Reliable Linux or FreeBSD or NetBSD motherboard

a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
edited August 2003 in Science & Tech
This system will NOT be overclocked. I will not be pushing the limits on RAM timings or anything that could possibly introduce instability.

I want this system to be as solid as a rock, therefore all devices will be run at their rated speeds, even if they are able to run higher with 100% stability.

What motherboards (recent, for the Athlon XP/MP) do you recommend for Linux, FreeBSD or NetBSD? I want a system that will run an Athlon XP 1700+ or higher, preferably a 2000+ or higher.

If you know of a good Intel board that supports the 533MHz and/or 800MHz FSB CPUs of 2.4GHz or higher also let me know. I lean more towards AMD, but I want this system to be stable and if Intel is the best route for a stable Linux/BSD machine that's what I want.

This system does not warrant dual processors, but if the most stable board is a dual processor board, then that's not a problem.

I do want AGP video, but nothing high-end. I just want to make sure the PCI-bus is free of any and all traffic that is not necessary.

I will be using IDE hard drives and I would like to mirror them, so on-board RAID that is fully supported is a very big plus.

Comments

  • AgeekAgeek
    edited July 2003
    A few things to avoid:

    HPT 372 or 374 (for Linux)-- drivers for these are keyed to older RAID BIOSes than modern boards use.

    Some Promise chips-- varys by distro as to what works and what does not.

    That said, the MSI 6712 works. It is not a RAID board. The Soyo Fire Dragon works, except for RAID, due to BIOS issues(not Linux core issues, due to the HPT supplied drivers not being available for current HPT BIOS revs). Many of the Intel boards work due to Intel coming out with drivers for Linux-- but some distros need lots of effort to accomplish this as Intel's drivers are compiled on Intel's Linux Compiler release and some distros need them RECOMPILED to work with Linux.

    One thing to keep in mind is that Linux can vary a lot as to what runs on a particular distribution of Linux-- each distro\kernel\compiler set can be different.

    Hard(non-software, AKA soft for software, hard for hardware) modern IDE or SATA RAID is the hardest thing to implement right now, nVidia is more lilely to work than ATI due to drivers being in more easily usuable form and more recent and much more actively developed by nVidia.

    For SATA, probably 6 months to 9 months wait, minimum. For IDE, the most usable is what the mfrs release drivers for, and if embedded than what the mobo mfrs support by syncing driver and RAID BIOS support.

    Good Luck.
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited July 2003
    Ageek: I appreciate the reply.

    I know that the nForce2 boards--at least some--have problems with Linux. I don't know about FreeBSD and NetBSD, but I'm thinking that for those two O/S's I'd need to get a board that's slightly older to ensure compatability as they don't tend to develop at as quick of a pace as Linux does.
  • trippintrippin Chatt, TN
    edited July 2003
    For server applications, tyan is the way to go. I would agrue to say that they produce some of the most stable boards (and thus better suited for servers). Their boards are not as fast as abit's, but they arent designed to be the fastest, they are designed to be stable.

    They have a kt400 board with onboard raid that would seem to meet all of your needs.

    Here is a review of the board on amdmb:
    http://www.amdmb.com/article-display.php?ArticleID=229

    Here is a link to newegg's site but this one has no onboard raid:
    http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProduct.asp?submit=manufactory&catalog=22&manufactory=1424&DEPA=1&sortby=14&order=1
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited July 2003
    Thanks trippin
  • AgeekAgeek
    edited July 2003
    Well, as to non-duallies, can tell you if Free 5.0 or the Mandrake 9.2 Beta or the RH Severn beta 1 works with an MSI KT4VL with a Barton 2500+ in it in a few days. Do you have an nForce2system you could swap out a HD in and try the RH Severn or Mandrake 9.2 Betas in?? Some folks have gotten Slack 9.0 working also on some nForces, the non-2's. The early NF7-S might also be a good trial candidate.

    Mandrake shows the KT400 chipset working, the 400A not. SuSE shows similar stats. I have no magic wand for kernel version for the betas, each one will have a different kernel working-- Mandrake 9.2 ETA is September, and depending on Linus's kernel work status, they may stick a 2.6 in it.

