Subject: Re: working motherboards
To: Joseph Sarkes <jsarkes@tiac.net>
From: Stephen Degler <stephen@degler.net>
List: port-amd64
Date: 02/25/2007 10:38:08
On Sun, 2007-02-25 at 09:13 -0500, Joseph Sarkes wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> It's been a while since I posted so please take that into account.  I  
> have an asus A8N sli premium
> mother board and amd 64 fx2 processor.  I think that ever since I  
> bought the board I have been
> unable to use the 64 bit version of netbsd on it.  The 32 bit seems  
> to work, but the 64 bit version
> gets stuck with lost interupt messages during boot and I never got to  
> install it.
> 
> The upshot of this is that I am interested in what are the  
> recommended/tested motherboards
> for netbsd? I am tired of doing battle with non-useable/not-supported  
> hardware and want a
> stable easy to use system.  I have learned my lesson about using  
> state of the art equipment
> and stuff made by secretive manufacturers that won't cooperate with  
> users.
> 
> I apologize if this info is in some readme file that I haven't been  
> smart enough to read
> thoroughly enough to glean the needed info.
> 
> If there is a list of what boards do not work or one that says which  
> ones DO work, it would
> be helpful to avoid wasting effort.
> 
> BTW, if there is some testing to be done to work out what the faults  
> are with booting this
> mb, I would be willing to invest some time as long as it won't be  
> wasted like my efforts have
> been to this point.
> 
> Thanks for all the hard work you all have put into netbsd, as  
> although in recent time I haven't
> been running it, I find it to be the cleanest and easiest to  
> understand and use/configure
> compared to linux and M$ products. 
> 

My most recent system is based on this motherboard:
MSI K9AGM-FID Socket AM2 ATI Radeon Xpress 1150 Micro ATX AMD
Motherboard - Retail 

My goals were to have a cheap sata based system that could perfom well.
I'm also very happy to use -current.  The integrated graphics are fine
for me, and work with pkgsrc/xorg.  NetBSD recognizes everything on the
motherboard, although I haven't tested sound. I believe that 

In general I choose anything but Nvidia, since they share little or no
documentation.

Overall, I've had good experiences with ATI, SIS, VIA, and Intel
chipsets.

skd