[gentoo-user] Re: ~amd64 compatibility with modern cpus

[Grant Edwards <grant.b.edwards@gmail.com>]

On 2012-12-14, felix@crowfix.com <felix@crowfix.com> wrote:
> On Fri, Dec 14, 2012 at 12:34:49PM -0600, Bruce Hill wrote:
>
>> Boot with SystemRescueCd and you can't get to a prompt?
>
> Currently can't even boot -- it hangs wit a blank screen at the point
> grub or the rescue DVD would take over.
>
>> Yes, your southbridge chipset could just happened to have failed at
>> the same time; or it failed on the reboot; or USB and SATA are both
>> on the southbridge that failed so you lost both, basically.
>
> Then my natural naive question is, can this be readily replaced, or
> is it soldered in and/or obsolete?  It is about 8 years old.

1) You probably can't get a replacement part.  Parts like that have a
   production lifetime of about 6 months.  You _might_ be able to find
   one on the secondary market -- if you're prepared to buy them by
   the tray-full.  If you find them, they'll either be dirt cheap or
   ridiculously expensive.

2) If you had a replacement part, it's probably a BGA part, and you
   have to have special equipment (and/or a _lot_ of luck with a
   heat-gun) to get the old part off and the new part on without
   destroying the board or surrounding parts.  Your best bet would be
   to take it to a board house that does prototype builds and have
   them replace it.  But, unless you're a regular customer, they're
   going to charge you so much for the job that you could probably buy
   a half-dozen replacement motherboards along with CPUs and RAM to go
   with them [if there's no hope of real business, they'll probably
   just say 'no' unless they're bored and feel like doing you a
   favor].

The only practical thing to do is replace the motherboard.  You might
be able to find an old one on eBay that will accept the same CPU and
RAM, but 8 years is a _long_ time...

-- 
Grant