Recommended dual Athlon motherboards

[Jeremy Jackson]

Are there any recommended motherboards that work might work with a bit
of effort?  I'm thinking 760MPX, are there other chipsets?

Thanks,

Jeremy

[Steven James]

Greetings,

760MPX is promising. I have found that the Tyan/Guiness LinuxBIOS can nearly do
it. There will need to be some mods to the initialization though. It gets all
the way through LinuxBIOS only right after booting from the OEM BIOS.

I haven't seen anything else for dual Athlon.
G'day,
sjames

Quoting Jeremy Jackson :
> Are there any recommended motherboards that work might work with a bit
> of effort?  I'm thinking 760MPX, are there other chipsets?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Jeremy
>
> Linuxbios mailing list
> [e-mail]
> http://www.clustermatic.org/mailman/listinfo/linuxbios

----------------------------steven james, director of research, linux labs

LinuxBIOS Cluster Solutions                   230 peachtree st nw ste 2705

High-Speed Colocation, Hosting,                        atlanta.ga.us 30303

Linux Hardware, Development & Support             http://www.linuxlabs.com

* Visit us at SuperComputing 2002, Booth 1441 *   office/fax [phone]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------

[Jeremy Jackson]

Hi,

Thanks for the info.  I've been looking at the Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466). 
What is Guiness referring to?

Might a comparison of PCI config registers or MSRs after OEM BIOS init
and cold boot reveal something?  Power management actually helps, since
all registers must be read/write (as opposed to write only - like VGA
Pallette snoop) so PM can save context on suspend.  Does LinuxBIOS go
far enough to get the serial port working?

I'm going to buy a board, is there any chance it can be done without an
ICE?

Regards,

Jeremy

On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 18:10, Steven James wrote:
> Greetings,
>
> 760MPX is promising. I have found that the Tyan/Guiness LinuxBIOS can nearly do
> it. There will need to be some mods to the initialization though. It gets all
> the way through LinuxBIOS only right after booting from the OEM BIOS.
>
> I haven't seen anything else for dual Athlon.
> G'day,
> sjames
>
> Quoting Jeremy Jackson :
> > Are there any recommended motherboards that work might work with a bit
> > of effort?  I'm thinking 760MPX, are there other chipsets?
> >
> > Thanks,
> >
> > Jeremy

Jeremy Jackson  writes:
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for the info.  I've been looking at the Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466). 
> What is Guiness referring to?

It was a code name of the Tyan S2462.
> Might a comparison of PCI config registers or MSRs after OEM BIOS init
> and cold boot reveal something?  Power management actually helps, since
> all registers must be read/write (as opposed to write only - like VGA
> Pallette snoop) so PM can save context on suspend.  Does LinuxBIOS go
> far enough to get the serial port working?

I suspect more than anything the warm reboot case is more luck than
anything else.  I remember there are some checks in the code that will
skip a practically all of the early setup in assembly if the machine
is already operational.
> I'm going to buy a board, is there any chance it can be done without an
> ICE?

I haven't used one yet...

And we currently have a mostly working port, though I don't
know where we are on the release cycle for that.
> From what I have seen of it the differences are almost totally due to the

different southbridge.  The AMD2466 vs AMD2468.

Eric

[Steven James]

Greetings,

Guiness is AKA TigerMP. I expect that the comparisons will be helpful, I just
haven't had the time to finish that yet. The datasheets are available from AMD
which is also a help. The Northbridge is the same for 760 and 760MPX chipset.

Serial comes up only on the first boot of LinuxBIOS (after OEM BIOS has done
some setup). I don't expect too much trouble fixing that. The rest will be
reletivly easy after that.

An ICE should not be required (which is good since I don't have one), but extra
flash chips will be essential.

G'day,
sjames

Quoting Jeremy Jackson :
> Hi,
>
> Thanks for the info.  I've been looking at the Tyan Tiger MPX (S2466). 
> What is Guiness referring to?
>
> Might a comparison of PCI config registers or MSRs after OEM BIOS init
> and cold boot reveal something?  Power management actually helps, since
> all registers must be read/write (as opposed to write only - like VGA
> Pallette snoop) so PM can save context on suspend.  Does LinuxBIOS go
> far enough to get the serial port working?
>
> I'm going to buy a board, is there any chance it can be done without an
> ICE?
>
> Regards,
>
> Jeremy
>
> On Sat, 2003-01-04 at 18:10, Steven James wrote:
> > Greetings,
> >
> > 760MPX is promising. I have found that the Tyan/Guiness LinuxBIOS can
>
> nearly do
> > it. There will need to be some mods to the initialization though. It
>
> gets all
> > the way through LinuxBIOS only right after booting from the OEM BIOS.
> >
> > I haven't seen anything else for dual Athlon.
> > G'day,
> > sjames
> >
> > Quoting Jeremy Jackson :
> > > Are there any recommended motherboards that work might work with a
>
> bit
> > > of effort?  I'm thinking 760MPX, are there other chipsets?
> > >
> > > Thanks,
> > >
> > > Jeremy

----------------------------steven james, director of research, linux labs

LinuxBIOS Cluster Solutions                   230 peachtree st nw ste 2705

High-Speed Colocation, Hosting,                        atlanta.ga.us 30303

Linux Hardware, Development & Support             http://www.linuxlabs.com

* Visit us at SuperComputing 2002, Booth 1441 *   office/fax [phone]

--------------------------------------------------------------------------