Date: Mon, 8 Oct 2001 23:16:42 -0500 From: Bob Willcox <bob@immure.com> To: Peter Wemm <peter@wemm.org> Cc: Luuk van Dijk <lvd@mndmttr.nl>, freebsd-smp@FreeBSD.ORG Subject: Re: Advice on Tyan dual athlon board wanted Message-ID: <20011008231642.A77988@luke.immure.com> In-Reply-To: <20011009005502.A148F380F@overcee.netplex.com.au>; from peter@wemm.org on Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 05:55:02PM -0700 References: <20011008144158.B55077@luke.immure.com> <20011009005502.A148F380F@overcee.netplex.com.au>
next in thread | previous in thread | raw e-mail | index | archive | help
On Mon, Oct 08, 2001 at 05:55:02PM -0700, Peter Wemm wrote:
> Bob Willcox wrote:
> > On Thu, Oct 04, 2001 at 08:49:52PM +0200, Luuk van Dijk wrote:
> > > I have the opportunity to buy a Tyan Tiger dual athlon motherboard
> > > for about 400 euro, and could use some advice.
> > >
> > > - does FreeBSD run on this? (I've seen messages confirming that
> > > FreeBSD
> > > runs on its elder brother, the ThunderK7)
> >
> > I am running FreeBSD 4-stable on one with two 1.2 GHz MP (Palomino)
> > Athlons and 1GB of memory.
>
> Likewise, both under 4.x and 5.x.
>
> > >
> > > - are there things to watch out for?
> >
> > Nothing specific that I can think of, off-hand. Mine came up quite
> > easily. I did originally have a hardware problem trying to run with two
> > 512MB Reg ECC DIMMs. The MB would not boot (never got past BIOS stuff to
> > try FreeBSD). I wound up switching to four 256MB Reg ECC DIMMs and all
> > was well (except that I won't be able to add more memory:-().
>
> Also, be sure to update to the latest bios from tyan. v2.06 is the
> absolute earliest you should use, and preferably v2.07a.
Hmm, for the S2460 MB the latest that I could find was v1.02. Are you
certain that we are talking about the same board (mine's the Tiger
S2460, not the Thunder S2462).
>
> > Note that if you turn on ECC in the BIOS settings that the boot time
> > increases noticably. There will be significant pause (almost a minute in
> > my case) before the first display and POST beep occurs...so give it some
> > time. :-)
>
> I *strongly* recommend that you change it back on again and just put up
> with the delay. Set it to 'ECC Scrub" and '#SERR on multiple bit errors'.
> If you dont to this, then you can end up chasing your tail wondering why
> the machine crashed due to something silly that "cannot happen" that was
> really an undetected/unreported memory error.
I have left mine on "ECC Scrub". I don't mind the delay. :-)
It's just a little disconcerting when trying to get the system up and
nothing happens for about a minute after applying power. It's easy to
think that something's wrong. That's why I warned Luuk.
>
> If you dont turn it on, then the ECC feature of the ram is 100% useless.
> And on a new memory technology (DDR), you should use all the seatbelts that
> are available.
Agreed. Though I do have other systems running PC2100 DDR memory that
don't have ECC memory, as it wasn't an option at the time (this one
that I'm typing, for example, has been running for over 6 months w/o
problems).
Bob
>
> Cheers,
> -Peter
> --
> Peter Wemm - peter@FreeBSD.org; peter@yahoo-inc.com; peter@netplex.com.au
> "All of this is for nothing if we don't go to the stars" - JMS/B5
--
Bob Willcox Putt's Law:
bob@vieo.com Technology is dominated by two types of people:
Austin, TX Those who understand what they do not manage.
Those who manage what they do not understand.
To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org
with "unsubscribe freebsd-smp" in the body of the message
Want to link to this message? Use this URL: <https://mail-archive.FreeBSD.org/cgi/mid.cgi?20011008231642.A77988>