Question: Status of VIA chipsets and 2.2 kernels

Question: Status of VIA chipsets and 2.2 kernels

[Robert Cohen]

What with all the various problem reports flying around for via
chipsets, Ive lost track of the state of play as regards via
northbridges and south bridges.
I am thinking of buying a machine with a via chipset and I wan't to know
how stable it is likely to be with Linux.
I would appreciate it if someone who know's whats going on can give a
report on the state of play
as regards to all the problems and their current status with 2.2 kernels
(and 2.4 if their feeling energetic).

Possible machine are:
 a P3 machine with a ASUS CUV4X-E motherboard which uses the apollo pro
694X northbridge and a 686B southbridge.

An athlon machine with an ASUS A7V motherboard which uses a KT133
(VT8363) northbridge and a 686A southbridge.

An athlon machine with an ASUS A7V133 motherboard which uses a KT133A
(VT8363A) northbridge and a 686B southbridge.

Problems Ive been hearing about include DMA disk transfers between
channels. Some reports say these only occur with Western digital disks.
The 2 athlon boards listed include an onboard promise IDE controller. So
I should be OK if I use this for disks, right?

Any other problems I should know about?


--
Robert Cohen
Unix Support
TLTSU
Australian National University
Ph: 612 58389

Re: Question: Status of VIA chipsets and 2.2 kernels

[Alan Cox]

> Problems Ive been hearing about include DMA disk transfers between
> channels. Some reports say these only occur with Western digital disks.

Not the case

> The 2 athlon boards listed include an onboard promise IDE controller. So
> I should be OK if I use this for disks, right?

Maybe. Consult your vendor and BIOS supplier. Given the current noticable
absence of exact info in the public domain I'd be careful they will guarantee
the VIA chipset problem fixes are in the BIOS. If they give you a blank look
go elsewhere

Re: Question: Status of VIA chipsets and 2.2 kernels

[Gerhard Mack]

Ugh why VIA? They have been a constant source of trouble for me on both
linux and windows.  I have my doubts about their ability to get a chipset
right in the first place.

Some other possible Athlon boards:
  Asus A7M266 (AMD chipset)
  Asus A7A266 (ALI chipset)

On Wed, 9 May 2001, Robert Cohen wrote:

> What with all the various problem reports flying around for via
> chipsets, Ive lost track of the state of play as regards via
> northbridges and south bridges.
> I am thinking of buying a machine with a via chipset and I wan't to know
> how stable it is likely to be with Linux.
> I would appreciate it if someone who know's whats going on can give a
> report on the state of play
> as regards to all the problems and their current status with 2.2 kernels
> (and 2.4 if their feeling energetic).
> 
> Possible machine are:
>  a P3 machine with a ASUS CUV4X-E motherboard which uses the apollo pro
> 694X northbridge and a 686B southbridge.
> 
> An athlon machine with an ASUS A7V motherboard which uses a KT133
> (VT8363) northbridge and a 686A southbridge.
> 
> An athlon machine with an ASUS A7V133 motherboard which uses a KT133A
> (VT8363A) northbridge and a 686B southbridge.
> 
> Problems Ive been hearing about include DMA disk transfers between
> channels. Some reports say these only occur with Western digital disks.
> The 2 athlon boards listed include an onboard promise IDE controller. So
> I should be OK if I use this for disks, right?
> 
> Any other problems I should know about?
> 
> 
> --
> Robert Cohen
> Unix Support
> TLTSU
> Australian National University
> Ph: 612 58389
> -
> To unsubscribe from this list: send the line "unsubscribe linux-kernel" in
> the body of a message to majordomo@vger.kernel.org
> More majordomo info at  http://vger.kernel.org/majordomo-info.html
> Please read the FAQ at  http://www.tux.org/lkml/
> 

--
Gerhard Mack

gmack@innerfire.net

<>< As a computer I find your faith in technology amusing.

Re: Question: Status of VIA chipsets and 2.2 kernels

[Robert Cohen]

Gerhard Mack wrote:
> 
> Ugh why VIA? They have been a constant source of trouble for me on both
> linux and windows.  I have my doubts about their ability to get a chipset
> right in the first place.
> 
> Some other possible Athlon boards:
>   Asus A7M266 (AMD chipset)
>   Asus A7A266 (ALI chipset)
> 
> On Wed, 9 May 2001, Robert Cohen wrote:
> 
> > What with all the various problem reports flying around for via
> > chipsets, Ive lost track of the state of play as regards via
> > northbridges and south bridges.
> > I am thinking of buying a machine with a via chipset and I wan't to know
> 

I'm wary of using an Ali chipset. They are even less common than the VIA
so just havent had the
exposure to root out problems.

