Power Commander and Ubuntu OS

Has anyone gotten the Power Commander software to work using Ubuntu? The program will work under Wine but it will not see the pciii through the USB connection. You can see if you run dmesg, but not anywhere else. I did load a map using my windows desk top computer so I know everything works but I'd really like to get working through my laptop which has Ubuntu. I'm a complete noob with Ubuntu/lLinux so any help would be welcome.

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I too feel the pain of Ubuntu. I love not having to worry about viruses and vista bullshit. But, getting programs to run and reconize hardware is a bitch. Hopefully someone on here has an answer because I'm going to be getting a power commander soon... Good luck.

 

There are a few possibilities here:

(1)
It is likely that the PCIII uses a communications chipset for which there is already an existing kernel module as it wouldn't make good business sense to manufacture a completely bespoke chipset for the device.
In this case it would be a fairly simple process to get things up and running -insert the appropriate kernel module, tell the software which device node to use and hey-presto!
I would love to be able to investigate this but unfortunately I do not have a PCIII to play with. Have you tried probing the device to identify the chipset? What does "lsusb -v" report for the device when it is connected?

(2)
Another possibility is that this would require someone with hardware driver development experience to write a kernel module to enable the OS to talk to the PCIII.
If this is the case then it's fairly unlikely that we will see the PCIII work on Ubuntu or any other Linux distro in the near future as I doubt there are many PCIII owners out there who know how to write a kernel module or who can be bothered to go through the pain of engineering one for that matter.

(3)
If at first you don't succeed, cheat!
If you have access to a Windows disk you could set your laptop up to dual boot which would mean creating a small disk partition for Windows to live on. Unfortunately if you have dedicated your entire disk to Ubuntu then this would entail modifying existing partitions to create space, creating a small Windows install on a new partition and then replacing the boot manager with LILO/GRUB. There are plenty of HOWTO's on this.
Alternatively, you might try and install Sun VirtualBox onto Ubuntu (free download for personal use from Sun) and then install Windows onto a new VirtualBox VM, then you could load this VM when you want to play with the PCIII. If full USB support is not available to VirtualBox initially (which under the latest version it should be) then there is an article here (USB_on_Ubuntu_7.04 - VirtualBox) on how to enable it.


Anyway, enough ramblings of a geek. Hope this helps - keep us posted.

 

I'm sure it's possible if you really wanted to kill yourself over it. However, the common sense solution is to put together a WinPE/BartPE live windows CD, you don't need any drivers to run USB usually, it really depends. if you do for the PCIII (I don't have one so I don't know), you can easily incorporate it into the CD.

No need to dual boot, no jacking around with your MBR or having to point GRUB/bootloader towards different OSs.

 

Thanks for all the input!
SGD, I'll try using the command you listed to get more info. I would like to see if its possible to get it working using Ubuntu.

That being said.....

Fizz, I do have a windows XP disk. How hard is it to create a WinPE/BartPE live windows CD? My laptop is a dell mini 9 so I don't have a optical drive, I use a 16G SD card for media transfer. Could I build it on that?

Thanks again for everyones input. I have friends that already have the power commander working on their laptops so its not critical, but I thought it would be cool if I could get to run.

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You could launch the live media from the SD card, you'd have to format it as bootable and put the WinPE/BartPE image on it. I'm not sure how well it works on SD cards though, I've never tried it from anything other than a USB drive.

Pe2usb: Installing Bartpe To Usb Flash Disk - The CD Forum

Bart's Preinstalled Environment (BartPE) bootable live windows CD/DVD

EDIT: Here's a better tut.

http://users.telenet.be/Robvdb/BootPEUSB_UK.htm

 

Fizz,
Using a USB drive would work. I couldn't open the link you posted with your edit. I'll look at it more tonight when I get some time. Thanks again for the help.

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I didn't actually post the link actually, lol. My mistake.