Date: Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:42:45 -0800 From: Andrew Fremantle <freebsd@skyhawk.ca> To: freebsd-questions@freebsd.org, freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Motherboard for new Socket 939 fileserver Message-ID: <44172AC5.8070400@skyhawk.ca>
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Hi all, I've been tasked with setting up a new FreeBSD network file server. I've been spending the last day fighting an ASUS A8N-VM CSM motherboard, and I've given up on that hopeless battle. The ACPI is horribly broken, the ethernet and PATA/SATA aren't supported on FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE, FreeBSD 6-STABLE recognises the disk controllers but then hits a bug that prevents it from using one of the disks, I've had enough. I was prepared to tough it out with the ATA/33 limit on the generic controller support, until a future release properly supports them, but this morning the machine started throwing "DANGER Will Robinson" messages regarding the SATA drives. I have a preference for nVidia chipsets, but if there's something else that will work and has decent FreeBSD support I'll take it. Here are my requirements Socket 939 At least four SATA headers (preferably) At least two PATA headers PCIe Gigabit Ethernet Reliable ATA system operation on the board is a MUST! This machine's primary purpose is going to be reading and writing those drives! Those damned UDMA timeouts and other ATA problems I've seen cropping up randomly over the last two years are NOT acceptable. After troubleshooting the nVidia RAID on this motherboard, and reading online about these "fake RAID" implementations, I'm pretty much planning on sticking with FreeBSD's "Pseudo-RAID". Can anyone offer any feedback on the reliability of FreeBSD's "Pseudo-RAID" system? Just in case anyone's interested, here are the rest of the components that will be used with the system. Seasonic 430w S12 powersupply Western Digital 80G PATA drive Pioneer PATA DVD Multidrive 2 x Seagate 7200.9 300GB SATA drives (mirrored) in a SNT-3141-SATA 4-drive SATA enclosure (Not sure who made this) Any feedback would be much appreciated. I'm desperate to avoid jumping to Linux on this one, because I know that will turn into a huge pain in the ass later on. - Andrew
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