Date: Thu, 4 May 2000 12:08:08 -0400 (EDT) From: Daniel Pouzzner <douzzer@mega.nu> To: wyldephyre2@yahoo.com Cc: freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Athlon boards (was :Re: Anybody using Epox EP-7KXA Athlon motherboard?) Message-ID: <200005041608.e44G88h26970@mega.nu>
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Another EP-7KXA report:
My system consists of an Athlon 750 on a 7KXA, with 256MB of Kingston
PC133 ECC SDRAM (ECC fully supported). On the Athlon I have a big
three fan Peltier cooler, and the 7KXA's layout is such that this is
no problem at all.
The 7KXA also has an ISA slot, which might come in handy.
Now, the interesting part, peripherals and stability under FreeBSD.
PCI bus currently has an Adaptec 39160 (Yamaha CRW6416 and Toshiba
SD-W1101 on one of its buses, the other one currently unoccupied,
awaiting migration of the Western Digital Enterprise on my other main
system) and a 3com 3C905B. G400-TV is on the AGP. On-board ATA/66,
one bus has an IBM DPTA372050 (20.5GB 7200RPM ATA/66) and the other
has a Panasonic LS-120 drive.
I was able to boot and install from the FreeBSD 4.0-REL CD image, over
the Adaptec interface and Yamaha drive, using the February-vintage
BIOS that shipped with the mainboard. I was also able to boot (DOS,
for BIOS flash) off the LS-120 drive with that version of the BIOS,
and every version since then. 1.44MB and 120MB diskettes in the
LS-120 are both mountable under FreeBSD.
Currently, BIOS is the 2000-Apr-25 version, settings are failsafe
default except 133MHz memory, change of boot device order, and a few
other minor tweaks. OS is still FreeBSD 4.0-REL; been running a local
build since I started trying to get sound to work (more on this
momentarily).
Stability is 100%. If you munge the BIOS CMOS settings so that power
management kicks in, your machine will go haywire ("microuptime() went
backwards" errors), so by all means avoid that (trivial to avoid).
The only problem area I've run into is sound. Even though onboard
AC97/Soundblaster sound is detected by an appropriately configured
kernel, and appears to software to be running properly (mixer works,
etc.), there is neither actual audio output nor apparent line input.
It's just deathly silent at the output port - apparently electrically
shut down. Either the sound subsystem on my mainboard is
munged/shorted/otherwise inoperative, or FreeBSD doesn't wake it up
properly at boot time.
I couple weeks ago I bought a Soundblaster Live, to try to get some
sound working, and succeeded, but I never got adequate performance out
of it. The only way I could keep it from glitching was by shutting
down the NIC and avoiding SCSI activity. Every time one of the other
cards grabbed the bus, the Live would glitch.
I've returned that piece o' junk and ordered an RME card, which is
professional buffered audio with full interrupt sharing.
The rest of my system: Boomrack 4U400X case, Mouse Systems 3 button
optical mouse (PS/2), and PFU America Happy Hacking Lite PS/2 keyboard
(Sun Type 3 layout). The Peltier cooler is from www.coolerstar.com.
The CPU runs at a stable 91-93 fahrenheit with ambient temp of 73
degrees inside the case and 68-70 degrees in the room.
-Daniel Pouzzner
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