Does anyone know of a working AMD motherboard?

 

I found one that might work.

 

The Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G.  It has a Marvel Gigabit port (it is a Marvell 88E1116, is that the Yukon?), and says it will boot from a USB Zip (I am assuming that is USB key).  It has built in video, but it does not say what kind of SATA controller it has, but that is not a big deal, as I can just add the PCI SATA card. 

 

It is going for $67 at Newegg:  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813128009

 

Any thoughts? 

 

Thanks. - Jeff

Looking at the manual, SATA support is via nForce 430 chipset.  Looking on the NVIDIA linux page, it would appear that the 'sata_nv' driver already built into unRAID Server should work.

 

In addition I downloaded the code from the above NVIDIA link and the base source file in the current unRAID Server release is actually quite a bit newer than file in the download.

 

If you decide to give it a go, please post back with results, since we have been concentrating on Intel-based m/b's and done very little testing with AMD-base m/b's.

Thanks.  So is that the right gigabit network port that works with unRaid?

Well, I got the board, and it boots on the USB drive, but it does not look like the SATA driver works, nor does the network card.  If you want to help get it working so that there is an AMD alternative, I would be happy to do so.  Otherwise I will need to return this board and try something else.  - Jeff

Yes, looking into it now.  Marvell posted a new driver yesterday - I need to see if it has that chip support.  Will not be able to get to it until later this afternoon...  Please send me an email so I can send you a driver if need be.

[email protected]

I sent an email.  Thanks.

Hey Jknight,

 

Any news on this testing!!! Very interested in the outcome..

 

Thanks,

 

Dave in Canada

Yes.  I just tried a new USB drive, and that has fixed lots of issues.  What is funny is that it booted off my original one and took me to the command prompt and I could log in.  But it would not map the usb drive, so things were not loading properly.  Now it looks like the network and drives are loaded, though it is not taking the IP address I give it (I am not using DHCP).  But it is looking very promising and I will report back when I get more news.

Well, I had success.  Tom at UnRaid added a new driver that got the network port working, and it is currently formating the system.  So it looks like unRaid will work on AMD.  The board I got looks good, but I am not sure it has Wake on Lan as I did not see it in the bios, but I will have to test that.  But the nForce SATA drivers work, as well as the Marvell 88E1116 network card.  There were quite a few board with that network card and the nForce SATA when I browsed for a motherboard at Newegg, so other AMD boards should work as well.

 

Thanks for your help Tom.

Hey jknight,

 

Can you list your components please. Cpu, Ram etc...and bios setting when you get some time.

 

Regards,

 

Dave in Canada

Here is what I have:

 

Gigabyte GA-M51GM-S2G

AMD 3500+ AM2 chip (though any will work)

512MB Ram.  Not sure the memory brand.  I just pulled them from a Dell PC.

SanDisk Cruzer Micro U3 USB memory stick.  I removed the U3 software.  It is on sale for 9.99 after rebate at Circuit City right now.

The only bios setting I had to make was the First Boot device, I selected USB-Zip and then it all worked.

I also needed the 3.1 Beta drivers which Tom added the needed network drivers.

 

Now I want to see if Cool 'n Quiet will work, and if the drivers are not already in there, if I can just load them as descibed in External Packages in the Documentation section.  I also need to test it going to sleep (hopefully is S3 mode) and waking up on Lan request.  But I don't know if it will do that.

jknight,

 

AMD's Cool and Quiet may only operate under Windows.

 

I have it installed on my AMD Athlon 64 3700 powered HTPC running Windows XP Pro and it installed as an application would.

 

Just a thought.

 

Regards,

TCIII

There are drivers for Cool and Quiet at AMD's site: http://www.amd.com/us-en/Processors/TechnicalResources/0,,30_182_871_9706,00.html but it says it is for 2.6, so it  may not work right now in the current 2.4 kernel that unRaid uses.

I tried it on an ECS nForce4 A939 board I have, and it seems to work on that as well.  Not my favorite name brand, but it can be had a Frys for like $40.  No built in video though.

Hi,

 

I am very interested in using this software to build a storage server utilizing the extra AMD chip I have lying around. Could anybody kindly provide some input on whether the following two boards would work with unRaid?

 

ASUS A8N-VM  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131570

 

Asus A8n-SLI  http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131517

 

I gather the A8n-VM might work given jknight's postings above...I searched on that criteria.

 

Any help would be appreciated.

 

-James

It looks like the ASUS A8N-VM will work as it has the right lan chip and uses nVidia chipset.  Most new board look like they will boot from a USB memory stick. 

Thanks JK...that's what I think as well going off the search criteria you had listed previously in this thread. Unfortunately...I found this post...

