From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Sun Jun 24 07:56:11 2007 Return-Path: X-Original-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [69.147.83.52]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id A8E0416A41F for ; Sun, 24 Jun 2007 07:56:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from etc@fluffles.net) Received: from auriate.fluffles.net (cust.95.160.adsl.cistron.nl [195.64.95.160]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 5EE1013C448 for ; Sun, 24 Jun 2007 07:56:11 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from etc@fluffles.net) Received: from 195-241-125-45.dsl.ip.tiscali.nl ([195.241.125.45] helo=[10.0.0.18]) by auriate.fluffles.net with esmtpa (Exim 4.66 (FreeBSD)) (envelope-from ) id 1I2Mwt-000IRY-3e; Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:55:55 +0200 Message-ID: <467E2392.6010109@fluffles.net> Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 09:56:02 +0200 From: Fluffles User-Agent: Thunderbird 2.0.0.4 (Windows/20070604) MIME-Version: 1.0 To: Ravi Pokala References: In-Reply-To: Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: Looking for a motherboard with lots of SATA ports, supported in 6.2-STABLE X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sun, 24 Jun 2007 07:56:11 -0000 Ravi Pokala wrote: > My main concerns are that the networking is well supported (GigE preferred of course), and that there are lots of supported on-board SATA ports. I currently have four SATA drives, so I'd prefer six or eight ports on the new board for growth. > > I'd also like decent on-board graphics, on the off chance I want to dual-boot it to play some older games. In FreeBSD, it just needs to be supported enough to give me a VGA console. > You probably won't find 8 SATA ports and onboard video, these two just don't match. You either take a high-end board with lots of features, but *never* have onboard video (IGP), of you take a microATX board with onboard video which have 2 maybe 4 SATA ports. So you may want to drop this demand and get a PCI videocard and focus on boards with lots of Serial ATA connectors. Also be sure to check if these are supplied by the chipset (best) or by some second chip on the motherboard. Sometimes these 'extra' chips use the old and obsolete PCI bus for data transfer, which can be very slow especially in a RAID configuration. Maybe you can search for boards and post them on the mailinglist, so we can check if the SATA and gigabit works? Good luck! - Veronica