    OT: FTPing notes
    Since I am on broadband and northern Europe and Scandinavia have universisties with big network pipes, I actually got 4 O\S ISO sets from ftp://ftp.sunet.se and a few from
    ftp://ftp.uio.no/pub/ -- both need pure FTP clients to work right, FTP Voyager and GetRight(note that Getright does nto have true spyware any more) will both work on both those sites. My Linux is faster than the windows clients, for FTP in either version of Windows I have on HD (about 140 KB\sec average actual throughput from sunet, greater than 190 KB\sec from uio.no out of gFTP, about 10-15% less per sec out of FTP Voyager). With Netscape's demise I am now an Opera fan, and the ftp client in that also behaves. But most commonly I use gFTP in Linux. Oh, I am in the US and the US mirrors are typically too busy.
    /OT

    Yeah, look for a board made a year to 1.5 years back for Linux of non-beta kinds with not compiling needed, and an Intel i845 board for best work with Free. Next best is an AMD chipset AMD board, for Free. Open, can not speak to very well. Ask Primesuspect what chipsets he is running, for that.
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited July 2003
    Yes, please let me know how the MSI + Barton works out.

    Recent boards I have access to are Abit's NF7-S Rev2.0 and ECS's L7S7A2. I also have access to an MSI board based on the i845e chipset, but it would have to be a weekend because that system is up 24/7 but isn't usually used on Saturday or Sunday.

    I've never been a fan of RH or Mandrake, though it has been a while since I've used either. Mandrake always felt slow and RH always seemed to do things its own way, no matter what most distros were trying to agree upon as a standard. I've always leaned towards Slack as it was like lightning, but if RH or Mandrake is what works best with a particular motherboard, then I'm fine with that.

    I don't have access to any KT400 boards.

    I hope I read your post accurately, and I hope this post makes sense. My body can stay awake, but my mind cannot.

    /me goes and slides gently into bed.
    Originally posted by Ageek
    Well, as to non-duallies, can tell you if Free 5.0 or the Mandrake 9.2 Beta or the RH Severn beta 1 works with an MSI KT4VL with a Barton 2500+ in it in a few days. Do you have an nForce2system you could swap out a HD in and try the RH Severn or Mandrake 9.2 Betas in?? Some folks have gotten Slack 9.0 working also on some nForces, the non-2's. The early NF7-S might also be a good trial candidate.

    Mandrake shows the KT400 chipset working, the 400A not. SuSE shows similar stats. I have no magic wand for kernel version for the betas, each one will have a different kernel working-- Mandrake 9.2 ETA is September, and depending on Linus's kernel work status, they may stick a 2.6 in it.

    OT: FTPing notes
    Since I am on broadband and northern Europe and Scandinavia have universisties with big network pipes, I actually got 4 O\S ISO sets from ftp://ftp.sunet.se and a few from
    ftp://ftp.uio.no/pub/ -- both need pure FTP clients to work right, FTP Voyager and GetRight(note that Getright does nto have true spyware any more) will both work on both those sites. My Linux is faster than the windows clients, for FTP in either version of Windows I have on HD (about 140 KB\sec average actual throughput from sunet, greater than 190 KB\sec from uio.no out of gFTP, about 10-15% less per sec out of FTP Voyager). With Netscape's demise I am now an Opera fan, and the ftp client in that also behaves. But most commonly I use gFTP in Linux. Oh, I am in the US and the US mirrors are typically too busy.
    /OT

    Yeah, look for a board made a year to 1.5 years back for Linux of non-beta kinds with not compiling needed, and an Intel i845 board for best work with Free. Next best is an AMD chipset AMD board, for Free. Open, can not speak to very well. Ask Primesuspect what chipsets he is running, for that.
  • AgeekAgeek
    edited July 2003
    The i845e should be worth a try with a spare HD in it, yes. Will see about the Barton thing in the next couple days.

