[gentoo-amd64] Tyan Motherboards

[gentoo-amd64] Tyan Motherboards

[Nuitari]

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.


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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Duncan]

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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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Jeffrey Gardner]

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Hash: SHA1

Duncan wrote:
> 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.

Not those specific models, but I've had an S2885 for a long time with no
trouble. Well, I had a PSU go out and it took the mobo and one of the
CPU's with it, but Tyan made good on their warranty. Didn't cost me a dime.
Tyan is very highly recommended in my book.


- --
Jeffrey Gardner
Gentoo Developer
Public PGP Key ID: 4A5D8F23
hkp://pgpkeys.mit.edu
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Duncan]

Jeffrey Gardner <je_fro@gentoo.org> posted 46393F98.1060408@gentoo.org,
excerpted below, on  Wed, 02 May 2007 20:49:12 -0500:

> Not those specific models, but I've had an S2885 for a long time with no
> trouble. Well, I had a PSU go out and it took the mobo and one of the
> CPU's with it, but Tyan made good on their warranty. Didn't cost me a
> dime. Tyan is very highly recommended in my book.

Ouch but glad they took care of it.  I had a PSU go out recently, but it 
was designed to "fail safe" and that it did.  Didn't fry a thing anywhere 
except in the PSU itself, but there, in addition to blowing the fuse, it 
blew the fronts clean-off a couple switching power transisters.  The PSU 
was a Vantec, BTW.  I seriously respect it for not killing anything but 
itself, when it failed that catastrophically inside.

As you no doubt noted, mine board is an s2885 too, so now I know someone 
else with one. =8^)

-- 
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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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[dave crane]

I've run _every_ iteration of the "Thunder" Athlon MP,  later Opteron
boards going all the way back to the very first MP board, and dual P3's
before that.

ALL the tyan AMD boards I've /ever/ bought (at least 50) are still in
heavy use, all running Gentoo.

My newest desktop is the n6650W, and again no issues.

Specific to you, I just installed a S3992 with 32g (16x2g) ram and 12
SAS Drives on a PCI-X card as a postgres machine no problem.

The Athlon MP boards are slated for replacement only because they
require ATX-GES power supplies and they aren't really available anymore,
plus in comparison they use alot of juice.

As Duncan mentioned many "tweaks" are not available with these boards.
They are meant to be servers, and as such stability is the rule.

Many have run multiple sets of CPU's, and the worst failure has been of
the CMOS batteries.  I've replaced it in the early MP boards at least
5-6 times each.

dave
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Nuitari]

> 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.)

I do run it on all of my other machines. Unfortunately the specific 
machine that is being upgraded has a 3ware hardware raid controller which 
got in there much more on a string of bad luck then by design.

> 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.

Thanks for 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.

I'm going to be adding an AMI Megarac g2 remote access card to the server 
and I'll be hoping that there won't be any compatibility issues as with 
the current MSI motherboard.

The 2 major motives for the upgrade is the increasing use of 
virtualization on that server, and the Megarac g2 RAC.

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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Duncan]

Nuitari <nuitari@melchior.nuitari.net> posted
Pine.LNX.4.64.0705022238430.22431@melchior.nuitari.net, excerpted below,
on  Wed, 02 May 2007 22:45:40 -0400:

> The 2 major motives for the upgrade is the increasing use of
> virtualization on that server, and the Megarac g2 RAC.

<drool>  Hardware virtualization is something the 3-digit Opterons don't 
have, unfortunately, and it'll (hopefully) be several more years before I 
upgrade mobo again, tho as I said I'm upgrading the CPUs to dual-core 
pretty quickly now.

I expect and predict that as hardware virtualization gets more common, 
the software/chroot level of protection now more or less routine for 
publicly exposed servers, especially as run on otherwise personal 
machines, will graduate to hardware virtualized servers, the idea being 
to make it even /more/ difficult for a compromised process to take over 
the entire host.  That hardware virtualized separation has been the case 
on "big iron" for some time, and it's nice seeing it finally come down to 
the consumer level.  However, it's a party I won't be joining for at 
least a few more years, if my hardware holds out, anyway.

