Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[ron minnich]

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, Jason Gurtz wrote:

> Do you have any experiences with any of the "embedded" type Pentium-M
> powered boards?  I would think those would be quite a bit speedier then
> the VIA offerings if they would prove to be compatible, especially if
> they supported the 2MB cache Dothen Pentium-M.

they're wonderful. Really really fast. Pentium-M just go fast fast fast. 

we're trying to work out linuxbios now on them.

downside: hot, power hungry, needs a fan ....

ron

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[Kenji Okamoto]

> downside: needs a fan ....

Oh, Nooooo. Please no more noise in my room.☺

Kenji

[9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[David Eckhardt]

Can anybody suggest a couple of "modern" motherboard/processor/Ethernet
combinations which work well (and, if necessary, a corresponding
kernel-source date)?  It's probably time to build an auth/file server
from parts for home.  I'm interested in exploring the plausibility of
a mini-ITX system, though I'd want a case which would let me do the
removable-IDE-drive thing for backups.

Dave Eckhardt

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[Bruce Ellis]

jmk can, and does it well.  sorry jim.
the dual athlon.  but that's two yearrs
old advice.

brucee

David Eckhardt wrote:

> Can anybody suggest a couple of "modern" motherboard/processor/Ethernet
> combinations which work well (and, if necessary, a corresponding
> kernel-source date)?  It's probably time to build an auth/file server
> from parts for home.  I'm interested in exploring the plausibility of
> a mini-ITX system, though I'd want a case which would let me do the
> removable-IDE-drive thing for backups.
> 
> Dave Eckhardt

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[jmk]

We've only bought 2 motherboards in the recent past, i.e. they're still available.

The first is a Biostar P4VTB. It has on-board VIA Rhine ethernet and serial-ATA chips.
There had problems with it at first, it would lock-up randomly into a state that even a
non-maskable interrupt couldn't disturb; it was traced to a chip-errata in the P4
which a BIOS update cured. As far as I know it works fine now. There are probably
a dozen other motherboards using the same components from different manufacturers.

The second is probably not what you're looking for, a Tyan S2882 dual-Opteron system.
I haven't had any problems with it so far.

Ron Minnich can probably advise on the good/bad points of what's available in the
mini-ITX format.

--jim

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[andrey mirtchovski]

> The second is probably not what you're looking for, a Tyan S2882 dual-Opteron system.
> I haven't had any problems with it so far.

You're running the Opteron in 32-bit mode, right?  I can
(temporarily) lay my hands on a couple of Sun V20z Opteron systems and
a few HP DL145 boxes, but using them in legacy mode doesn't sound like
fun.

andrey

ps: they all have broadcom gige cards in them :(

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[ron minnich]

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, andrey mirtchovski wrote:

> You're running the Opteron in 32-bit mode, right?  I can (temporarily)
> lay my hands on a couple of Sun V20z Opteron systems and a few HP DL145
> boxes, but using them in legacy mode doesn't sound like fun.

for future, try to get Tyan boards with the eepro. Coming soon.

ron

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[jmk]

On Mon Jun 14 15:27:16 EDT 2004, rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
> On Mon, 14 Jun 2004, andrey mirtchovski wrote:
> 
> > You're running the Opteron in 32-bit mode, right?  I can (temporarily)
> > lay my hands on a couple of Sun V20z Opteron systems and a few HP DL145
> > boxes, but using them in legacy mode doesn't sound like fun.
> 
> for future, try to get Tyan boards with the eepro. Coming soon.
> 
> ron

As well as the 2 tg3 GbE interfaces, the S2882 has a 10/100 eepro on it
(Intel 82557 in our world). Interestingly, they decided to add that and
disable the AMD 10/100 contained in the south bridge. There is also a
cheaper Tyan board (S2875) that has an Intel GbE on-board rather than the
2 Broadcom 5704s (tg3).

Yes, running in 32-bit mode, 2 CPUs:

	ella% pwd
	/usr/jmk/9/pc
	ethel% mk clean>/dev/null
	ella% time mk>/dev/null
	2.29u 1.61s 6.52r 	 mk
	ella% cat '#P'/cputype
	Opteron 1791
	ella% 

while on the 2 CPU + hyperthreading P4:

	ethel% pwd
	/usr/jmk/9/pc
	ethel% mk clean>/dev/null
	ethel% time mk>/dev/null
	5.00u 6.02s 7.11r 	 mk
	ethel% cat '#P/cputype'
	P4 2197
	ethel% 

The P4 is on a GbE link to the fileserver, the Opteron is 100Mbs.

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[ron minnich]

warning on the broadcom tg3 part: I just fixed a problem here on an Arima 
HDAMA by turning OFF checksum offloading. 

ron

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[jmk]

On Mon Jun 14 15:27:48 EDT 2004, rminnich@lanl.gov wrote:
> warning on the broadcom tg3 part: I just fixed a problem here on an Arima 
> HDAMA by turning OFF checksum offloading. 
> 
> ron

The Tigon 2 (etherga620.c) had this problem with some versions of the firmware too,
if I remember correctly.

Anyone have programmer's manual for the tg3?

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[Philippe Anel]

At 08:42 PM 6/14/2004, you wrote:
> > The second is probably not what you're looking for, a Tyan S2882 
> dual-Opteron system.
> > I haven't had any problems with it so far.
>
>You're running the Opteron in 32-bit mode, right?  I can
>(temporarily) lay my hands on a couple of Sun V20z Opteron systems and
>a few HP DL145 boxes, but using them in legacy mode doesn't sound like
>fun.
>
>andrey
>
>ps: they all have broadcom gige cards in them :(

I'm porting the freebsd broadcom driver to plan9.

         Philippe,

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[ron minnich]

On Mon, 14 Jun 2004 jmk@plan9.bell-labs.com wrote:

> Ron Minnich can probably advise on the good/bad points of what's
> available in the mini-ITX format.

yeah, there's not much good if you want speed. 

I still like the ituner m100 because of the front-removable CF card. 
However those cards are slow. 

The travela is almost as nice s the ituner and you can put a  hard drive 
in it. It is about $400.

We should really see if we can use the Hauppage MVP, which is a PPC box 
for $99. We will need a current 4e port to PPC, however.

ron

Re: [9fans] Recommended motherboards?

[Kenji Okamoto]

> Can anybody suggest a couple of "modern" motherboard/processor/Ethernet
> combinations which work well (and, if necessary, a corresponding
> kernel-source date)?

I'm using BIOSTAR's P4TSV + Pen4 2.8GHz + 1GB memory for CPU
server.  It has onboard rtl8139 ether chip.
I haven't check its graphic chip (865G) though.

Kenji