 

http://lime-technology.com/forum/index.php?topic=100.msg595#msg595

 

Not sure if this was a specific error on the users part    or more generally the board is unusable...

 

-james

fwiw...this board works...

 

-needed to change USB speed to Fast mode from High-Speed mode in bios.

 

My problem now seems to be the speed at which the parity drive is getting synched...~1,700kbs...telling me >30 hours for a 200gb drive.

 

I've played around with the jumper settings on the drive. (it is connected as Pri Master, while a 40gb drive is connected as Pri Slave) but so far no joy.

 

If anybody has any suggestions please feel free to post them 

 

In the meantime I'll putz around with this for the rest of the day...

 

-james

sainttjames,

 

Your unRaid drives should be set up as "cable select" not as "master" or "slave".

 

Just a thought.

 

Regards,

TCIII

Thanks TCIII...i *thought* i had tried that initially...but (knowing how my brain works) I'll set them up that way now. 

 

 

addendum: I changed the jumpers to CS, and aside from unRaid complaining that the largest drive must be in the '1st position' (which i changed)...I am back to square one...~1,700kbs

 

I notice when unRAID is booting up I see it attempting to start SAMBA a message pops up as follows:

 

/proc/scsi/scsi extensions not found

 

 

would this have any bearing on my predicament?

 

reaching for straws,

James

well a full day of trying multiple configurations...and nothing worked.

 

of note: removing one drive allowed the parity check to approach the 4,500-5,000kbs range

tried 4 different cables...3 were the same...one didn't work (binned it)

tried multiple jumper settings on the hard drives...nothing...

 

fwiw...this is UnRaid 3.1b2

 

will give this a go over the next couple of days...then who knows    ...would really like for it to work.

 

-james

a couple of screenshots...the drives are in UDMA5 mode...so that rules out this being a PIO issue I suppose...

 

/dev/hda:

 

Model=ST3200822A, FwRev=3.01, SerialNo=3LJ08R1C

Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec Fixed DTR>10Mbs RotSpdTol>.5% }

RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=0, SectSize=0, ECCbytes=4

BuffType=unknown, BuffSize=8192kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16

CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=268435455

IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:240,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}

PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4

DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2

UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5

AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled

Drive conforms to: ATA/ATAPI-6 T13 1410D revision 2:

 

* signifies the current active mode

 

root@Tower:~# hdparm -i /dev/hdb

 

/dev/hdb:

 

Model=WDC WD400BB-00AUA1, FwRev=18.20D18, SerialNo=WD-WMA6R4443213

Config={ HardSect NotMFM HdSw>15uSec SpinMotCtl Fixed DTR>5Mbs FmtGapReq }

RawCHS=16383/16/63, TrkSize=57600, SectSize=600, ECCbytes=40

BuffType=DualPortCache, BuffSize=2048kB, MaxMultSect=16, MultSect=16

CurCHS=16383/16/63, CurSects=16514064, LBA=yes, LBAsects=78165360

IORDY=on/off, tPIO={min:120,w/IORDY:120}, tDMA={min:120,rec:120}

PIO modes:  pio0 pio1 pio2 pio3 pio4

DMA modes:  mdma0 mdma1 mdma2

UDMA modes: udma0 udma1 udma2 udma3 udma4 *udma5

AdvancedPM=no WriteCache=enabled

Drive conforms to: device does not report version:

 

* signifies the current active mode

more info for someone who might know something 

 

hda

 

name                    value            min            max            mod

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

acoustic                        0                0              254            rw

address                        1                0              2              rw

bios_cyl                  24321                0              65535          rw

bios_head                  255                0              255            rw

bios_sect                    63                0              63              rw

breada_readahead          8                0              255            rw

bswap                          0                0              1              r

current_speed                0              0              70              rw

failures                          0              0              65535          rw

file_readahead            124              0              16384          rw

init_speed                      0              0              70              rw

io_32bit                        0              0              3              rw

keepsettings                  0              0              1              rw

lun                                0              0              7              rw

max_failures                    1              0              65535          rw

max_kb_per_request    128                1              255            rw

multcount                    16              0              16              rw

nice1                              1              0              1              rw

nowerr                          0              0              1              rw

number                          0              0              3              rw

pio_mode                write-only          0              255            w

slow                              0              0              1              rw

unmaskirq                        0              0              1              rw

using_dma                      0              0              1              rw

wcache                          0              0              1              rw

Do you have any SATA drives to try?  Maybe the IDE drivers in unRaid are not very good for that board.

JK,

 

I have some in another pc...but they got data on them 

 

I'll go out and buy a SATA drive tomorrow...ultimately it will get used...I just wish it would get used in this...as it is starting to look like it's not going to happen...

 

Hey! Thanks for stopping by - btw...

 

-james