-- 
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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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Nuitari]

> <drool>  Hardware virtualization is something the 3-digit Opterons don't
> have, unfortunately, and it'll (hopefully) be several more years before I
> upgrade mobo again, tho as I said I'm upgrading the CPUs to dual-core
> pretty quickly now.
>
> I expect and predict that as hardware virtualization gets more common,
> the software/chroot level of protection now more or less routine for
> publicly exposed servers, especially as run on otherwise personal
> machines, will graduate to hardware virtualized servers, the idea being
> to make it even /more/ difficult for a compromised process to take over
> the entire host.  That hardware virtualized separation has been the case
> on "big iron" for some time, and it's nice seeing it finally come down to
> the consumer level.  However, it's a party I won't be joining for at
> least a few more years, if my hardware holds out, anyway.

Unfortunately it looks like that I'll have to keep using vmware on it for 
a while as I won't have the new hardware locally long enough to really 
test QEMU / KVM.
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Peter Humphrey]

On Thursday 03 May 2007 01:47:12 Duncan wrote:

> 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.

You may be referring to me here, so I'll just close the story by saying that 
AFAIR I had no real problems with dual Opteron 246s on my MSI K8T Master2 
FAR board (my memory is getting to be notorious, though :-) . The BIOS 
lacked some settings in memory timing etc, but I would probably have left 
them alone anyway.

Eventually, after three years of 24hr BOINC number-crunching, it seemed to 
develop some memory timing problem of its own - at least, it wouldn't boot 
with its usual 4 GB, not even back at the system builder's. So I got them 
to put in a new board, which is a Supermicro H8DCE. That was last 
Christmas. My only complaint with this board is its poor documentation of 
BIOS settings. The manual is not much more than the superficial 
plug-this-in-here-and-that-in-there variety. I've had to do quite a bit of 
experimenting to find what various things do, and I'm still not confident 
that I've found the best arrangement.

Anyway, it seems to be working ok.

-- 
Rgds
Peter Humphrey
Linux Counter 5290, Aug 93
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Tyan Motherboards

[Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.]

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On Wednesday 02 May 2007 03:14:11 Nuitari wrote:
> 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.

Since others have done so, I'll throw in my vote of confidence for Tyan.  I've 
not used those specific motherboard models, but Tyan has above-average Linux 
support and the product I bought from them has performed as advertised or 
better.  The integrated peripherals (isn't that an oxymoron?) are 
well-supported in linux.

I am happily running Gentoo amd64 on the system and have been since the middle 
of 2005, with few complaints.  [That said, there are disadvantage to running 
a 64-bit userland, still.]

My next motherboard purchase will almost certainly be Tyan; I'll never go back 
to 32-bit land.

> The CPUs would be 2 2xxx opterons.

I haven't had any experience with these processors.

-- 
Boyd Stephen Smith Jr.                     ,= ,-_-. =. 
bss03@volumehost.net                      ((_/)o o(\_))
ICQ: 514984 YM/AIM: DaTwinkDaddy           `-'(. .)`-' 
http://iguanasuicide.org/                      \_/     

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Tyan Motherboards

[Joshua Hoblitt]

[-- Attachment #1: Type: text/plain, Size: 3035 bytes --]

Hi,

Not with those specific boards but I have 16 x S2927s which are very
similar to the S2932.

I'm currently having major support issues with Tyan while attempting to
integrate the M3292 IPMI cards.  Basically Tyan claimed that this
combination would work on the motherboard's spec. sheet but hadn't even
posted the necessary firmware for the M3292 to make this work.  I've had
reports from various different techs at Tyan that this combination
should work, that the motherboard may need to be recalled, or that it's
a problem with the M3292 for S2927 firmware.  This is after repeatedly
flashing the BIOS, the NVidia MCPs firmware, and the M3292s firmware
multiple times.  Now we're stuck on them claim it's working in the lab
but my card will only respond via the OpemIPMI interface.  Over the lan
I can see it sending out gratuitous arp messages but it won't respond to
arp resolution and it ignores all traffic if I publish an arp entry for
the card.  Supposedly the tech that "really knows" this IPMI card has
been on vacation since last Monday so I'm stuck.

