From owner-freebsd-amd64@FreeBSD.ORG Fri May 6 02:01:10 2005 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.freebsd.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8CFD816A4CE for ; Fri, 6 May 2005 02:01:10 +0000 (GMT) Received: from pandora.afflictions.org (asylum.afflictions.org [64.7.134.90]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id DEB3D43D96 for ; Fri, 6 May 2005 02:01:09 +0000 (GMT) (envelope-from dgerow@afflictions.org) Received: from localhost (localhost [127.0.0.1]) by pandora.afflictions.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 4EC7478C70 for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 22:03:36 -0400 (EDT) Received: from pandora.afflictions.org ([127.0.0.1]) by localhost (pandora.afflictions.org [127.0.0.1]) (amavisd-new, port 10024) with ESMTP id 80025-08 for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 22:03:31 -0400 (EDT) Received: from dementia.afflictions.org (unknown [172.19.206.152]) by pandora.afflictions.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 9D7FA78C5F for ; Thu, 5 May 2005 22:03:30 -0400 (EDT) Received: by dementia.afflictions.org (Postfix, from userid 1001) id 8F27F33C79; Thu, 5 May 2005 22:01:02 -0400 (EDT) Date: Thu, 5 May 2005 22:01:02 -0400 From: Damian Gerow To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Message-ID: <20050506020102.GA83574@afflictions.org> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline X-GPG-Fingerprint: B3D7 D901 A53A 1A99 BFD6 E6DF 9F3B 742B C288 9CC9 User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.9i X-Virus-Scanned: amavisd-new at pandora.afflictions.org Subject: Tyan K8WE X-BeenThere: freebsd-amd64@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.1 Precedence: list List-Id: Porting FreeBSD to the AMD64 platform List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 02:01:10 -0000 After all the speculation on boards recently, and the hubbub about avoiding and not avoiding nForce-based motherboards, I found myself in posession of the Tyan K8WE. I'll leave generic hardware impressions aside, and focus on the functionality... (note that all this has been posted to ): The board actually works surprisingly well. I was expecting to have a much bigger headache getting everything up and going. 5.3 *does* seem to work a little bit better for some reason (I originally thought ACPI regression, but I'm currently running RELENG_5 cvsup'ed this afternoon with ACPI). The on-board nVidia BGE controllers *DO NOT WORK* with ports/nvnet. You *will* need to have a PCI (/PCI-X) Ethernet card to use networking. I'm currently using an Intel 82550 Pro/100 card in a PCI-X slot just fine. My sound drivers from opensound.com don't work. That's something I'll chase down with them. I cannot boot into single-user mode in 5.4. The box just doesn't take input from the keyboard (I haven't tried serial console) when specifying the root shell to use. Oddly, hitting CTRL+ALT+DEL will successfully reboot the machine (i.e. FreeBSD will go through its shutdown process). Other than that, the board works quite well. It took me most of the day to get it going, and I'm still not /convinced/ there's no ACPI issues hanging around, but there's no complaints in the dmesg, and everything's working fine. It's done a few buildworlds (and currently rebuilding firefox) under the current RELENG_5 build, so it seems to be moderately stable. - Damian