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Athlon Motherboards And Chipsets Under Linux
Posted by
CmdrTaco
on Wed May 31, 2000 04:28 PM
from the do-they-work? dept.
from the do-they-work? dept.
appletnc from linhardware.com points us to their article about Athlons and Linux. They're trying to sort out the compatibility problems rumored to exist with the boards and chipsets. He says "Despite SuSE's
Athlon workaround and
RedHat's (in)compatibility
note, etc.) and rumors, we have not seen many reports of problems by LhD users. Are Linux users actually experiencing problems with Athlon motherboards? Given that the outstanding price/performance value of the Athlon, the question is how well do Athlon motherboards work under Linux?"
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Athlon Motherboards And Chipsets Under Linux
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Check your ram (Score:3)
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ASUS K7V -- Linux Tested & Certified (Score:5)
An interesting note about this board is that on the box, listed among its various features is a Linux 'icon', with a checkmark and the text "linux-tested.com". Apparantly this is some sort of certification for Linux hardware.
I was curious about this, so I went to linux-tested.com and read up. Asus actually paid these guys money to put this board through various Linux tests (both distro and non-distro specific), and it passed everything. This is a really nice thing for Asus to do, and I thank them for it.
no problems here (Score:3)
I have set up a couple machines with Mandrake 7 (sweet install, BTW) with no issues at all. Athlon 700 and 550's, Microstar 6167 and Abit KA7 (rockin boards in their respective generations)and have sen no problems.
A friend with the Microstar and a 750 Athlon also seems to be cruising fine. Not sure whast the fuss is about...
2 cents.. (Score:4)
There were some issues:
1) The VIA ATA/66 chipset on board + linux didn't like my Maxtor 30GB HD using DMA when my CD-RW drive was running, and would cause hard locks. I replaced it with a Seagate ATA/66 IDE drive, and all is well.
2) The Irongate AGP is only recently well supported for DRI, and probably still needs some polish.
3) The interactivity does get somewhat sluggish with XFree 4.0 when there is a lot of hard drive activity.
4) The interactivity under X was extremely slow until I turned on UDMA on the hard drive using hdparm.
That all said, the system is quite fast and extremely stable, once I got the HD situation figured out.
I think that the IDE support needs some work for VIA Athlon chipsets (which is an experimental patch for the kernel, BTW), but other than that, no problems.
jf
Re:Athelon works, I think... (Score:3)
[I can only verify that this works on an Asus K7M and may not even work for your Asus K7M. Do not do this if you feel litigious or are just plain retarded. You have been warned.]
Go into the BIOS setup area. Then go to Advanced. Arrow down to Internal cache. It might say write-thru or enabled or something. Hit F5. A little box will come up saying "Load Optimal Settings." Hit Enter. It should now say "Reserved." At this point, you need to go back into your other settings and configure things back the way you wanted them.
As an aside, you have to go through this whole rigamarole EVERY TIME you enter the BIOS. Yay Asus.
As another aside, a friend of mine discovered this while I was visiting him and other friends for a Local Area Network Object. This was a several-hundred-mile trip and involved the purchase of a moose. 3=) 3=) 3=).
Re:K6 can't do SMP, Athlon can (Score:4)
3. x86 architecture specific questions
1.Can I use my Cyrix/AMD/non-Intel CPU in SMP?
Short answer: no.
Long answer: Intel claims ownership to the APIC SMP scheme, and unless a company licenses it from Intel they may not use it. There are currently no companies that have done so. (This of course can change in the future) FYI - Both Cyrix and AMD support the non-proprietary OpenPIC SMP standard but currently there are no motherboards that use it.
Big Athlon Problems!!! (Score:3)
Yeah, I've had tons of problems with Athlons and the chipsets. I can't afford one!!! Anyyone, feel free to send one on over and I'll be glad to tell you if I find any incompadibilities.
Athlon Problems Explained (Score:5)
Second was the AGP problems. These are still getting worked out, but it looks like there are working drivers for certain kernel versions. I believe these are yet to be merged in the official kernels, but it can't be long now. This caused hangs when starting X Windows.
Both are solved. The first was a real problem. It caused the machine to not boot. The second was only a problem if you wanted really fast 3D speeds.
-Dave
K6 can't do SMP, Athlon can (Score:3)
Nope, sorry. The Athlon can do SMP (one of the benefits of a redesign -- and of using the EV6). The K6 cannot do SMP.
I've long looked at that pair of old K6-2/300 CPUs I have sitting left over and wished I could upgrade my MP3 server to an SMP box, but it's not to be. The K6-* chips can't handle SMP because of design limitations (and some patent hinkiness with Intel, if I recall correctly).
A better question is when will the Athlon do SMP? AMD would do well to court the Linux/smaller server crowd and hand us an SMP-able chipset that we can use. Since Intel seems to be having problems delivering just about everything they "release", one would think AMD would jump at the chance to steal some of the workgroup/small server market from them like they've done with the dektop. Guess they're just too busy. Darn shame, too. Best way to get me to buy another AMD chip isn't with a faster clock speed (600MHz is plenty fast, thanks), it's by tempting me with SMP. Hell, they release an SMP chipset, they'll sell me two chips at once! :-)
-B
Re:AGP problems (Score:4)
I have had RH 6.1 installed (since Feb) and I have not noticed anything. I have run XF86 3.3.5 and XF86 4.0 and only have seen one distoted artifact. It is a half inch strip of pixel coloration across the top of my screen, which probably is a result of the hardware nVidia driver for XF86. It goes away when the grey X background and mouse come onto the screen.
I _did_ have AGP problems when running Q3A. The problem occured after playing Q3A for a while. The game would freeze up and begin repeating sound. I would have to reboot by telneting in from another machine (killing q3a only made the sound stop playing)
Fortunately nVidia includes an option in XF86 4.0 that you can add to your XF86Config file to disable AGP:
(put into your "Screen" section. this is also described in nVidia's FAQ for XF86 v4 installation)
Option "NvAgp" "0"
This will disable AGP under X at least for nvidia video cards running under XF86 v4.0. I would be anxious to know if this option helps/heleped out with any other AGP errors that might be presenting themselves to others...
lilo.conf Re:Check your ram (Score:3)
for best results, edit
if lilo chokes, on a listing for a floppy boot kernel for example, try mounting a floppy, then running lilo... if it still chokes, you might have to remove the listing for the floppy boot option. (you can still overide this at the boot prompt if needbe to boot from whatever device you want)
I had many an issue with this when I first started playing with linux - and everyplace I looked skipped over the fact that you need to run lilo after configuring lilo.conf
Doh!