[WBEL-users] Athlon64 AMD64 motherboard recommendation

[Kirby Bohling]

On Fri, Aug 06, 2004 at 08:11:08AM -0400, Mace.Scott@tatravelcenters.com wrote:
> I too have an Nforce2 board, and your assertion is misleading.  There is 
> full ethernet support using the forcedeth driver.  Alsa supports the 
> sound, but it won't do hardware mixing.  My firewire port seems to be 
> supported, and working, however I don't have firewire devices I can use to 
> test.  I would suspect that the same would hold true for the Nforce3 
> boards.  I am using Gentoo on that box, and kernel 2.6.7  Forcedeth is 
> available as source, so getting the driver working on another kernel 
> should be simple.  Alsa will certainly work on the 2.4 series.

Scott,

	I was unaware that Alsa supported the sound.  However, I don't
see that ALSA is supported via WBEL (I can't find any alsa packages
in the WBEL YUM repositories).

	I was well aware of the forcedeth driver.  The forcedeth driver
was developed relatively quickly over the last 12 months if I
remember correctly, and it was reverse engineered.  Furthermore, the
forcedeth driver also doesn't appear to be in the most current
current from WBEL.  Not something I'm anxious to put on a production
machine.

	My firewire card never worked, but it's been at least 18 months
since I fiddled with it.

	Not precisely what I'd recommend using on a production quality
box.  As he said he's installing it on production systems using
WBEL, I'm going to stand by my recommendation.  You're entitled to
think I was being misleading.

	Sure he could probably make it work.  However, he could easily
pick a motherboard that is actually well supported by the WBEL
kernel, as opposed to one that if he worked hard he could recompile
a bunch of unsupported source code and see if he can bend it to his
will.  There's something to be said for doing that.  I've done it,
and it's fun.  However, it's inappropriate for a production server
environment.

	Kirby




> 
> =========================
> Scott Mace
> Systems Administrator
> Travelcenters of America
> 440-808-4318
> mace.scott@tatravelcenters.com
> =========================
> 
> 
> 
> Kirby Bohling <kbohling@birddog.com> 
> Sent by: whitebox-users-admin@beau.org
> 08/05/2004 07:17 PM
> 
> To
> rramstad@alum.mit.edu
> cc
> whitebox-users@beau.org
> Subject
> Re: [WBEL-users] Athlon64 AMD64 motherboard recommendation
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> 
> > 
> > I'm leaning towards NForce3 based boards, as these seem to be really
> > common, but I'm wondering if the built in stuff, like Ethernet, is
> > easy to enable and configure.
> > 
> 
>                  I can't speak directly to NForce3's, but I have an 
> NForce2 that
> takes IA32 AMD chips.  Nvidia is very proud of their secret
> Ethernet, Sound and Firewire chipsets.  So there's no support for
> them under Linux without binary only drivers.  Nvidia is generally
> pretty good about releasing updated drivers for their video cards
> that are kernel neutral, and I use those.
> 
>                  I hate binary only drivers that are kernel specific as 
> I'm at
> the mercy of my vendor.  So I'd recommend checking to be sure the
> chipsets are supported via the default drivers in WBEL.  I'd be
> absolutely shocked if they are.
> 
>                  Thanks,
>                                  Kirby
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