> http://www.memtest86.com/

There is a newer version out on http://www.memtest.org The original is
apparently no longer supported.

rms

In article <(E-Mail Removed)>,
(E-Mail Removed) <(E-Mail Removed)> writes:
> On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 17:01:17 GMT, Will Dormann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> wish wrote:
>> > On Mon, 09 Feb 2004 14:39:28 GMT, Will Dormann <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> >
>> >>Chris wrote:
>> >>
>> >>>New system: 350W Aopen PSU / Asus A7N8X-X (nForce2) / Athlon 2500 /
>> >>>512MB PC3200 / 3x Maxtor 80GB / GeForce2 / Promise UDMA133 / onboard
>> >>>UDMA133 / DVD-ROM / DVD-RW / FDD.
>> >>>
>> >>>I'm a bit lost now. I was thinking that linux gives problems for some
>> >>>reason with the nForce 2 chipset, since win2k installs and runs
>> >>>without any problems. Could this be?
>> >>
>> >>Yes, if you have APIC enabled. Common problem with Nforce2 and Linux.
>> >> Disabling it in the BIOS should be sufficient.
>> >>
>> >>
>> >>-WD
>> >
>> >
>> > Thanks for the quick reaction. I just did so, as well as flashing the BIOS to the newst version
>> > (1007), unfortunately without the desired result :-(
>>
>>
>> Not sure. It might be that you need a kernel with the APIC feature
>> disabled? Now that APIC is disabled in your BIOS, does dmesg show
>> any reference to APIC?
>
> Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds logical. But to my understanding, to recompile a kernel,
> one needs to have one first. That's where it already goes wrong. My linux system just froze instantly
> and now I start from the beginning again: how to install linux from an iso-CD without lock-ups during
> HDD partitioning :-(
>
> Am I the only one facing these problems? Or do linux users simply ignore nForce2 mainboards?
>
The nForce2 is quite problematic under Linux, at the moment.
On the good side though, there are people working HARD on this, as
the nForce2 is one of the more solid and high-performing chipsets
on the Athlon family. If it's on your news feed, check out the
Linux kernel mailing list for more info.

In short, ACPI/APIC on the nForce2 is a bit of a mess, from what
I can read. On the bad side, they appear to have built some of the
ACPI tables wrong. On the good side, they have some intelligent
prefetch built in that can speed some operations up. But back on
the bad side, under certain circumstances the CPU can get badly
confused because the speedup makes the chipset deliver data too
fast.

But on the really good side, they're figuring things out and
issuing patches. There are people with ACPI and APIC running,
though there are others still with hangs.

But if you just want to work, configure the kernel to not have
ACPI or APIC, and keep them turned off in BIOS. If you can't get
far enough to build the kernel that way, there are boot time
flags to do the job. I've been running problem-free for over a
year this way. I'm really hoping that in a few months this stuff
will get hammered out and folded into the mainline 2.6 kernel,
and about that time Gentoo moves off of 2.4. Then I'll reinstall
my aging RH8.0.

It's a lot better than it was. Originally there wasn't even GART
support, so the only 3D was nVidia. (not my ATI)

Dale Pontius

I did boot the system with acpi=off and noapic. Mandrake = no go. Whitebox = go! This is the first time I
use Whitebox, and so far it looks a lot like RedHat (not surprised). Too bad for mandrake, I liked that
distro a lot.

Everybody thanks a lot for thinking along!

Cheers,
Chris

(E-Mail Removed) <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote :

>> Not sure. It might be that you need a kernel with the APIC
>> feature disabled? Now that APIC is disabled in your BIOS, does
>> dmesg show any reference to APIC?
>
> Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds logical. But to my
> understanding, to recompile a kernel, one needs to have one first.
> That's where it already goes wrong. My linux system just froze
> instantly and now I start from the beginning again: how to install
> linux from an iso-CD without lock-ups during HDD partitioning :-(

you can pass parameters to kernel like noacpi noapic (lilo)

> Am I the only one facing these problems? Or do linux users simply
> ignore nForce2 mainboards?

your the one with faulty hardware I guess


Pozdrawiam.
--
RusH //
http://kiti.pulse.pdi.net/qv30/
Like ninjas, true hackers are shrouded in secrecy and mystery.
You may never know -- UNTIL IT'S TOO LATE.

