Subject: Re: Any experience with MSI nforce motherboards?
To: David Brownlee <abs@absd.org>
From: Anders Lindgren <ali@df.lth.se>
List: port-amd64
Date: 09/01/2005 11:57:19
On Tue, 30 Aug 2005, David Brownlee wrote:
>
> 	K8N Neo4 Platinum - nForce4 Ultra Chipset

I have a new AMD64 3500+ box with precisely this motherboard. I am 
currently building a 3.0_BETA (cvs as of a couple of days ago) dist to try 
to install it (again).

Last I tried (briefly), 3.0_BETA INSTALL would boot but not be able to use 
the SATA interface. It would hang with "lost interrupt" messages for a 
long time before getting to the then useless sysinst. I didn't try to move 
the disk(s) to the SiI SATARAID ports instead.

As far as I have been able to puzzle together, it should work once I get 
the right permutation of kernel and BIOS options. Recent voices suggest 
that it might Just Work(tm) if I disable APIC mode in the BIOS and/or 
disable "MPBIOS" in the kernel.

AFAIK onboard Nvidia ethernet doesn't work, but ISTR the Marvell Yukon 
Gbit ethernet works with the skc(4) driver.

I'll get back with details as soon as I have had an opportunity to try my 
latest build. Speaking of which...

...If anyone knows what a sane config should look like (BIOS APIC mode 
off, MPBIOS disabled in favor of (MP)ACPI?) I'd be glad to hear it. I am 
used to workstation architectures where the hardware Just Works(tm) and 
know next to nothing about PC BIOSen and the associated plethora of kernel 
options (INTR_FIXUP anyone?). :/

...I tried to figure out how to select the kernel to boot from that 
floppy-emulating CD bootloader. Is that possible? I was unable to get the 
bootloader's builtin "ls" command to do anything useful at all (it simply 
failed no matter what arguments I gave it) and was equally unsuccessful in 
having the bootloader accept any alternative kernel names to boot, 
regardless of absolute, relative or no paths.

Best regards,
ali:)