Personal computing discussed

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titan
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:46 am

My Intel 440BX works flawlessly in Linux. :D
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king_kilr
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:53 am

My Biostar 6100-M board is good(I think I messed up the name, but its their 6100 chips board).
Damn the torpedoes , full speed ahead.

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bitvector
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Re: Linux friendly motherboards thread.

Fri Jun 08, 2007 10:53 am

axeman wrote:
Maybe if this flies, it can be stickied ?

If something like this was stickied, various mobos would need to be continually updated as driver support is added.
 
Usacomp2k3
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Re: Linux friendly motherboards thread.

Fri Jun 08, 2007 11:04 am

bitvector wrote:
axeman wrote:
Maybe if this flies, it can be stickied ?

If something like this was stickied, various mobos would need to be continually updated as driver support is added.

It also depends on the distro as well, which are constantly being updated.
 
lex-ington
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 11:07 am

The Giga-byte GF6100 board I have is working quite fine using CentOS.
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just brew it!
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 11:43 am

Here are my own Linux experiences with several mobos (and one laptop). I've also noted the distro used in each case (all have been various flavors of Redhat/Fedora).

FIC VA-503A (Socket 7, VIA chipset) - no issues [Redhat 8]

MSI K7 Pro (Slot A, AMD chipset) - no issues [Redhat 8 and Fedora Core 5]

FIC AD11 (Socket A, AMD chipset) - no issues [Redhat 8]

MSI K8MM-V (Socket 754, VIA chipset) - no issues [Fedora Core 4 / 64-bit]

DFI K8M800-MLVF (Socket 754, VIA chipset) - could not get grub bootloader to work with onboard SATA ports, had to futz around with LILO (which is not included in the distro) to get the system to boot from SATA [Fedora Core 6 / 64-bit]

Tyan Tomcat K8E (Socket 939, nVidia chipset plus onboard ATI Rage XL video) - the X.org driver for the onboard Rage XL borders on unusable (painfully slow, with high CPU usage); other than that, seems to work [Fedora Core 6 / 64-bit]

Asus A8V-VM (Socket 939, VIA chipset) - onboard DeltaChrome video appears to not have a corresponding driver in the stock X.org distribution (uses generic VESA driver instead); did not properly detect supported refresh rates of LCD monitor, resulting in a "signal out of range" error until xorg.conf was manually edited [Fedora Core 6 / 64-bit]

Compaq nc6220 laptop - works great, except for WPA encryption on the Wi-Fi adapter (this wasn't really the fault of the laptop's wireless chipset per se, it is more a symptom of WPA support under Linux not being completely mature; if I'd spent a little more time on it I'm sure I could've gotten it to work) [Fedora Core 6]

Caveat: I have not tested onboard sound on most of these, since most are (or were) being used as servers, not desktops. I can say that sound definitely works on the Compaq laptop, and the DFI S754 board. Not sure about the others.
Last edited by just brew it! on Fri Jun 08, 2007 2:10 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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FroBozz_Inc
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:17 pm

Good to know, I have an Asus M2A-VM on the way as we speak.
I had planned to give MythTV a go with it - maybe not now. Hmmmpf.

Maybe Win2000 (I have a legal license open) and beyond TV will be my first shot with this.

I can tell you that the Epox 4BDA2+ i845 motherboard and the Gateway Solo 5350b LS (Intel 830-M chipset w/ ICH-3) laptop work wonderfully in Ubuntu.
Last edited by FroBozz_Inc on Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:27 pm, edited 1 time in total.
 
bitvector
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:25 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Compaq nc6220 laptop - works great, except for WPA encryption on the Wi-Fi adapter [Fedora Core 6]

What wireless driver were you using? According to my Googling, this laptop uses the Intel 2200BG (or 2915ABG), which is an excellent wireless chip in terms of stuff working with the ipw2200 driver. Are you sure this isn't a personal configuration issue rather than a specific hardware support issue?
 
just brew it!
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:28 pm

axeman wrote:
There are definate issues running X on newer Via chipsets, older ones just use the S3 driver AFAIK. If you google "openchrome" it will point you in the right direction.

Thanks for the tip.

Looks like they at least support 2D acceleration on DeltaChrome... no 3D acceleration though.
Last edited by just brew it! on Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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just brew it!
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:29 pm

bitvector wrote:
just brew it! wrote:
Compaq nc6220 laptop - works great, except for WPA encryption on the Wi-Fi adapter [Fedora Core 6]

What wireless driver were you using? According to my Googling, this laptop uses the Intel 2200BG (or 2915ABG), which is an excellent wireless chip in terms of stuff working with the ipw2200 driver. Are you sure this isn't a personal configuration issue rather than a specific hardware support issue?

