PCI-X Board or Chipset recommendataions

[Jeremy Jackson]

Anything in the PCI-X category with LinuxBIOS potential?

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On 7 Jan 2003, Jeremy Jackson wrote:
> Anything in the PCI-X category with LinuxBIOS potential?

yes, look in the mainboard/supermicro directory, the p4dp series all have 
pci-x slot(s).

ron

[Jeremy Jackson]

How LinuxBIOS friendly are the e7500/Xeons for LinuxBIOS?  Any NDA
issues like AMD MSRs or similar?

Also, I'm looking at the p4dpl-m, which has different bus layout than
either of the p4dp's in cvs, and wondering how difficult to support.

Thanks,

Jeremy

On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 19:00, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
> On 7 Jan 2003, Jeremy Jackson wrote:
> > Anything in the PCI-X category with LinuxBIOS potential?
>
> yes, look in the mainboard/supermicro directory, the p4dp series all have 
> pci-x slot(s).
>
> ron
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[steven james]

Greetings,

I'm having good success with the Intel Clearwater boards w/ dual Xeon.

G'day,
sjames

On 8 Jan 2003, Jeremy Jackson wrote:
> How LinuxBIOS friendly are the e7500/Xeons for LinuxBIOS?  Any NDA
> issues like AMD MSRs or similar?
>
> Also, I'm looking at the p4dpl-m, which has different bus layout than
> either of the p4dp's in cvs, and wondering how difficult to support.
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeremy
>
> On Tue, 2003-01-07 at 19:00, Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
> > On 7 Jan 2003, Jeremy Jackson wrote:
> > > Anything in the PCI-X category with LinuxBIOS potential?
> >
> > yes, look in the mainboard/supermicro directory, the p4dp series all have 
> > pci-x slot(s).
> >
> > ron
> >
> > Linuxbios mailing list
> > [e-mail]
> > http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

[Ronald G. Minnich]

On 8 Jan 2003, Jeremy Jackson wrote:
> How LinuxBIOS friendly are the e7500/Xeons for LinuxBIOS?  Any NDA
> issues like AMD MSRs or similar?

no nda issues whatsoever. Intel has been extremely helpful on this 
chipset. In fact there was a glitch a few months ago and Intel did what 
needed to be done to get it fixed.
> Also, I'm looking at the p4dpl-m, which has different bus layout than
> either of the p4dp's in cvs, and wondering how difficult to support.

send an lspci.

ron

[Richard A. Smith]

On Wed, 8 Jan 2003 13:00:46 -0700 (MST), Ronald G. Minnich wrote:
> On 8 Jan 2003, Jeremy Jackson wrote:
> > How LinuxBIOS friendly are the e7500/Xeons for LinuxBIOS?  Any NDA
> > issues like AMD MSRs or similar?
>
> no nda issues whatsoever. Intel has been extremely helpful on this 
> chipset. In fact there was a glitch a few months ago and Intel did what 
> needed to be done to get it fixed.

Wow. thats quite a different story that what I got.  Intel is so
inconsistent sometimes.  I tried to get the register documentation
for the 440MX (note MX not BX which I already have) and not only do
you have to be under the standard NDA you have to go get a under an
extra double-dog-secret NDA which my Intel rep said "is quite
difficult to get"  So we bailed on the 440MX and are going to respin
our BX version.

Any possibility you could put me in touch with your Intel contact? 
Perhaps he could shed some light on why the 440MX is so shrouded.

Jeremy Jackson  writes:
> How LinuxBIOS friendly are the e7500/Xeons for LinuxBIOS?  Any NDA
> issues like AMD MSRs or similar?

There are no hang ups like what slowed the AMD port, and the AMD port
does not suffer from them any longer.

If you are doing serious work it does pay to go through the NDA
process with intel and get all of their documentation.  While there is
a large amount of overlap between their public and more restricted
documents the information in their private documents is easier to use,
and with an NDA you can earlier access to hardware bug reports.
> Also, I'm looking at the p4dpl-m, which has different bus layout than
> either of the p4dp's in cvs, and wondering how difficult to support.

I'm not familiar with that one.  Assuming it has the PCIH2 it should
just be a matter of tracking down the irq assignments.  Though I can
be surprised.

If you have any non-trivial changes to the bootstrap be careful.  On
the p4dpr I had to navigate my way through 3 pretty serious hardware
bugs.

Eric