[9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[Akshat Kumar]

Looking to get the following motherboard:

Jetway VIA C7 1.5GHz CN700

It would work well to house 2 IDE and 1 SATA
drives. Has anyone tried Plan 9 on this, before
I commit $100 to it?


Thanks,
ak

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[Lyndon Nerenberg (VE6BBM/VE7TFX)]

> Jetway VIA C7 1.5GHz CN700

My primary terminal is an Epia-EX motherboard with a 1 GHz C3. It's
diskless so I can't speak for the IDE or SATA support, but video
(1920x1080) and network are fine.  If the board you are looking at uses
the same (or similar) N/S-bridge chips you should be fine.

--lyndon

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[cinap_lenrek]

had a via c7 machine once and i had problems with ide and sata.

gave spontanious i/o errors if you use multiple drives and sata
was emulated as ide.

i use plan9 on sb600 based machines now and it works perfectly.

--
cinap

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[Akshat Kumar]

Is the VIA C7 too old to support AHCI?
That is, do you have to emulate SATA
as IDE?


Best,
ak

On Wed, Jul 6, 2011 at 10:21 PM,  <cinap_lenrek@gmx.de> wrote:
> had a via c7 machine once and i had problems with ide and sata.
>
> gave spontanious i/o errors if you use multiple drives and sata
> was emulated as ide.
>
> i use plan9 on sb600 based machines now and it works perfectly.
>
> --
> cinap
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[cinap_lenrek]

it didnt support ahci.

--
cinap

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[Akshat Kumar]

SB600 seems to support AHCI.
Could you name some mobos
based on SB600, that you use?

On Thu, Jul 7, 2011 at 1:00 AM,  <cinap_lenrek@gmx.de> wrote:
> it didnt support ahci.
>
> --
> cinap
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[erik quanstrom]

On Thu Jul  7 04:17:42 EDT 2011, akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net wrote:
> SB600 seems to support AHCI.
> Could you name some mobos
> based on SB600, that you use?

http://www.quanstro.net/plan9/9atom/index.html

- erik

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[Eris Discordia]

Despite being touted as fanless and most C7-based boards being equipped
only with heatsinks they get hot as hell. Right now I'm experimenting on a
board (custom form factor) built around VIA Eden 1.2 GHz, CX700 chipset,
with FreeBSD 8.2-RELEASE (1 GB RAM, 8 GB IDE SSD, networked, and an
external HDD over USB). The following make it undesirable:

1. the temperature when it's passively cooled,

2. frequent unexplained spontaneous reboots (botched ACPI? missed IRQs?),

3. low-quality (RTL-81xx family, in this case 8139, a.k.a 8100) NIC chip.

Lowering CPU frequency down to 400 MHz does not help, either.

I suggest getting an Atom-based board instead, if it makes sense for you.

P.S. As a last resort I'm trying to go without ACPI and see if the thing
will stay up for more than a week.

P.P.S. Various steppings of the C3 family, too, caused various headaches
(with Longhaul or VIA Padlock). Overall, VIA's track record in this field
is not remarkable.


--On Wednesday, July 06, 2011 11:34 -0700 Akshat Kumar
<akumar@mail.nanosouffle.net> wrote:

> Looking to get the following motherboard:
>
> Jetway VIA C7 1.5GHz CN700
>
> It would work well to house 2 IDE and 1 SATA
> drives. Has anyone tried Plan 9 on this, before
> I commit $100 to it?
>
>
> Thanks,
> ak
>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[ron minnich]

Systems that get hot as hell can need a surprisingly small amount of
air motion to cool down.

I built this minicluster that got incredibly hot, i.e. you could burn
yourself on it:
http://tinyurl.com/3o229ho

What you see strapped to it is a 12V fan from a dell desktop which I
ran at 5V, not 12V (a trick I learned from John DeGood). Very little
air had to move, it was noiseless, and it all cooled right down. You
don't need huge noisy fans in all cases.

ron

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[Eris Discordia]

Very good point. And, an extremely tempting experiment you have introduced
me/us to out of your mighty rucksack. Could prove to be the downfall of me,
buying a few more PC-104 (don't need be PC-104+, right?) Geode boards (I
already got one based on LX 800). Thank you :-)

Then, even without active cooling heat does flow more rapidly from a hotter
source to the ambient reservoir than from a cooler source. However, even if
you manage to get as cool as the cooler source by throwing in lightweight
active cooling you have barely arrived at the start line. Besides, you know
far far far better than I, final temperatures equal, heat dissipated thus
shows up on your electricity bill. (May be negligible for running just a
few such cores.) If given a choice I'd go with something that does not
generate the heat in the first place.


--On Friday, July 08, 2011 14:59 -0700 ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Systems that get hot as hell can need a surprisingly small amount of
> air motion to cool down.
>
> I built this minicluster that got incredibly hot, i.e. you could burn
> yourself on it:
> http://tinyurl.com/3o229ho
>
> What you see strapped to it is a 12V fan from a dell desktop which I
> ran at 5V, not 12V (a trick I learned from John DeGood). Very little
> air had to move, it was noiseless, and it all cooled right down. You
> don't need huge noisy fans in all cases.
>
> ron
>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[ron minnich]

On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gmail.com> wrote:
> If given a choice I'd go with something that does not generate
> the heat in the first place.

agree. Get an ARM :=)

ron

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[Bruce Ellis]

SOC? 4 arms is more fun to try and boot than 1.

brucee

On Sat, Jul 9, 2011 at 2:13 PM, ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gmail.com> wrote:
>> If given a choice I'd go with something that does not generate
>> the heat in the first place.
>
> agree. Get an ARM :=)
>
> ron
>
>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[Eris Discordia]

Again, great point. An evaluation board built around S3C2440 I experimented
with worked surprisingly well at 50+ degrees Celsius ambient temperature,
no ventilation, running straight for over two months until somebody turned
it off. And it wasn't even near industrial grade. Linux support for that
SoC is quite mature, too.


--On Friday, July 08, 2011 21:13 -0700 ron minnich <rminnich@gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Fri, Jul 8, 2011 at 5:26 PM, Eris Discordia <eris.discordia@gmail.com>
> wrote:
>> If given a choice I'd go with something that does not generate
>> the heat in the first place.
>
> agree. Get an ARM :=)
>
> ron
>

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[ron minnich]

apropos temperature .... some of the embedded vendors test some of
their boards by immersing them in boiling water, or so they tell me.

ouch!

ron

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[erik quanstrom]

On Sat Jul  9 17:03:15 EDT 2011, rminnich@gmail.com wrote:
> apropos temperature .... some of the embedded vendors test some of
> their boards by immersing them in boiling water, or so they tell me.
>
> ouch!

no, sure doesn't sound good.  i prefer mine deep fried.

- erik

Re: [9fans] Plan 9 on VIA C7

[John DeGood]

To assign proper credit, I learned that trick from the 264x terminals
manufactured by HP in the mid-to-late 70s. In those days most computer
fans still used AC motors, so HP operated 240 VAC muffin fans at 120 VAC
to exhaust the terminal heat in a virtually silent fashion. Modern
(brushless DC motor) computer fans can be similarly tamed by reduced
voltage, or by PWM.

John

On 7/8/2011 5:59 PM, ron minnich wrote:
> What you see strapped to it is a 12V fan from a dell desktop which I
> ran at 5V, not 12V (a trick I learned from John DeGood). Very little
> air had to move, it was noiseless, and it all cooled right down. You
> don't need huge noisy fans in all cases.