On Fri, Mar 16, 2007 at 05:50:50AM +0900, John Summerfield wrote: > 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. FWIW, my Gigabyte board (3 years old now) has the BIOS flasher built into the BIOS, so all you need is a FAT floppy with the file on it. -- ---- Fred Smith -- fredex at fcshome.stoneham.ma.us ----------------------------- But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us. ------------------------------- Romans 5:8 (niv) ------------------------------ -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: not available Type: application/pgp-signature Size: 189 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://lists.centos.org/pipermail/centos/attachments/20070315/06bcb89a/attachment-0004.sig>