Works fine. My earlier problem was as follows: I have a PS/2 power supply with soft power switch always jumpered on. I would turn on this power supply, the EPIA would get power, but it needs to also still see a closure on the power switch before it will come up.
Soft power is not always your friend.
Now, the question is, what's the right etherboot image for this board? Anybody built one yet?
Thanks to Andrew and Kevin for all their fine work on this board.
$105 now gets you a PIII/800 equivalent. Amazing.
ron
Ron,
Now, the question is, what's the right etherboot image for this board? Anybody built one yet?
I put them at http://www.cwlinux.com/downloads/linuxbios-sdk/images/romimages/epia.rom
It will load kernel from hda1, then etherboot.
-Andrew
On Sat, 21 Dec 2002, Andrew Ip wrote:
Ron,
Now, the question is, what's the right etherboot image for this board? Anybody built one yet?
I put them at http://www.cwlinux.com/downloads/linuxbios-sdk/images/romimages/epia.rom
Thanks.
I have an EPIA board hopefully arriving this morning. Plan to get some more in the new year.
I have strange ideas about building a low cost/low noise cluster at home.
On Sat, 21 Dec 2002, John Hearns wrote:
I have an EPIA board hopefully arriving this morning. Plan to get some more in the new year.
I have strange ideas about building a low cost/low noise cluster at home.
Not for numerics, obviously. Could be useful for playing with distributed filesystems and nonnumerical codes which operate out of memory (like a database running on data loaded and locked in memory).
What are you trying to do?
I have an EPIA board hopefully arriving this morning. Plan to get some more in the new year.
Via is also having EPIA-M which supports ddr and dvd.
-Andrew
On Sat, 21 Dec 2002, Eugen Leitl wrote:
On Sat, 21 Dec 2002, John Hearns wrote:
I have an EPIA board hopefully arriving this morning.
I have strange ideas about building a low cost/low noise cluster at home.
Not for numerics, obviously. Could be useful for playing with distributed filesystems and nonnumerical codes which operate out of memory (like a database running on data loaded and locked in memory).
What are you trying to do?
As you say, playing with things! I'll probably be intially experimenting with Linuxbios and diskless booting. The application I have in mind is a small render farm - I used to work in post-production. But it is just so much fun to be able to think of a home cluster!
By the way, I trudged out to East London today to pick up my board from the courier company. It is an EPAI5000 - I did not realise that DOC was an option on these boards. Mine doesn't have this. A bit frustrating to see the empty space on the board.
Does anyone know how to specify this option, and what the extra cost is?
On Sat, 21 Dec 2002, Andrew Ip wrote:
I have an EPIA board hopefully arriving this morning. Plan to get some more in the new year.
Via is also having EPIA-M which supports ddr and dvd.
Aarghhh.. yet more shiny toys to buy.
Seriously though, I'm trying to put together a very cheap setup. PC-133 RAM is cheaper - I bought 512Mbyte modules for 30 UKP or 48USD each today (and these are 25mm high, which is good.)
Now, the question is, what's the right etherboot image for this board? Anybody built one yet?
I put them at http://www.cwlinux.com/downloads/linuxbios-sdk/images/romimages/epia.rom
Thanks. I have an EPIA board hopefully arriving this morning. Plan to get some more in the new year. I have strange ideas about building a low cost/low noise cluster at home.
BTW, EPIA-M also supports 1394 and USB2. Instead of using built-in ethernet, ether1394 can be used as network connections. I have tried ether1394 couple years ago and the performance is quite disappointed. Have anyone tried that recently?
-Andrew
On Sun, 22 Dec 2002, Andrew Ip wrote:
BTW, EPIA-M also supports 1394 and USB2. Instead of using built-in ethernet, ether1394 can be used as network connections. I have tried ether1394 couple years ago and the performance is quite disappointed. Have anyone tried that recently?
While there is IP over 1394, and Oracle has released their clustering librares over 1394 as open source, it seems that the "400 MBps" and "isochronous" invite to mistake 1394 as low-latency. Alas, it's not. I've posted some real numbers to Beowulf some month ago (which were quite appalling), and Becker meant they were optimistic.
But, it is probably still worthwhile to use 1394 for some applications (like Oracle's clustered filesystems, maybe with built-in databases), along with onboard Ethernet. Do they have to share the PCI bandwidth internally?
On Sun, 22 Dec 2002, Andrew Ip wrote:
BTW, EPIA-M also supports 1394 and USB2. Instead of using built-in ethernet, ether1394 can be used as network connections. I have tried ether1394 couple years ago and the performance is quite disappointed. Have anyone tried that recently?
Yes, the builtin Firewire is interesting. Again, as I'm trying to keep costs down I have found D-link Firewire cards for 12 UKP. I've ordered four of them. One of the other ideas I had was to link a cluster up with Firewire, and see how it performs.
These cards have three ports (haven't arrived yet). Does anyone have good pointers to Firewire/1394 resources please?
On Sun, Dec 22, 2002 at 01:12:34PM +0800, Andrew Ip wrote:
BTW, EPIA-M also supports 1394 and USB2. Instead of using built-in ethernet, ether1394 can be used as network connections. I have tried ether1394 couple years ago and the performance is quite disappointed. Have anyone tried that recently?
Hi Andrew,
Does linuxbios support the EPIA-M? (My EPIA-M just arrived.)
Thanks, -Kevin
Does linuxbios support the EPIA-M? (My EPIA-M just arrived.)
Probably not. EPIA-M uses different North and South bridge.
-Andrew
It is an EPAI5000 - I did not realise that DOC was an option on these boards. Mine doesn't have this. A bit frustrating to see the empty space on the board.
Does anyone know how to specify this option, and what the extra cost is?
I posted a while back w/ my frustrations trying to find out more about the DOC pad on the EPIA5000 and 6000 and C3-800 boards. Through several channels VIA replied back "this feature is discontinued and unsupported".
As soon as my SMT soldering kit comes in i want to try and mount a DOC on the pad, move the jumper, power up and prey that i dont smell smoke.. Aparantly from what i have read elsewhere (i forget exactly where), the early rev of the EPIA bios for these motherboards still contains the code to use the DOC. So if all goes well, i should have more to tell in a few weeks.
If things dont go well, i might have to revert to following the traces on the motherboard. UGH. Anyone got xray vision?
And I agree, such a promising void must be filled! =)
-N
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Andrew Ip -
Eugen Leitl -
John Hearns -
Kevin O'Connor -
Nicholas Mistry -
Ronald G. Minnich