Skip site navigation (1)Skip section navigation (2)
Date:      Mon, 09 Jun 2003 17:45:39 -0700
From:      Ed Hall <edhall@weirdnoise.com>
To:        Scott Mitchell <scott+freebsd@fishballoon.org>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: Via EPIA Mini-ITX motherboard 
Message-ID:  <200306100045.h5A0jeV0016749@screech.weirdnoise.com>
In-Reply-To: Message from Scott Mitchell <scott%2Bfreebsd@fishballoon.org>  <20030608152726.GA26871@tuatara.fishballoon.org> 

next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
Scott Mitchell <scott+freebsd@fishballoon.org> writes:
> On Thu, Dec 05, 2002 at 10:16:13PM -0000, George Barnett wrote:
> > Hi,
> > 
> > Has anybody got experience running a recent snapshot on one of these?
> > 
> > I'm looking to get the C3 800 model and make a small fileserver for home use
> > and am looking for feedback on hardware compatibility / problems / etc.
> 
> An old thread, but one that was worth keeping.  I'm about to put together
> an EPIA-M based system to be my new router/firewall/mail-web-mp3-server so
> I've been going through the archives to see if I can distill exactly which
> hardware on these boards is and isn't supported.  I think I have a pretty
> good idea now, but I wonder if anyone out there is running 4.8R or a recent
> -STABLE on one of these and can confirm for sure that:

I'm running 4.8-STABLE on an EPIA-ME6000 (the one with a 600MHz fanless CPU).
It's been rock-solid.

> 	- The onboard vr(4) Ethernet is now working reliably at 100Mbps?

Yes.  I'm not exactly using it as a high-bnadwidth internet server, but I
backup a small LAN to this box as well as us it as mail and web server.
Not a speck of trouble.

> 	- The USB ports work, but only in USB 1.1 compatibility mode?

No idea; I've not tried to use USB 1.1 or 2.0.

> 	- The Firewire ports are recognised, and can successfully drive a
> 	  FireWire disk?

Yes, although I only use it to burn CD-R[W]'s and DVD-R[W]'s.  The only
time I've had problems is when I've forgotten to power up the peripheral
before plugging in the firewire cable.  (This has a tendency to freeze up
the system.)  Aside from that, I've burned dozens of disks with nary a
problem.  No idea how it would work with a hard disk or other firewire
device, but my expectation is that the interface chip on the peripheral
is what determines success or failure.  I've not seen anyrhing to suggest
that you'd see any difference between this board and any other compatible
IEEE 1394 host interface.

> Note that I'm most interested in the EPIA *M* boards, the newer ones with
> USB 2.0, Firewire and hardware MPEG decoding (not that I'll be using
> that...), rather than the original EPIA.

This reminds me of one other thing: I'm using still using the vendor-supplied
Linux X11 driver that Matt Dillion hacked up for X.  Xfree86 is now supposed
to support the "Castlerock" video chip, but I've not heard one way or the
other as to whether it works under FreeBSD.

> Many thanks in advance,
> 
> 	Scott

		-Ed Hall
		edhall@weirdnoise.com




Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?200306100045.h5A0jeV0016749>