Re: [expert] sata and Socket A motherboard and Mandrake
Hi Everyone, Since placing the question to the mailing list about the Epox EP-8RDA3+Socket A motherboard with a Nforce chipset and SATA support, I thought I better let people know how I went.. First up I tried the board with SATA drives, and installed Mandrake 9.1, I had 2 SATA 80Gig Seagates installed, which I setup Linux Software RAID1 on.. I thing that I can say the Mandrake installer is great for setting up Linux software RAID.. as well as the XFS file system.. Although Mandrake was able to install on the SATA and boot off the drives, which were seen as /dev/hde /dev/hdg the problem was performance, by default DMA was disabled on the drives.. trying to enable the DMA lead to instant data corruption.. The Second most obvious and serious notable problem with the drives was the heat coming from both the drives, the Seagate SATA 80Gig drives were running extremely hot.. I hope this is not something that we are going to see from Seagate in the future.. I hate hot running drives. The drives were so hot one could barely touch them. Since I have rejected both drives and sent them back due the heat problems, and replaced them with the Standard Seagate ATA 80Gig drives, which ran very quick on the Epox motherboard, and the whole system ended up being a great system, and very linux compatible but without the SATA drives..maybe give it 6 months for SATA stuff.. Cheers Mark On Fri, 2003-08-29 at 09:32, Mark Williamson wrote: Hello Everyone, Just looking at a Nforce2 motherboard Epox EP-8RDA3+Socket A motherboard, does this have any problems with Mandrake 9.1?. Is there anyone running sata drives with Mandrake 9.1, are they stable, can one just use a standard Kernel that comes with Mandrake.? The board looks good from it's Web site link http://web.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8RDA3pluslang=1 But if it don't work with Mandrake it ain't much good. Cheers Mark __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
[expert] sata and Socket A motherboard and Mandrake
Hello Everyone, Just looking at a Nforce2 motherboard Epox EP-8RDA3+Socket A motherboard, does this have any problems with Mandrake 9.1?. Is there anyone running sata drives with Mandrake 9.1, are they stable, can one just use a standard Kernel that comes with Mandrake.? The board looks good from it's Web site link http://web.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8RDA3pluslang=1 But if it don't work with Mandrake it ain't much good. Cheers Mark Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] sata and Socket A motherboard and Mandrake
I just got an asus with nforce2 and the same Silicon Image Sil3112a SerialATA controller and am running it with 9.2rc2 now. and the drive works fine. I don't know about the 9.1, but you might be good if you can get the updated boot kernels from http://www.netikka.net/tmb/9.1/ and use them to install from and them update to one of the newer kernels from there. I'm not sure at what stage the driver was added. also the newer kernels have a lot of nforce2 fixes. http://www.netikka.net/tmb/Cooker/ as an example, these srpms can be compiled on 9.1 if you edit the spec, and change the gcc build requirement (I comment it out). I'm not sure if the binaries install out of the box or not because of the different gcc versions or whatever. but I'm running one of the tmb kernels on my laptop with 9.1 installed with no problems. On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 19:32, Mark Williamson wrote: Hello Everyone, Just looking at a Nforce2 motherboard Epox EP-8RDA3+Socket A motherboard, does this have any problems with Mandrake 9.1?. Is there anyone running sata drives with Mandrake 9.1, are they stable, can one just use a standard Kernel that comes with Mandrake.? The board looks good from it's Web site link http://web.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8RDA3plus=1 But if it don't work with Mandrake it ain't much good. Cheers Mark __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] sata and Socket A motherboard and Mandrake
Wow.. Thanks for the info Byron, looks like it may be difficult to install and make the sata drive as the bootable drive.. Although I am not sure about this.. are you using the SATA dive as your main drive? The information about these drives is awfully sketchy at the moment, are they worth the trouble.. what sort of through puts are you seeing.. is it noticeable difference to the ATA133 stuff? Cheers Mark On Fri, 2003-08-29 at 14:48, Byron Poland wrote: I just got an asus with nforce2 and the same Silicon Image Sil3112a SerialATA controller and am running it with 9.2rc2 now. and the drive works fine. I don't know about the 9.1, but you might be good if you can get the updated boot kernels from http://www.netikka.net/tmb/9.1/ and use them to install from and them update to one of the newer kernels from there. I'm not sure at what stage the driver was added. also the