 LTS \n \l



sid@nimkar:~$ lsmod
Module Size Used by
acpi_sbs 24600 0
i2c_acpi_ec 7040 1 acpi_sbs
battery 12296 1 acpi_sbs
ac 7176 1 acpi_sbs
thermal 16524 0
fan 6408 0
button 8864 0
via_rhine 28676 0
8139too 31744 0
nls_iso8859_1 6656 0
nls_cp437 8320 0
vfat 16768 0
fat 57136 1 vfat
binfmt_misc 15248 1
rfcomm 45600 0
l2cap 30464 5 rfcomm
bluetooth 59268 4 rfcomm,l2cap
ipv6 300416 12
ppdev 11400 0
powernow_k8 12992 0
cpufreq_userspace 9184 1
cpufreq_stats 8264 0
freq_table 6464 2 powernow_k8,cpufreq_stats
cpufreq_powersave 3328 0
cpufreq_ondemand 9768 0
cpufreq_conservative 10984 0
video 18824 0
tc1100_wmi 9096 0
sony_acpi 7188 0
pcc_acpi 16128 0
hotkey 13768 0
dev_acpi 15364 0
container 6272 0
dm_mod 63176 1
md_mod 76792 0
lp 15040 0
snd_seq_dummy 5508 0
snd_seq_oss 38372 0
snd_seq_midi 11456 0
snd_seq_midi_event 9984 2 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi
snd_seq 64088 6 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd

_seq_midi,snd_seq_m idi_event
floppy 74120 0
snd_via82xx 32936 1
gameport 19216 1 snd_via82xx
tsdev 10240 0
snd_ac97_codec 110268 1 snd_via82xx
snd_ac97_bus 4096 1 snd_ac97_codec
snd_pcm_oss 59424 0
snd_mixer_oss 20608 1 snd_pcm_oss
8139cp 26880 0
mii 7680 3 via_rhine,8139too,8139cp
parport_pc 40944 1
parport 44172 3 ppdev,lp,parport_pc
snd_pcm 104712 3 snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec,snd_pcm_oss
snd_timer 29064 2 snd_seq,snd_pcm
snd_page_alloc 13968 2 snd_via82xx,snd_pcm
snd_mpu401_uart 10368 1 snd_via82xx
snd_rawmidi 31648 2 snd_seq_midi,snd_mpu401_uart
snd_seq_device 11280 5 snd_seq_dummy,snd_seq_oss,snd_seq_midi,snd_seq,s nd_rawmidi
snd 68576 13 snd_seq_oss,snd_seq,snd_via82xx,snd_ac97_codec, snd_pcm_oss,snd_mixer_oss,snd_pcm,snd_timer,snd_mpu401_uart,snd_rawmidi,snd_seq_ device
soundcore 13216 1 snd
i2c_viapro 11416 0
i2c_core 26624 2 i2c_acpi_ec,i2c_viapro
pcspkr 3592 0
psmouse 40452 0
serio_raw 9732 0
shpchp 51360 0
pci_hotplug 33168 1 shpchp
sg 43568 0
evdev 14464 1
ext3 145936 1
jbd 70952 1 ext3
ide_generic 2816 0
ehci_hcd 34568 0
uhci_hcd 36640 0
usbcore 145980 3 ehci_hcd,uhci_hcd
ide_cd 35744 0
cdrom 41144 1 ide_cd
via82cxxx 10884 0 [permanent]
sd_mod 21504 3
generic 7300 0
sata_via 11140 7
libata 86048 1 sata_via
scsi_mod 160504 3 sg,sd_mod,libata
processor 29224 2 thermal,powernow_k8
capability 7176 0
commoncap 9728 1 capability
vga16fb 15120 1
cfbcopyarea 5120 1 vga16fb
vgastate 10368 1 vga16fb
cfbimgblt 4224 1 vga16fb
cfbfillrect 5760 1 vga16fb
fbcon 43136 73
tileblit 4096 1 fbcon
font 9984 1 fbcon
bitblit 7424 1 fbcon
softcursor 3712 1 bitblit



sid@nimkar:~$ lspci
0000:00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.1 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.2 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.3 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
0000:00:00.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
0000:00: 00.7 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. K8M800 Host Bridge
0000:00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI bridge [K8T800/K8T890 South]
0000:00:0d.0 Ethernet controller: Realtek Semiconductor Co., Ltd. RTL-8139/8139C /8139C+ (rev 10)
0000:00:0f.0 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controll er (rev 80)
0000:00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT82 3x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
0000:00: 10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Contr oller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Contr oller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Contr oller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Contr oller (rev 81)
0000:00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
0000:00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/ K8T890 South]
0000:00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8 237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
0000:00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
0000:00:18.0 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Hyp erTransport Technology Configuration
0000:00:18.1 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Add ress Map
0000:00:18.2 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] DRA M Controller
0000:00:18.3 Host bridge: Advanced Micro Devices [AMD] K8 [Athlon64/Opteron] Mis cellaneous Control
0000:01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. S3 Unichrome Pro VGA Adapter (rev 01)

At present this was my configuration. Well all this seemed to be proper so I tried with mixer settings again in the prefrences I enabled few things and played with it. YES AND IT WORKED. Specially VIX DXS controller boosted my sound. Master surround had to be kept in limited. But I really liked ALSA mixer settings which really boosted sound something which I never seen in Windows.

Well now my every component I had installed in Breezy was upgraded with its version.
My firefox problem was also solved. I am now using FIREFOX 1.5. Yuppiee and Cheers to my new system now. And its dam smooth.