Aleksandar - I greatly appreciate your advice as well as the advice of others on this topic. Though I understand the concepts of chip sets and motherboards, the specifics is not my forte; once I get a computer up and running as a server to handle my testing of php scripts and to provide a way for my client to FTP my work during the day, I just let it run :-) ! One of my servers (was my main one) has a board with Adaptec fake-RAID BIOS that works well with RH 9, but for the reasons you have stated, it does not work with RHE 4 - even if I use the 2 connectors that bypass the RAID. So, I want to replace the motherboard with a middle of the road board (I think I have a Pentium 3 on the current board). Thank you.... Todd Aleksandar Milivojevic wrote: > Sam Drinkard wrote: > >> After doing more research, I found that the SuperMicro boards do >> maintain a compat list with various versions of Unix / Linux / RedHat. > > I can also recommend SuperMicro boards. They all worked well with Linux. > > However, word of warning. Couple of SuperMicro boards (for example > P4SCT+) have Marvell SATA chipset with Adaptec's fake-RAID BIOS. This > chipset is not supported by Linux kernel. You can download device > driver from Abit web site and compile it, however this is not > supported. Abit's device driver also supports fake RAID feature of > Marvell chipset. There is some work being done to develop open source > version of this driver. This is relatively rare chipset, and it is > uncertain when open source driver will be available. > > The motherboards in question are developed for SuperMicro servers with > four bays for SATA drives. All of them also have Intel chipset that > supports two SATA drives. There is total of six SATA connectors on > each of those motherboards (four connected to Marvell chip, and two > connected to Intel chip). Well, at least those that I'm aware of have > two additonal Intel ports. Linux can use two ports that are connected > to Intel chip. > > So, as long as you are OK that only two out of six SATA ports would > work with Linux those motherboards are also good choice. Sooner or > later, there'll also be open source device driver that'll enable you > to use the four ports connected to Marvell controller. If you buy > entire system from SuperMicro that has this motherboard, you'll have > to move two cables from Marvell ports to Intel ports, and you won't be > able to use third and fourth drive bay (unless you put additional SATA > controller in PCI or PCI-X slot). > _______________________________________________ > CentOS mailing list > CentOS at centos.org > http://lists.centos.org/mailman/listinfo/centos > > -- Ariste Software 2200 D Street Ext Petaluma, CA 94952 (707) 773-4523