Newbie Mint Questions

[bjr@ebicom.net (Brian J. Roland)]

Aloha,
    I've been watching the list for a few months now, and feel silly 
asking this line of questions...but my interest has peaked, and I'm 
finally brave enough to post away.  Thanks for your tolerance if these 
seem like brainless questions.
    Okay, I've gone out and purchased a Practical Guide To Unix System 
V, and have played around with the KGMD (English Intall *kudos to 
Kathrine for making it possible*).  Of course there are Mint specific 
differences, and I'll do my best to focus on those questions.

    My hardware is a Stock Falcon030 14meg with VGA display.  KEMD is 
home to an 80meg SCSI minix partition, and I boot with HD Driver 5 on 
the internal IDE.  I also run NVDI 3.5, and have other IDE and SCSI 
devices (inc. Extendos and CDROM).  I generaly run GEM in 800X600 256color 
using VI.

1.  I find several vconsoles in /usr/etc.  What are the differences?  
I've been using vcons1d so far, and find that Geneva does not like this 
console at all (works great except the keyboard will not input into 
dialogues, such as the file selector, or the url dialogue of CAB as 
examples).  I've been unsucessful in getting XAES to boot at all.  
AES 4.1 works well, but frequently looses the mouse if TOSWIN or TW100 
is running, and it's very slow compared to Geneva.  The above holds true
with, or without NeoDesk4.
    Bypassing Init all-together, and executing Geneva in the mint.cnf 
file leads to a stable running AES, but with no hope of VT100 emulation 
(that I know of) as no version of TW100 I've tried so far will work 
with Geneva.  So far, I've had the best luck with Geneva in doing the 
following:

# In mint.cnf
paths, gluestik, blah blah and slns
exec sh rc.boot.scripts as init would normally do 
    #with virtual console services commented out of the scripts#
exec u:/c/geneva

I've also tried above with init launching Geneva on the default console
with the same results.

The dialogues work this way...leading me to believe there's a conflict 
at the console level.

Any tips on getting Geneva to work with a vcon so I can at least have a 
"decent" vt52 term?  Geneva TOS in a Window just doesn't fit the bill 
in my experiences/tests.  In fact, it won't even run vi!  I've 
considered pasting the GNVA_TOS term cap into the term cap file of mint
but fear I may muck something up, and was under the impression it is 
vt52 anyway *ideas?*.
 
Perhaps I'm wasting my time on Geneva?

2.  Again, about vconsoles...is there a way to invert them to white on 
black?  My monitor would run much more quiet and suffer less burn-in that 
way :)

3.  What I'd like most of all...is a vconsole that supports at least 16 
colors and full VT102 emulation.  Does such a thing exist?

4.  What is the best way to get audio support for CAB 2.5 under Mint?  
I'm not getting any sound with any of my sample players..GEMjing 
included.  I do have a CAF 44.1khz sample clock if that is of any 
consideration.

Tons of questions are swimming around in my head as I try to get the 
concepts solidified for my ideal workstation, and most of them are 
along this nature.  I'm sure there must be documentation about to 
answer this stuff, but I'm not having much luck in the search since I 
don't read German, and am clueless about which of the many "man" 
distributions I should choose to download and attempt to install.

The basic Ideal I'm shooting for goes like this:
Falcon is primarily a CAF workstation (Midi and Audio)...
I'd like to be able to easily reboot into an Internet Workstation that is
localy networked with a Windows Box (either box "sometimes" being a Proxy 
to a single modem Internet Connection).  The falcon will hold small user accounts, 
and hopefully a small http server.  I'd like to make Falcon smart 
enough that it can answer a modem and allow root to administer remotely 
or launch a pppd script and put Falcon on the internet (perhaps via the 
same modem via crond delay).  Falcon needs to be the real brain here, 
because the Windows Box comes in and out of the network frequently...so 
ignore it for now...I'll try to mount its resources manually only when 
needed, but it is a near future interest to contend with.

This part gets kind of winey....I know there are workarounds for these 
issues....just looking for tips to get as close to an "ideal" falcon as 
possible...so try not to get irritated if they seem to come from "gripe 
mode".

The working environment ideal is the ability to run CAB, Email, FTP, 
etc, on a GEM console, and typical unix/gnu stuff in the back ground 
(like getty for a remote user, or a MUD client for me:)  Color VT102 is 
important to me because I assist in manageing several linux shell 
accounts that simply do not intend on supporting vt52.  In one case, 
linux itself will support vt52, but few of the programs were compiled 
to support it (pine is a good example...vt52 not supported).  Also, in 
several cases, vt52 can't scroll properly, and color makes all kinds of 
difference in eye/brain strain.  There's also the very important 
account (the only one that's a local call for me) that for some odd
reason ignores MY cshrc and login scripts forcing the default system 
ones (complete with root's X11 garbage and personal alias')...so I 
can't even make "ls" get rid of the ansi color codes, or 
keep up with personal term settings.  Each account deals with enough 
data that I'd rather do my buissness from their log-in shell (tcsh in 
most cases) rather than try dumping it all to my Falcon for processing.
In essence...a nice color vt102 term would be a god-send if anyone 
knows where I can find one.  TW100 is nice and all, but is "very 
slightly" short of my "ideal" in lacking partial screen scrolling 
ability.

Wow....
    Thanks for your paitence with me on this posting mint groupers.
Please don't take insult at my wishing aloud...I've a PC too...and it's 
worse :)

Brian