    *writes note to self-- self, install Free 5.0 on Barton box!*
  • PsychoI3oyPsychoI3oy Aurora, CO
    edited August 2003
    i just stumbled on this page looking for a freebsd getright workalike but i thought i could add my $.02US (btw, there are programs out there that start/resume downloads, i tried one called aria but couldn't get it to work, there's others but what i want is one that'll limit the bandwidth used in downloading, a la getright's speed limit feature)

    i just installed freeBSD 5.1-RELEASE on my Asus A7V8X motherboard (kt-400 chipset) and the only problem i had was with the onboard gigabit lan (stupid pnp setting in bios) that was easy enough to fix. it's only an athlon 1.1ghz but the board will support up to Athlon XP 3000+ (333MHz bus, barton included). i've had no problems relating to stability of the motherboard (though i did lock up when i wrote a bad perl script) mine is the most expensive version with the aforementioned onboard gigabit E, along with SATA and RAID 0,1 (onboard audio but that's disabled in favor of a SB Live) all in all it's much more stable than win2k was on the same hardware (though my uptime is only a day and 12 hours cause i recompiled the kernel for sound) but i'd recommend this board to anyone. at one point i was regretting not spending the extra $30 for the A7N8X (nforce2 chipset) because of game performance, but i'm glad i went with this one now cause it works in freeBSD

    hope this is helpful information, i'mma go poke around the other forums here and see what this is all about
  • AgeekAgeek
    edited August 2003
    Um, if Gnome is available try gFTP. It also runs in KDE. It is not a pure workalike, but I find it more relaible than GetRight. It also will autoresume if you try to download same file again or let you overwrite if you think your file is bad. Try not to resume with ISOs if you can help it, though.
  • a2jfreaka2jfreak Houston, TX Member
    edited August 2003
    PsychoI3oy, thanks for your input.

    I wish I could help you, but I'm not familiar with any GetRight type software for FreeBSD. I mainly use Windows 2K, but I don't even use GetRight type software on W2K either.
  • PsychoI3oyPsychoI3oy Aurora, CO
    edited August 2003
    Originally posted by Ageek
    Um, if Gnome is available try gFTP. It also runs in KDE. It is not a pure workalike, but I find it more relaible than GetRight. It also will autoresume if you try to download same file again or let you overwrite if you think your file is bad. Try not to resume with ISOs if you can help it, though.

    thanks, i'm downloading the port right now. 5 minutes for 1.5MB, not too bad on this connection. i looked at the pkg-descr and it has alot of the features of getright, but i didn't see anything specific about keeping the bandwidth under a certain limit. i'll dig around in the options and configs once it's built to see what can be done about that but thanks for the tip
  • PsychoI3oyPsychoI3oy Aurora, CO
    edited August 2003
    Originally posted by a2jfreak
    PsychoI3oy, thanks for your input.


    i forgot to mention how the RAID on this board works. it's got one extra ATA133 interface and can RAID (mirror) that with a SATA drive, or it can mirror the SATA drives. i think it can stripe across all 3 though i haven't played around with it (no SATA drives yet, but i'm glad the prices aren't much more than ATA100)
  • AgeekAgeek
    edited August 2003
    FTP menu, Option, Network TAB, limit is an upper limit, 0.00 is NO upper limit. If you put it in passive mode it will take server feed rate, not passive it pushes FTP server with pings to show it is free and ready for next packet.
  • PsychoI3oyPsychoI3oy Aurora, CO
    edited August 2003
    Originally posted by Ageek
    FTP menu, Option, Network TAB, limit is an upper limit, 0.00 is NO upper limit. If you put it in passive mode it will take server feed rate, not passive it pushes FTP server with pings to show it is free and ready for next packet.

    heh, yup, found the setting in there. too bad it kept crashing when i tried to download the file i wanted. any small files (readme from the root folder, for example) would work but when i hit that large one it dumped core. i've been told on another forum that curl might do the trick for me, too, but i'm waay too tired to try to mess with more stuff tonight, i just spent the last 12 hours getting my epson c82 printer to work with cups/gnome-print/ghostscript

    too bad i couldn't find a howto or something, maybe i'll write one. just gotta do 2 things, get the applications in X to actually print to it and remember all the steps that actually worked. wow one OT comment in this thread goes pretty far, huh?
  • AgeekAgeek
    edited August 2003
    Well, you might want to see if wget will work if you want to use command line downloaders. Curl is having problems, lots of them.
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