Oleg Goldshmidt <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes: > Rather than reading more reviews of different mobos and getting more > and more worried, I would love to hear about experiences and > suggestions.
OK, thanks to everybody who responded to my query, and it's time for a short report on my experiences with the new computer. I got an AMD Toledo 3800+, dual core 64 bit, and ABIT KN8 Ultra-9 mobo (nVidia chipset), a PCIE GeForce 6600, on-board nVidia CK804 Serial ATA, Ethernet, USB. Fedora Core 4 installed from CDs without a hitch, but after a short while I found out that for some reason the computer started hanging. Notably, this happened a lot while yum was downloading the updates. I saw "nv_stop_tx: TransmitterStatus remained busy" messages from the forcedeth driver in the logs, though I am not sure whether the driver was responsible for hangs. There were no oopses, just total freeze, no response from either keyboard or mouse, nothing helped but powercycle. Looked like a deadlock to me. All this with the stock FC4 2.6.11-smp x86_64 kernel that is installed from the CDs. I did not investigate this for too long, after upgrading to 2.6.14 and then to 2.6.15 kernels from FC4 updates the problem went away, and so far the computer has been working flawlessly. One exception: Macromedia's flashplayer does not have a 64bit version, at least I didn't find one. I fooled the installer to recognize x86_64 as a valid architecture, and installation succeeded, but it does not work. Any suggestions welcome. Please keep discussions of the lessons regarding vendor lock-in, closed source, and such off this list. I suppose that installing 32-bit versions of the various browsers will help, but I am not willing to do it just for the pleasure of having flash. The only other funny thing that I found out concerned a USB keyboard (actually, wireless keyboard and mouse): the default BIOS configuration has USB keyboard disabled, which leads to a bit of a bootstrapping problem. Luckily, I have half a dozen PS/2 keyboards lying around, so after plugging one of them and enabling USB keyboard in the BIOS everything was fine. I did chuckle in the process, though. One other thing that is not related directly to my system, but a tidbit I discovered while shopping. Just something I am curious about. The newest LCD monitors (e.g. from Samsung - SyncMaster 960BF 19'') come without any controls whatsoever - all the controls are in software. Only Windows software is supplied. Question: does anyone know how it is supposed to work on non-Windows (and non-Mac) systems? The assumption apparently is that the monitor will work (for some definition of the word) without the software - otherwise how can one install it? -- Oleg Goldshmidt | [EMAIL PROTECTED] | http://www.goldshmidt.org ================================================================= To unsubscribe, send mail to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with the word "unsubscribe" in the message body, e.g., run the command echo unsubscribe | mail [EMAIL PROTECTED]
