From owner-freebsd-hardware@FreeBSD.ORG Sat Oct 4 03:45:27 2008 Return-Path: Delivered-To: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.freebsd.org (mx1.freebsd.org [IPv6:2001:4f8:fff6::34]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 711001065688 for ; Sat, 4 Oct 2008 03:45:27 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from QMTA05.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net (qmta05.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net [76.96.62.48]) by mx1.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 0E03B8FC19 for ; Sat, 4 Oct 2008 03:45:26 +0000 (UTC) (envelope-from jdc@koitsu.dyndns.org) Received: from OMTA13.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net ([76.96.62.52]) by QMTA05.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id NTE11a00417dt5G55TlSNo; Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:45:26 +0000 Received: from koitsu.dyndns.org ([69.181.141.110]) by OMTA13.westchester.pa.mail.comcast.net with comcast id NTlR1a00M2P6wsM3ZTlRPN; Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:45:26 +0000 X-Authority-Analysis: v=1.0 c=1 a=YwmtPnopMWYA:10 a=S0p5oBhICSgA:10 a=QycZ5dHgAAAA:8 a=aI5JEK4DkXG52acvh5oA:9 a=fu_uvA5DM7WE5_cJmbgA:7 a=rK1ADffFeQETSKkFhH6j6KiddHgA:4 a=EoioJ0NPDVgA:10 a=LY0hPdMaydYA:10 Received: by icarus.home.lan (Postfix, from userid 1000) id D5870C9419; Fri, 3 Oct 2008 20:45:24 -0700 (PDT) Date: Fri, 3 Oct 2008 20:45:24 -0700 From: Jeremy Chadwick To: Giuseppe Pagnoni Message-ID: <20081004034524.GA44662@icarus.home.lan> References: <92056ebc0810020932w680c593er585dd865ef8af538@mail.gmail.com> <20081002231848.GA13467@icarus.home.lan> <92056ebc0810030750g7275e60fw147983fb9efa7ab6@mail.gmail.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline In-Reply-To: <92056ebc0810030750g7275e60fw147983fb9efa7ab6@mail.gmail.com> User-Agent: Mutt/1.5.18 (2008-05-17) Cc: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org Subject: Re: LG combo drive and Attansic Technology ethernet card on Asus P5Q Pro X-BeenThere: freebsd-hardware@freebsd.org X-Mailman-Version: 2.1.5 Precedence: list List-Id: General discussion of FreeBSD hardware List-Unsubscribe: , List-Archive: List-Post: List-Help: List-Subscribe: , X-List-Received-Date: Sat, 04 Oct 2008 03:45:27 -0000 On Fri, Oct 03, 2008 at 04:50:36PM +0200, Giuseppe Pagnoni wrote: > thank you very much for your help. I downloaded the 7.1 prerelease, > but unfortunately didn't solve the problem with the CD/DVD. As for > the ethernet card, it's a kind of catch 22: to see if the card is > working I should install the OS, but I cannot from the DVD. Understood. This situation is very frustrating; people often run into on Windows as well ("How do I get the Ethernet driver for my NIC from the web site if Windows doesn't already have support for my NIC?!"). > I cannot even install over FTP, because the institution I am in wants > my MAC address to allow this pc to connect to internet and I cannot > get to the MAC address without installing an OS (at least, I don't > know how... I tried an Ubuntu LiveCD, but it doesn't recognize the > ethernet card, either). Yong-Hyeon covered this; I was incorrect in assuming the Attansic L1E was just a PCI Express version of the L1. They are apparently different chips and are initialised differently. Yong-Hyeon doesn't have access to any hardware which uses the L1E, so writing a driver for it is going to be a bit difficult. :-( If needed, I can ship him an Asus P5Q SE board + CPU/RAM for testing and development (I have the CPU/RAM, but I would need to purchase the board). As far as the ATA/IDE stuff goes, that's going to be more difficult. I'm really surprised FreeBSD doesn't work with it. I might have to experiment with why that is on my own P5Q SE box; this would require Soren Schmidt (ata(4) author)'s involvement. > Since I have other problems with this machine, I am thinking about > returning it. I wonder whether you could point me to some sure > FreeBSD compatible hardware which is in the ballpark of this machine > in terms of configuration. I tried to look in the Release Hardware > note, but it's a bit difficult for me to match all the hardware codes > to their physical counterparts! This is what I have currently: My recommendation would be to keep the motherboard and purchase two pieces of hardware: 1) Intel Pro/1000 PT NIC (PCI Express) -- about US$35-45, 2) Any SATA-based Pioneer DVD drive -- about US$25-30. If you were in the States I'd send you the NIC free of cost, as my way of saying "I'm sorry for all the issues you're having with FreeBSD's hardware support". But I see you're in Italy. :-) If you want to go with another NIC, that's fine too -- I would recommend staying away from Realtek NICs. If you can find an older Intel Pro/100 NIC somewhere, that might be cheaper; those use the fxp(4) driver. This should allow you to get online reliably, and allow you to perform the FreeBSD installation using a SATA-based DVD drive hooked to the ICH controller, rather than the Marvell ATA/IDE controller. When FreeBSD gets support for the Attansic L1E chip, switching over to it would be painless. :-) > RAM: 4 GB, 800 Mhz (by the way, I never understood if the > processor can address or not 4GB... should I just get 3GB?) The processor and system *most definitely* can address more than 4GB. It just depends on how the OS supports it. FreeBSD has two flavours: i386 (32-bit) and amd64 (64-bit). i386 can address up to 4GB of RAM natively (see below), but you will probably only get ~3GB of that usable. The reason is limited memory address space; PCI Express, ACPI, and many other features (I can provide you a list or reference material if you want to see) cause some of the memory addressing space to be taken up. If you install more than 4GB on i386, you will have to use what's known as PAE mode. It's an Intel addressing extension to support >4GB of RAM on i386. There are many problems with it though; there's a performance hit, and there are known issues with drivers and FreeBSD features which you cannot use in PAE mode. When it comes to i386, I recommend people stick with 2 or 3GB, and avoid PAE mode at all costs. amd64 can address up to 256TB of RAM. Don't let the "amd64" term make you think it's intended for AMD processors; it works fine on both Intel and AMD processors. If you plan on installing 4GB or more memory in a system, I recommend considering amd64. However, there's one thing I remember reading somewhere. Someone will have to correct me if I'm wrong -- if you plan on using X Windows on an am64 system, be aware that nVidia does not provide an amd64-compatible video driver for FreeBSD. Hope this helps in your decisions. -- | Jeremy Chadwick jdc at parodius.com | | Parodius Networking http://www.parodius.com/ | | UNIX Systems Administrator Mountain View, CA, USA | | Making life hard for others since 1977. PGP: 4BD6C0CB |