Re: [SLE] New MB opinions

• Previous message: Alan Dawson: "[SLE] Upgrade to 7.2 to SuSE 8.2"
• In reply to: H du Plooy: "Re: [SLE] New MB opinions"
• Next in thread: Richard: "Re: [SLE] New MB opinions"
• Reply: Richard: "Re: [SLE] New MB opinions"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]

To: suse-linux-e@suse.com
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2003 16:13:46 -0700

On Mon July 28 2003 2:22 pm, H du Plooy wrote:
> On Wed, 2003-07-16 at 22:26, Richard wrote:
> > Does anyone have any opinions (really opening up here) between the MSI
> > K7N2Delta ILSR motherboard and the Gigabyte 7N400 Pro? Both seem to be
> > good
>
> Let us know what you got and how it works. I'm interested in ditching
> my old SD-RAM board for a DDR setup so my Athlon can perform the way it
> should. I've seen the benchmarks and the nForce boards rock, but I'm
> sceptical of nVidia under linux (after two years of frequent
> unneccessary trouble with various nVidia cards.
>
> Thanks
> Hans

I got the Gigabyte board and my review would be mixed at this point. The CD
was supposed to have linux drivers on it and it did not. I downloaded the
linux files from the Gigabyte website, but they only supplied files for
RedHat and Mandrake. Thus the included drivers, as modules, were built for
those two distros. Simply copying them did not work as my system did not
accept them since it recognized the RH/Md indentifying info. I downloaded a
driver file from the Nvidia website, after some searching and they seem to
have worked ok for the most part. Sound seems to work for system sounds but
I had to do some "monkeying" to get KSCD to play. I understand that that is
not unusual so I cannot attribute that to the G-MB/NV drivers, yet. The
ethernet driver was another story as I had to do some fiddling to get it to
work with Yast. Yast recognized the eth controller but needed to be told to
use the "nvnet" module and it had to be insmod'd and added to
etc/modules.conf.
I wanted the availability of the Raid chip, more for the ability to use more
than four IDE drives than necessarily for the raid capability. Again,
drivers are on the website for RH and Md only. I was able to download the
driver source files from the ITE website (makers of the Gigaraid chip), after
registering on that site, and built (I think) a driver module that my system
accepted. I have not tried to use it in a raid setup yet but my system does
recognize and can mount the drives I have attached to that controller, after
copying the created module to the /lib/modules/... and insmod'ing. The
installation instructions for a raid setup direct to replace the installation
kernel with their supplied kernel, which kernel is not available for SuSE, of
course. My concern is that the installation instructions mention that the
supplied (supposedly) kernel already has support for the ITE chip built in.
Since I do not see support for that chip in the standard kernel I am too
queasy and too much of a 'fraidy-cat to go much further. Telephone call to
Gigabyte's tech support said they will not provide support for SuSE for the
raid chip because they do not have the time to try out the chip with all
distros, and cetera, and the usual.... They suggested I try the ITE people.
I did and their tech support said similar, they only had time and resources
to do the two distros they did. Disappointing.
On the positive side, the board is up and running and seems nice.
On the tremendously negative side I have not been able to use the dual-channel
DDR memory capability. I have two memory sticks, which test out fine alone
and together, so long as they are in same channel. When placed into
different channels (a requirement for dual-channel) they system shows
multiple errors and locks up, though at different places for both WinXP and
SuSE 8.2. I don't think it is an OS problem. I have been back in touch with
the computer memory geek at Fry's, where I bought the board and he is stumped
at this point. There is no newer BIOS on the Gigabyte website than the
release version I have. I have not been back in touch with Gigabyte tech
support about this yet as I have been pressed for time: I needed a working
system first, "extra" come later. On the other hand, that was supposed to be
feature of the board, not an extra. I cannot say at this point whether the
problem is hardware or BIOS or somehow software based.

Summary: board works and seems stable (except for the dual-channel memory
issue, above) but SuSE'ers will have to do some legwork and building of their
own for drivers. I suspect the raid function should be considered
non-supported and not available to SuSE'ers at this point (kernel issue).

Hope this helps. I am nothing if not wordy. So my son says. Richard

-- 
Check the headers for your unsubscription address
For additional commands send e-mail to suse-linux-e-help@suse.com
Also check the archives at http://lists.suse.com
Please read the FAQs: suse-linux-e-faq@suse.com

• Previous message: Alan Dawson: "[SLE] Upgrade to 7.2 to SuSE 8.2"
• In reply to: H du Plooy: "Re: [SLE] New MB opinions"
• Next in thread: Richard: "Re: [SLE] New MB opinions"
• Reply: Richard: "Re: [SLE] New MB opinions"
• Messages sorted by: [ date ] [ thread ] [ subject ] [ author ]