[gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Duncan <1i5t5.duncan@cox.net>]

Nuitari <nuitari@melchior.nuitari.net> posted
Pine.LNX.4.64.0705020412370.22431@melchior.nuitari.net, excerpted below,
on  Wed, 02 May 2007 04:14:11 -0400:

> Hi,
> 
> I'd like to know if anyone has any experience with either the Tyan
> Thunder n3600M (S2932) or the
> Tyan Thunder n2000M (S3992) motherboards and, of course, gentoo amd64.
> 
> The CPUs would be 2 2xxx opterons.

No experience with those models, but Tyan is generally one of the better 
mobo manufacturers in terms of Linux support.  I'm running a now older 
s2885 (dual Opteron 2xx, currently 242s, soon to be upgraded to 290s -- 
Tyan was very good about upgrading their BIOS to support the dual-cores 
when they came out as well), and have been VERY well pleased with their 
Linux support.

Among other things, they had a pre-configured lm_sensors.conf file for my 
board, and it's certified for several Linux distributions. (These 
appeared in the shipped manual, not in the PDF on the Tyan site, so while 
I knew it worked with Linux from my research, the actual certifications 
were a surprise to me.  I'm guessing that's what the blank page in the 
manual on the site will have in the shipped version, if they've gotten 
them.)  Tyan also has Linux FAQ sheets both in general and for specific 
boards.  Sometimes they have Linux drivers too, but those are usually the 
proprietaryware versions of stuff like RAID drivers, and I'd recommend 
using the native Freedomware Linux drivers instead, as it's generally 
possible to do so.  (I'm running kernel software RAID here, rather than 
their BIOS/software solution, and the kernel solution is more flexible, 
more widely tested, and more portable should the hardware I'm on fail, 
all three.)

One of the the reasons I decided to go with Tyan was that at the time I 
bought the board (back in late 2003), there were only a very few makers 
of dual Opteron boards, four I think listed on pricewatch.com.  The two 
that ended up on my short list were MSI and Tyan.  Where the Tyan site 
used standard (and therefore Linux viewable) PDFs for its manuals and 
some other documentation, and standard zip files to ship its BIOS and 
other utilities, all I could find on the MSI site were *.exe files 
(probably self-extracting zips, but there was no way to tell for sure 
without further investigation and it was enough to get me to drop them 
from consideration).  I emailed MSI too, telling them exactly why I 
dropped them from consideration.  Apparently, it and perhaps the emails 
of others had an effect, as people have reported since that MSI's 
downloads are now standard format as well, no more *.exe.  Anyway, I made 
the right decision, as Gentoo/amd64 MSI users have seen more problems (as 
reported here) than Tyan users, which have seemed pretty happy with their 
purchases, from what has been reported here anyway.

At the time I got mine, as I said in late 2003, Tyan's BIOS flash 
instructions still required MSDOS, but I wrote to them inquiring about 
using FreeDOS (since I didn't have an MSDOS around by that point, having 
dumped everything MS).  They were generally helpful and supportive but 
couldn't verify whether FreeDOS would work for flashing or not.  It did, 
and I've  used it the couple times since when I needed/wanted to do a 
BIOS flash.  I wrote back verifying that FreeDOS did indeed work, and 
suggested that they do what I think it's ASUS does, actually ship 
complete FreeDOS boot images for the purpose of flashing, so folks didn't 
have to create their own FLASH images, possibly screwing up the image by 
loading memory managers and the like.  I've not checked to see if they 
have or not, but it'd be nice to see them at least mention in their Linux 
FAQ that some users have reported that FreeDOS works for flashing, as an 
alternative to using MSDOS.  They could do that without testing and 
without liability.  Anyway, if it's not in their instructions, yes, 
FreeDOS for BIOS flashing seems to work quite well. =8^)

The single problem I did have wasn't specifically Linux related at all.  
Their original BIOS didn't support the memory speed adjustments that I 
had grown accustomed to (and apparently erroneously thought were more or 
less standard in moderm BIOSs), and for some time I was running generic 
memory that really wasn't stable at its rated PC3200 (200 MHz DDR to 
400).  A later BIOS update DID include memory speed limiting, and I 
lowered my memory  the speed a single notch, to 183 MHz (DDR to 366, 
PC3000).  My system was rock-stable after that, as a Linux-system should 
be.  At the slower nominal speed I was in fact able to tweak the 
individual memory latency settings beyond factory settings to bring speed 
back up somewhat.  It just couldn't handle the full 200/400/PC3200 
nominal speeds.  Later I upgraded the memory (now running 8 gig) , and 
the new memory didn't have the issue at all; I was able to reset the BIOS 
to full speed.  It was thus in fact a problem with the generic memory I 
had been running, not of the board, but having the additional memory 
speed tweaking options in the earlier BIOSs would have saved me a LOT of 
grief.  They eventually got them, but I sure could have used them earlier!

As I said, however, that wasn't Linux related at all.  On the Linux 
front, as I've seen the various issues folks have reported here, I've 
been VERY glad I bought Tyan, and in fact I'm likely to stay with them in 
the future, precisely because they DO support Linux, and quite well, at 
that.

One thing you may wish to research a bit is the integrated video.  You 
don't mention your intended usage.  If your purpose is a no-X server, the 
integrated PCI-only ATI es1000 should be fine.  If you will be running X, 
it appears the xorg-native radeon driver supports it, based on the output 
in my xorg log (I've a Radeon 9200 AGP, my board didn't have integrated 
video).  I've no idea what the proprietary ATI fglx driver supports as I 
won't run proprietary drivers.  However, it may be that you'll simply 
disable it and install a PCI-E card if you want 3D accelerated X.  
Anyway, it's likely you are simply running it as a no-X (or even 
headless, serial console redirect) server, in which case the integrated 
video should be fine.

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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