[CentOS] Re: New System Build

[John Summerfield]

Paul wrote:

>>I recently had an MB die. The only replacement I could afford that was 
>>available quickly was an ASRock. I bought it and have been suffering 
>>ever since.
> 
Probably the problem is a function of the particular chipset; it could 
arise with other brands.

No justification for poor support or bad manners though.

> 
> My daughter's system running FC6 on an ASRock P4i65G (intel 865G chipset
> based) works fine ... onboard sound, video, networking, IDE & SATA. I've
> been happy with their Intel chipset boards in the past.
> 
> 
>>My old board had 3 parallel IDE devices. The new board can only support 
>>2. OK. This is not special to ASRock. But ....
>>
>>I got 2 new SATA drives to go with it. I thought I would set them up in 
>>a RAID configuration. Was I wrong.
>>
>>This MB apparently has some special BIOS code that only works with M$ 
>>software. There is NO Linux support for it. I found other references to 
>>this on the net.
>>
>>ASRock support simply replied to use the Nvidia drives from the Nvidia 
>>site. Well they didn't solve the BIOS problem. ASRock did not reply when 
>>I re-asked for their help.
>>
>>CentOS 4 will not recognize these drives.
>>
>>I am now using FC6 and booting with NODMRAID. By doing this I was 
>>finally able to use booth drives. If I don't use NODMRAID, I get device 
>>mapping and everything is fine until I reboot - there is that BIOS 
>>problem again.
> 
> 
> The motherboard almost certainly uses "Fake Raid" and other than
> initially booting the OS is pretty dim.  This is the same as 99.9% of

There's no need to be so disparaging. You want cheap RAID, you get 
software RAID in the BIOS.

Personally, I'd rather do the RAID in my Linux box where I can control 
it better:-)


> 
> My personal preference is usually Gigabyte & ASRock for budget boards
> and Tyan & ASUS for mid to upper range desktop boards.

I've found Gigabyte's support a bit off; "gotta have windows" to flash 
the BIOS. This might not be a problem with more recent boards, but I've 
been bitten, and I'm happy with alternatives.



-- 

Cheers
John

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1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu  Z1aaaaaaa at coco.merseine.nu

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