Manuel Bouyer <bouyer@antioche.eu.org> writes:
> On Thu, Nov 07, 2002 at 01:46:48PM -0600, D. Michael McFarland wrote:
> > I've replaced my aging desktop machine with a new Pentium 4 box.
> > ...
> > The hardware includes
> > 
> >     Motherboard: ECS P4S5MG/651+, AMI BIOS, 2.4 GHz P4, 1 GB DDR RAM
> 
> Do you know what chipset it uses ?

Well, I do now. ;-) In fact, I know more about this board than I ever
wanted to.  From the manual, which describes a few boards at once
(mine is the .../651):

/----
| Notice to user:
| 
| This manual is provided to accommodate the P4S5MG, P4S5MG/GL and
| P4S5MG/651 mainboards. To identify the type of mainboard you have,
| please refer below:
| 
| * P4S5MG mainboard incorporates the SiS650 Northbridge and SiS961
|   Southbridge chipset.
| 
| * P4S5MG/GL mainboard incorporates the SiS650GL Northbridge and SiS961
|   (or SiS962) Southbridge chipset.
| 
| * P4S5MG/651 mainboard incorporates the SiS651 Northbridge and SiS961
|   (or SiS962) Southbridge chipset.
\----

The other problematic bit was networking.

/----
| * SiS961 Embedded Fast Ethernet MAC and onboard Realtek RTL8201 LAN
|   PHY compliant with IEEE802.3u 100BASE-TX, 10BASE-T and ANSI X3.263
|   TP-PMD standards
\----

Now that I have this sorted out, I've no one to blame but myself.  I
checked the archives before buying the machine this board is in, but
obviously I should have paid more attention to the details.  Linux and
the BSDs have worked on everything I've thrown at them for so long
that I became carelesss, and when I saw no one screaming bloody murder
about similar hardware, I shrugged and said to myself, "It's all
standard stuff," and placed an order.

In the end, the fix was simple: I installed a Promise Technology
Ultra133 TX2 IDE controller and a Netgear FA311 NIC, turned off their
onboard counterparts in the BIOS, and I seem to be in business.  The
total cost of the box is still low enough to brag about, I got to
brush up on my hardware skills, and I'll know better what to do next
time.

Thanks for your interest, Manuel.

Cheers,
Michael