Getting it to work with WEP was a piece of cake, using the driver you mention. Never did get WPA to work quite right, and simply gave up since it wasn't a high priority.
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bitvector
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 1:40 pm

just brew it! wrote:
Getting it to work with WEP was a piece of cake, using the driver you mention. Never did get WPA to work quite right, and simply gave up since it wasn't a high priority.

Well, I ask because I have a 2200BG mini-PCI card and I've used WPA with the ipw2200 for about two years. I've also used WPA on madwifi. The main thing I've found is that it's often a pain to set up the supplicant and configuration stuff in general, across drivers. But if we're making some sort of compatibility list, I wouldn't mark down the ipw2200 chipset as "not working" for WPA.
 
just brew it!
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 2:06 pm

bitvector wrote:
Well, I ask because I have a 2200BG mini-PCI card and I've used WPA with the ipw2200 for about two years. I've also used WPA on madwifi. The main thing I've found is that it's often a pain to set up the supplicant and configuration stuff in general, across drivers. But if we're making some sort of compatibility list, I wouldn't mark down the ipw2200 chipset as "not working" for WPA.

Yeah, I think it was getting the supplicant stuff set up properly (and getting it to load properly on boot) where I eventually gave up. At best, it only seemed to work intermittently.

I'll go back and edit the other post to indicate that the problem wasn't really specific to the ipw2200.
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bitvector
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 2:10 pm

axeman wrote:
I already added it to the first post, but as I understand it, you want Atheros or Intel wireless chipsets, (madwifi or ipw2200 drivers) as the best choices, no?

I think they have the best track record with the caveat that the Intel 4965AGN is basically completely unsupported now (some people use ndiswrapper, but that's hardly a solution). The ipw3945 works, but it's not in the mainline kernel like the ipw2200 (but madwifi also isn't in the mainline kernel). Now, the broadcom bcm43xx support is also supposed to be pretty good and in the mainline kernel, but some people have reservations about the quality of broadcom devices and there are a few landmines here and there with specific iterations of the chip that may not work right. I have no personal experience with the bcm43xx, though.

Madwifi has treated me fairly well. Some people don't like madwifi because people tend to get repository snapshots with "half support" for brand-spanking new devices and that leaves a bad taste in their mouth. The thing that is good about madwifi is that it is really actively developed.
 
SuperSpy
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Fri Jun 08, 2007 2:14 pm

TYAN S3950G2NR AM2 server motherboard:
Works beautifully under Fedora (6 and 7) and Debian (Sarge and Etch), except the built-in serverworks serial ata controller seems to cause wierd disk slowdowns under moderate load. Popped in a 3ware PCI-X raid card and all is well again.
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farmpuma
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Fri Jul 13, 2007 5:23 am

So I'm googlin' around for ubuntu 7.04 friendly AM2 chipsets after getting frustrated on ubuntu.com and this thread pops up. Just goes to reinforce what I should have remembered .. If you have a tech question, do a TR search first!

From this thread and a few bits of googlefu it seems the 6100/430 IGP chipset might be a good foundation for a native nix SMP folder. In one google result I read (in bold text) that ubuntu has supported all six series nVidia IGPs since 6.06 dapper. Maybe it's safe to assume the 6150 is a good choice for 7.04. I've been drooling over the latest 'econobox' reject, the Asus M2NPV-VM, but it's way up at the top of my price range. Sadly, the lower priced 6100 siblings seem to be a bit lacking in bios options. Guess I have another mobo manual to download. Has anyone heard anything about the 61xx/405 chipset?
edit: Like this ABIT NF-M2S PS edit: Awe crap .. that one has crabs! Then again, I don't need to listen to it fold.
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Fri Jul 13, 2007 7:54 am

the machine i just bought has the nv6150/430 chipset. it took a little....finesse to get the network card working. opensuse 10.2 wouldn't automagically see/install the nic during setup. i had to manually tell it to use the nvlan module. not a big deal after i found out that i had to do this, just a minor inconvenience.
as to the sound, i was never able to get it to work. after googling around a little bit, seems the "realtek" onboard sound is more than meets the eye. some kind of hybrid realtek-nvidia thingy. suse would only see it as an nvidia card and so couldn't load a working module for it. ended up having to buy an old sb live 5.1 to get some sound.
overall, a much better experience than the first time i tried to use a board based off of the nv6150 chipset. still not what i'd call satisfactory though, compared to using a non-igp chipset.
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nightmorph
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Sat Jul 14, 2007 12:31 am

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Last edited by nightmorph on Fri Sep 20, 2013 3:06 am, edited 1 time in total.
 
just brew it!
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Sat Jul 14, 2007 12:47 am

nightmorph wrote:
I still use the BIOS it shipped with back in October '06, it has never once needed an update or any fixes.