newer kernels have a lot of nforce2 fixes. http://www.netikka.net/tmb/Cooker/ as an example, these srpms can be compiled on 9.1 if you edit the spec, and change the gcc build requirement (I comment it out). I'm not sure if the binaries install out of the box or not because of the different gcc versions or whatever. but I'm running one of the tmb kernels on my laptop with 9.1 installed with no problems. On Thu, 2003-08-28 at 19:32, Mark Williamson wrote: Hello Everyone, Just looking at a Nforce2 motherboard Epox EP-8RDA3+Socket A motherboard, does this have any problems with Mandrake 9.1?. Is there anyone running sata drives with Mandrake 9.1, are they stable, can one just use a standard Kernel that comes with Mandrake.? The board looks good from it's Web site link http://web.epox.com/html/motherboard.asp?product=EP-8RDA3plus=1 But if it don't work with Mandrake it ain't much good. Cheers Mark __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com __ Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] sata and Socket A motherboard and Mandrake
On Fri, 2003-08-29 at 08:55, Mark wrote: Wow.. Thanks for the info Byron, looks like it may be difficult to install and make the sata drive as the bootable drive.. Although I am not sure about this.. are you using the SATA dive as your main drive? The information about these drives is awfully sketchy at the moment, are they worth the trouble.. what sort of through puts are you seeing.. is it noticeable difference to the ATA133 stuff? Cheers Mark I'm using the drive as my main drive. It worked off the bat. I've booted with a gentoo install cd, and also a knoppix live cd, and the gentoo saw the drive, and the knoppix did not if I recall correctly. I think the knoppix had like a 2.4.20 kernel where as the gentoo disk had a 2.4.21 kernel. Main reason I opted for sata is the cleanliness of the cables, and efficient airflows. (don't care oabout over clocking but still want a well cooled case.) I don't really know how to judge the performance numbers, but here is what hdparm -tt gives: hdparm -tT /dev/hde /dev/hde: Timing buffer-cache reads: 1564 MB in 2.00 seconds = 782.00 MB/sec Timing buffered disk reads: 78 MB in 3.04 seconds = 25.66 MB/sec this is on 2.4.22-1mdk here are the results from hdparm -I, the drive is a 120 gig seagate SATA: hdparm -I /dev/hde /dev/hde: ATA device, with non-removable media Model Number: ST3120026AS Serial Number: 3JT0JJKQ Firmware Revision: 3.05 Standards: Used: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2 Supported: 6 5 4 3 Configuration: Logical max current cylinders 16383 65535 heads 16 1 sectors/track 63 63 -- CHS current addressable sectors:4128705 LBAuser addressable sectors: 234441648 LBA48 user addressable sectors: 234441648 device size with M = 1024*1024: 114473 MBytes device size with M = 1000*1000: 120034 MBytes (120 GB) Capabilities: LBA, IORDY(can be disabled) bytes avail on r/w long: 4 Queue depth: 1 Standby timer values: spec'd by Standard R/W multiple sector transfer: Max = 16 Current = 16 Recommended acoustic management value: 254, current value: 0 DMA: mdma0 mdma1 mdma2 udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 udma5 *udma6 Cycle time: min=120ns recommended=120ns PIO: pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4 Cycle time: no flow control=240ns IORDY flow control=120ns Commands/features: Enabled Supported: *READ BUFFER cmd *WRITE BUFFER cmd *Host Protected Area feature set *Look-ahead *Write cache *Power Management feature set Security Mode feature set *SMART feature set *FLUSH CACHE EXT command *Mandatory FLUSH CACHE command *Device Configuration Overlay feature set *48-bit Address feature set SET MAX security extension *DOWNLOAD MICROCODE cmd *SMART self-test *SMART error logging Security: supported not enabled not locked not frozen not expired: security count not supported: enhanced erase Checksum: correct thats about all the info I think I can think of now. -Byron Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
Re: [expert] sata and Socket A motherboard and Mandrake
From: Mark [EMAIL PROTECTED] Wow.. Thanks for the info Byron, looks like it may be difficult to install and make the sata drive as the bootable drive.. Although I am not sure about this.. are you using the SATA dive as your main drive? The information about these drives is awfully sketchy at the moment, are they worth the trouble.. what sort of through puts are you seeing.. is it noticeable difference to the ATA133 stuff? Cheers Mark The Sil3112a was on of the first serial ata chipsets that got support added to the kernel.org kernels... (as it was one of the first to ship...) The mdk kernels recognized the 3112a chipset even before MDK 9.1 was released... as of wether it works... I can't tell you, as I have the chipset but no sata drives yet... but according to the kernel ml you should be ok Regards Thomas Want to buy your Pack or Services from MandrakeSoft? Go to http://www.mandrakestore.com
