KO: Katana+Odachi

I had little problem merging Katana (Linux box) and Odachi (Windows box) together. I now have a fully function Linux-Windows hybrid computer. I normally boot from Linux. And if I want to boot with Windows, either physically or from a virtual machine, I can.

Making Windows XP capable of booting from the physical BIOS and VMWare was slightly tricky. I remember trying to do so before and failed. I kept getting a blue screen when starting up Windows from within VMWare, with the error 0x7B INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE. The solution was simply to boot physically in Windows, create a copy of the current hardware profile, and change the driver of the 3rd-party IDE controller to the generic one. I renamed the profile copy to “Physical” and the one I modified to “Virtual”. Now, it works like a charm!

For the sound in Linux, I had a little bit difficulty making ALSA work for non-ALSA software, including VMWare. (My friend NoMez has the same problem.) But I’ve found something that fixes that. All I needed to do what to create the file ~/.asoundrc with the following:

pcm.!dsp {
  type plug
  slave.pcm "dmixer"
}

Although, that seems to have made another problem. With that, I seem to be unable to record any audio, so Skype and my home-made VCR script don’t work as expected. (I can hear friends in Skype, but people can’t hear me. And video recorded by my script has no audio.)

“To each solution, there’s a problem,” I always say.

However, I did manage to still use my SB Live! sound card instead of the crappy on-board sound. The motherboard I have now is the worst I’ve ever used with its weak audio output and non-working Ethernet port. I now have the following in my five PCI slots:

• Sound Blaster Live! sound card
• D-Link wireless card
• Realtek chipset Ethernet card
• 3-port FireWire card
• ATI TV Wonder (BT878 chipset) TV tuner and capture card

I also have a good nVidia video card in the AGP slot, and I found a great RPM repository at www.livna.org with wonderful kernel modules and X drivers for the card. The 3D acceleration is always fun to have, even if I’m not a hardcore gamer.

Compiling my favourite SNES emulator, ZSNES, was also a problem. But that’s because there was actually a bug in the source code. A fixed version is linked in a ZSNES forum page. (Direct download.)

I decided to rename my computer to K.O.(Katana+Odachi), since it’s like the initials of a good friend of mine…