I'm also in the middle of an "interesting" experience for trying to
cross-ship a motherboard board with a dead on-board NIC.  Tech support
said to contact the RMA department, RMA department said I had to contact
tech support to arrange for across-ship, tech support said they won't do
a cross-ship without an RMA # from the RMA department.  After all this
tech support said that it was late in the day or someone would call me
the next day to arrange the cross-ship.  That was a week ago.  I e-mail
the RMA department again and got a phone call from someone in the RMA
department asking what was going on and wonder why I have an RMA # for
standard return when I'm asking for a cross-ship.  Of course, as you
already know, only tech support can arrange for a cross-shipment so this
person decided to get in touch with them on my behalf and call me back.
It's now 5pm US/Hawaii time and I have not been called back.

Don't get me started about how useless it has become to attempt to
e-mail their tech support.  If you want a response you have to call them
 - at least their still responsive in answering the phone.

In the past Tyan has had _wonderful_ support and I have literally dozens
of their motherboards in production systems.  I even have a Tyan board
in my home system.  However, after this most recent experience I most
likely going to be investigating SuperMicro boards now they they support
Opterons.

Good luck,

-J

Ps. The S2882 is a dated but good board if you can live without PCI-E.
The S2982 seem to have wacky issues with the broadcom NIC ROMs.

--
On Wed, May 02, 2007 at 04:14:11AM -0400, Nuitari wrote:
> 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.
> 
> 
> -- 
> gentoo-amd64@gentoo.org mailing list
> 

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Tyan Motherboards

[Bob Sanders]

Joshua Hoblitt, mused, then expounded:
>
> In the past Tyan has had _wonderful_ support and I have literally dozens
> of their motherboards in production systems.  I even have a Tyan board
> in my home system.  However, after this most recent experience I most
> likely going to be investigating SuperMicro boards now they they support
> Opterons.
> 

Don't expect Supermicro's tech support to be better.  In many cases the
questions have to be fed to the local techs, asked by them to the mothership
in Taiwan and then replied back to.

And while their BMC works well with ipmi 1.8.9 or web browser, they sometimes
do upgrades in the middle of board runs that eliminates some usefulness - like
the web browser.  Still, they're a lot better than many other vendors out
there.  Though Tyan is still my preferred vendor.

On the original subject - my Tyan S2885 is still running strong as my office
workstation, since 2006.  More than I can say for the ECS ATI R690 chipset 
I had to upgrade to at home due to a failing system - way too easy to lock it up.

Bob
-  
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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Tyan Motherboards

[Joshua Hoblitt]

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On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 07:13:20AM -0700, Bob Sanders wrote:
> On the original subject - my Tyan S2885 is still running strong as my office
> workstation, since 2006.  More than I can say for the ECS ATI R690 chipset 
> I had to upgrade to at home due to a failing system - way too easy to lock it up.

The S288x series of boards are/were great.  Probably because all of the
hyper-transport connected components are from the same vendor (AMD).  I'd
still consider this series if you can live without PCI-e.  Unfortunately
there are all sort of compatibility problems between PCI-X cards and
chipsets.  Compatibility issues are what prompted my move to boards with
an NVidia PCI-e implementation.

-J

--

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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Tyan Motherboards

[Joshua Hoblitt]

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The S288x series also only use socket 940 which is rapidly fading from
the market.

-J

--
On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 12:14:52PM -1000, Joshua Hoblitt wrote:
> On Thu, May 03, 2007 at 07:13:20AM -0700, Bob Sanders wrote:
> > On the original subject - my Tyan S2885 is still running strong as my office
> > workstation, since 2006.  More than I can say for the ECS ATI R690 chipset 
> > I had to upgrade to at home due to a failing system - way too easy to lock it up.
> 
> The S288x series of boards are/were great.  Probably because all of the
> hyper-transport connected components are from the same vendor (AMD).  I'd
> still consider this series if you can live without PCI-e.  Unfortunately
> there are all sort of compatibility problems between PCI-X cards and
> chipsets.  Compatibility issues are what prompted my move to boards with
> an NVidia PCI-e implementation.
> 
> -J
> 
> --



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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Duncan]

Joshua Hoblitt <jhoblitt@ifa.hawaii.edu> posted
20070503221801.GC28620@ifa.hawaii.edu, excerpted below, on  Thu, 03 May
2007 12:18:01 -1000:

> The S288x series also only use socket 940 which is rapidly fading from
> the market.

