Use Linux To Find Drivers

[shanenin]

If you ever need to find drivers for an odd computer. You may have luck googling the motherboard model. Then you can get drivers from the motherboard sight. If that does not turn up any good results. Go to the source, the chipset makers, they have drivers available for all of their chipsets. Most all computers use just a few different chipsets made by the following(among others): sis, via, intel. One of the easiest ways to get detailed information on the chipset your computer is using, is to boot a linux cd, then run the command "lspci" . It will list info like this. This is from my computer

shane@mainbox ~ $ /usr/sbin/lspci
00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8377 [KT400/KT600 AGP] Host Bridge (rev 80)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 PCI Bridge
00:0f.0 RAID bus controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VIA VT6420 SATA RAID Controller (rev 80)
00:0f.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586A/B/VT82C686/A/B/VT823x/A/C PIPC Bus Master IDE (rev 06)
00:10.0 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.1 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82xxxxx UHCI USB 1.1 Controller (rev 81)
00:10.4 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. USB 2.0 (rev 86)
00:11.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8237 ISA bridge [KT600/K8T800/K8T890 South]
00:11.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT8233/A/8235/8237 AC97 Audio Controller (rev 60)
00:12.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT6102 [Rhine-II] (rev 78)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV18 [GeForce4 MX 4000 AGP 8x] (rev c1)

with the above information, you can easily find drivers for even obscure brands of computers. For example, I recently worked on a vpriemer. I was not able to find any driver info for that computer, but I was able to get drivers made for the generic chipsets.

for example using the info above obtainded by using the linux command "lspci" I am directed to use this driver obtained from the via sight

http://www.viaarena.com/default.aspx?PageI...40&SubCatID=104

Edited April 13, 2006 by shanenin

[hitest]

I'm moving this to linux tips and tricks. great tips, shanenin!

[shanenin]

but it is a windows tip :-). It is a method used to find drivers for windows OSs.

[hitest]

Yes, I see your point, shanenin:-) This post could be either a windows post or a Linux post depending on your point of view. I'll move it back to the PC help forum.