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 02:53:14 +0000 (UTC), RusH <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
> (E-Mail Removed) <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote :
>
> >> Not sure. It might be that you need a kernel with the APIC
> >> feature disabled? Now that APIC is disabled in your BIOS, does
> >> dmesg show any reference to APIC?
> >
> > Thanks for sharing your thoughts. It sounds logical. But to my
> > understanding, to recompile a kernel, one needs to have one first.
> > That's where it already goes wrong. My linux system just froze
> > instantly and now I start from the beginning again: how to install
> > linux from an iso-CD without lock-ups during HDD partitioning :-(
>
> you can pass parameters to kernel like noacpi noapic (lilo)

I did so. Mandrake still didn't install, In the end I gave up Mandrake and
downloaded Whitebox (RedHat rip off) iso files, and installed these succesfully.

> > Am I the only one facing these problems? Or do linux users simply
> > ignore nForce2 mainboards?
>
> your the one with faulty hardware I guess
>

Apparently, but I was just wondering if it was a linux and nForce2 thing in general,
since nForce and Windows work just fine (I also executed memory tests as
suggested, no problems there). My conclusion is that despite the same linux kernel
used, there are more differences between several distributions than I thought. I
might give Gentoo a chance today, see how that behaves.

Regards,
Chris

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 08:49:56 GMT, (E-Mail Removed) <(E-Mail Removed)>
wrote:
>On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 02:53:14 +0000 (UTC), RusH <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote:
>> (E-Mail Removed) <(E-Mail Removed)> wrote :
>> > Am I the only one facing these problems? Or do linux users simply
>> > ignore nForce2 mainboards?
>>
>> your the one with faulty hardware I guess
>>
>
>Apparently, but I was just wondering if it was a linux and nForce2 thing in general,
>since nForce and Windows work just fine (I also executed memory tests as
>suggested, no problems there). My conclusion is that despite the same linux kernel
>used, there are more differences between several distributions than I thought. I
>might give Gentoo a chance today, see how that behaves.

I recently had to wipe my Linux partition after a HD died, but I used
to have Mandrake 9.1 running on an nForce board (the first nForce, not
nForce2), ACPI and all. I did encounter one problem though. As best
as I could tell I had a PCI conflict with the Adaptec 7850 driver when
combined with both the integrated sound and NIC of the nForce board.
This was only in the default Mandrake kernel though, when I recompiled
the kernel either from the pristine source or from Mandrake's source
package, everything worked.

My new HD is in transit as we speak and I plan on throwing Mandrake
9.2 on the thing when it gets here. I'll see if I can't figure some
of these things out at that time.

-------------
Tony Hill
hilla <underscore> 20 <at> yahoo <dot> ca

On Thu, 12 Feb 2004 13:27:31 +0000, Tony Hill wrote:


> I recently had to wipe my Linux partition after a HD died, but I used to
> have Mandrake 9.1 running on an nForce board (the first nForce, not
> nForce2), ACPI and all. I did encounter one problem though. As best as
> I could tell I had a PCI conflict with the Adaptec 7850 driver when
> combined with both the integrated sound and NIC of the nForce board.
> This was only in the default Mandrake kernel though, when I recompiled
> the kernel either from the pristine source or from Mandrake's source
> package, everything worked.

I'm up and running again! What solved my problem was *not* using the
Promise UDMA133 controller for my linux disk. I use that one now only for
my windows disk. The linux disk uses of the onboard HDD controller. I
still had to build the kernel with acpi=off and noapic, but all this
pretty much solved it. It still is a bit a weird since I used this Promise
card in my old 440BX setup without problems. I also can mount my windows
disks and read/write without problems. Lilo wouldn't install from CD, so
I'm using grub now as a bootmanager.

> My new HD is in transit as we speak and I plan on throwing Mandrake 9.2
> on the thing when it gets here. I'll see if I can't figure some of
> these things out at that time.

As I said, after some time of trial and errors, Mandrake 9.2 is up and
running, and so far it feels just as stable as my previous setup. I even
have my CPU running quite overclocked: AMD2500 --> AMD3200 (just to see
how it handles, a 2500 is more than enough for my computing purposes).

Cheers,
Chris