IIRC Linux actually relies on the BIOS less than Windows does, so out-of-date BIOSes should be less of an issue.
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nightmorph
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Sun Jul 15, 2007 3:15 am

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farmpuma
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Wed Jul 18, 2007 4:05 pm

Thanks to axeman, nightmorph, and all for the info. I guess I was a bit unrealistic expecting an IGP chipset to have a full feature bios.

Nightmorph's MSI K9N Ultra Platinum looks to be a pretty rare find. MSI USA doesn't list it at all, but MSI Global lists a Platinum and an Ultra. Both use the Realtek ALC883 sound chip, but may be ok since it says, "Compliant with Azalia 1.0 Spec."

I'm going to play it safe(?) and go with an ASUS M2N-E. It uses an ADI 1988 sound chip and an nVidia/Marvell ethernet setup. I hope to find an open box board since the vast majority of RMAs will be due to incompatible memory. The M2N-E's memory voltage maximum is ~1.95volts. The vCore range is still a bit of a mystery, but the HTT (fsb) ranges from 200MHz to 400MHz.
edit: M2N-E at Asus USA
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lex-ington
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Sun Aug 19, 2007 10:30 pm

I have the Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2 board, and according to their website the on-board LAN controller is a Realtek 8201 chip, but I can't get it to be recognized by CentOS for anything - I have a DLink PCI card in there now that works flawlessly.
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lex-ington
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Fri Aug 24, 2007 3:06 pm

axeman wrote:
lex-ington wrote:
I have the Gigabyte GA-M61SME-S2 board, and according to their website the on-board LAN controller is a Realtek 8201 chip, but I can't get it to be recognized by CentOS for anything - I have a DLink PCI card in there now that works flawlessly.


The realtek 8201 is a PHY, not a real ethernet controller. It just provides the physical layer for the ethernet controller built into the chipset.. Being a GF6100 chipset, it should work with the forcedeth module. I'm not familiar enough with CentOS to guess what's going on though.

Here's a handy link:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHYceiver


Should . . . but no . . .doesn't happen. So I'm sticking with my 538TX card. Everything else works flawlessly though. I'm thinking about upgarding to a full ATX board to put more memory in there though. Maybe the S3H 690G board from Gigabyte.
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notfred
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Fri Aug 24, 2007 4:24 pm

What's the kernel version CentOS is running "uname -r"? The forcedeth driver gets updated from time to time to add new nVidia chips, occasionally in functionality but usually in PCI Ids.
 
lex-ington
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Fri Aug 24, 2007 5:22 pm

I am showing 2.6.18-8.1.8.el5.centos.plus
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bitvector
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Fri Aug 24, 2007 5:54 pm

lex-ington wrote:
I am showing 2.6.18-8.1.8.el5.centos.plus

2.6.18-8.1.8 is mirroring RHEL5.0's current kernel version, but an RHEL5.1 beta was released to Red Hat partners/RHN subscribers recently and sports kernel 2.6.18-36. It's possible it may be fixed in that. As soon as it is released in non-beta form (which will be after the beta period ends in early September), I'm sure CentOS will follow. Looking at the 2.6.18-36 patches, it looks like they brought the forcedeth version up to 0.6 and added some PCI IDs.

If you want to give it a shot, you can try John Linville's unofficial packages of kernel 2.6.18-36.el5. Remember to rpm -i(vh) new kernel rpms rather than -U(vh). :wink:
 
notfred
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Fri Aug 24, 2007 7:21 pm

Another way would be to grab the latest vanilla kernel from kernel.org, strip out the forcedeth driver and try building that as a module against your kernel tree. You may get lucky and not have any API changes, or just minor ones. Once you have it built then you can swap the module in to replace the one distributed with the kernel, depmod -a and modprobe forcedeth to see if it works.

Building as a module will usually require some form of headers package for your installed kernel to be installed first, then in the directory with the driver set up a Makefile with
obj-m +=forcedeth.o
and do a "make -C (wherever the headers are) M=(wherever forcedeth is) modules"

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