Well, it should have /some/ time yet, as AMD recently introduced the x90 
series, at 2.8 GHz.  That's what I expect I'll be upgrading to. Prices at 
pricewatch.com are running just over $700 for the 290, so just over $1400 
for the pair.  The biggest thing I'll miss is the support for hardware 
virtualization in the 4-digit Opterons, but oh, well...  

PCI-E would be nice too, but the paucity of good libreware driver 
supported PCI-E graphics hardware at present means there's little to miss 
there, and the multiple bus PCI/PCI-X on my current s2885 gives me 
sufficient room for data expansion there, if necessary, so there's little 
to miss there as well.  Thus, it's the missing hardware virtualization 
support in the 290s that'll be the big downer for me.

-- 
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and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Nuitari]

> 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.

I've finally received a new S3992 based server yesterday.
I've been hit by 4 issues and here they are:

1.
The one thing that was clearly lacking from Tyan and ThermalTake was that 
there are actually 2 different Heatsink sizes on the market for Socket F 
systems. Some heatsinks at 3.5" and others at 4.1".

ThermalTake's Socket F heatsinks use 4.1", while the Tyan board uses 3.5".

In the end I got 2 Socket 940 heatsinks using the special brackets from 
Tyan.

After rereading the specifications, the only line that was a clue to is 
was "Uses the standard 3 1/2"/89mm socket connector" which is really not 
telling much.

2.
The second issue was that when I disable the "Hide XIOAPIC PCI functions" 
the linux kernel will only see 1 core of 1 cpu. My only clue to that being 
the problem was a post to the Linux Kernel List from someone that had the 
same problem but mentionned he couldn't remember what setting he used.

3.
If the fan fail led is enabled, then not connected fan are marked as 
failed and there is no way to tell it to ignore them. The bios will also 
give a message like "FAN5 RPM doesn't detected".


4:
lm_sensors require a special program to "switch" which set of fan and cpu 
is being monitored. I really wish that there is a way to avoid that. I 
like being able to parse the output of lm_sensors to hobbit (aka big 
brother) for monitoring purposes.
-- 
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[gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Duncan]

Nuitari <nuitari@melchior.nuitari.net> posted
Pine.LNX.4.64.0706072350030.4516@melchior.nuitari.net, excerpted below, on
 Fri, 08 Jun 2007 00:08:03 -0400:

> 1.
> The one thing that was clearly lacking from Tyan and ThermalTake was
> that there are actually 2 different Heatsink sizes on the market for
> Socket F systems. Some heatsinks at 3.5" and others at 4.1".
> 
> ThermalTake's Socket F heatsinks use 4.1", while the Tyan board uses
> 3.5".
> 
> In the end I got 2 Socket 940 heatsinks using the special brackets from
> Tyan.

Wow.  Last time I bought a mobo, I bought Tyan from Monarch, referred 
from pricewatch.com.  Pricing mobos, CPUs, and heat-sinks/fans separately 
at the lowest cost on pricewatch, Monarch was charging like $25 to ship 
it all assembled and tested.  In addition, that meant I ordered it all 
together (I did order memory separately, from someone else) instead of 
having to worry about ordering and getting separate packages from several 
different places.  So I did it that way.  They shipped it already 
assembled, so until very recently, when I took one of the heatsinks off 
to check that I could do so and reuse them when I order my dual Opteron 
290s, I'd never even had the heat-sinks off the CPUs.

I guess that's one way to ensure you get the right one! =8^)  I was quite 
pleased with Monarch service as well as price (tho their prices on memory 
were only average, thus my buying that elsewhere), and will likely order 
from them again next time I upgrade.  

-- 
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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Re: [gentoo-amd64] Re: Tyan Motherboards

[Nuitari]

> I guess that's one way to ensure you get the right one! =8^)  I was quite
> pleased with Monarch service as well as price (tho their prices on memory
> were only average, thus my buying that elsewhere), and will likely order
> from them again next time I upgrade.

I ordered the whole server (w/o hard drives as I already have them) from a 
local computer store  (Cartier Informatique, in the Greater Montreal Region) 
which has excellent service, however that was their (and mine) first 
socket F system. I'm quite happy I dealt through them as I would have 
easily been over 140$ on useless heatsinks.
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