Also the main feature I'm looking for is a machine with 768 Meg or 1G
ram at a reasonable price.
Hence I want to use 256 Meg dimms. I can't use an i815 chipset as this
tops out at 512 Meg.
The apollo pro board is one of the few that has 4 dimm slots allowing 1
Gig of memory.
The athlons boards only have 3 dimm slots so top out at 768 Meg.

I'm wary of using DDR dram. The chipsets havent been round long enough
to have much of a track record.
And the ram is too expensive. Also the A7M266 is using a VIA 686b
southbridge anyway which I thought was the source of the problems.
Anyway these boards only tend to have 2 DDR dimm slots and the biggest
DDR dimm that crucial sells is 256 Meg. So I would be limited to 512
Meg.

Maybe I have to bite the bullet and go with 512 Meg dimms. They only
appear to be available in
registered with ECC which makes them cost about twice as much per meg
and which I wasnt sure that all boards support.
What motherboards/chipsets to people recommend for machines with 1Gig+
ram.

--
Robert Cohen
Unix Support
TLTSU
Australian National University
Ph: 612 58389

Re: Question: Status of VIA chipsets and 2.2 kernels

[God]

On Wed, 9 May 2001, Robert Cohen wrote:

> From: Robert Cohen <robert@coorong.anu.edu.au>
> 
> I am thinking of buying a machine with a via chipset and I wan't to know
> how stable it is likely to be with Linux.
> I would appreciate it if someone who know's whats going on can give a
> report on the state of play
> as regards to all the problems and their current status with 2.2 kernels
> (and 2.4 if their feeling energetic).


Hi Robert,

Right now one of my boxes (gaming box) is running off of :

OS          : Linux 
Distro      : Slackware 7.1
Kernel      : 2.4.3 SMP

Mother Board: MSI KT7 Pro 2-A
Chipset     : VIA KT133
Processor   : AMD Duron 800 Mhz (Not OC'd and not modified) 

Hard disks  : Maxtor 5T060H6 (60 Gigger / 7200 RPM / UDMA100)
            : Quantum Fireball SE2.1A (2.1G / ??? RPM / UDMA33)
RAM         : 128M DIMM, PC133
Video Card  : Geforce2 GTS, 32M DDR
Network Card: I forget what I put in there.. hrmm



VP_IDE: IDE controller on PCI bus 00 dev 39
VP_IDE: chipset revision 6
VP_IDE: not 100% native mode: will probe irqs later
VP_IDE: User given PCI clock speed impossible (66), using 33 MHz instead.
VP_IDE: Use ide0=ata66 if you want to force UDMA66/UDMA100.
VP_IDE: VIA vt82c686b (rev 40) IDE UDMA100 controller on pci00:07.1
    ide0: BM-DMA at 0xd000-0xd007, BIOS settings: hda:DMA, hdb:DMA
    ide1: BM-DMA at 0xd008-0xd00f, BIOS settings: hdc:pio, hdd:DMA
hda: QUANTUM FIREBALL SE2.1A, ATA DISK drive
hdb: Maxtor 5T060H6, ATA DISK drive
hdd: LTN403L, ATAPI CD/DVD-ROM drive
ide0 at 0x1f0-0x1f7,0x3f6 on irq 14
ide1 at 0x170-0x177,0x376 on irq 15
hda: 4124736 sectors (2112 MB) w/80KiB Cache, CHS=1023/64/63, UDMA(33)
hdb: 120103200 sectors (61493 MB) w/2048KiB Cache, CHS=7476/255/63,
UDMA(100)
hdd: ATAPI 40X CD-ROM drive, 120kB Cache, UDMA(33)


00:00.0 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 0305 (rev 02)
00:01.0 PCI bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc.: Unknown device 8305
00:07.0 ISA bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super] (rev
40)
00:07.1 IDE interface: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586 IDE [Apollo] (rev
06)
00:07.2 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586B USB (rev 16)
00:07.3 USB Controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C586B USB (rev 16)
00:07.4 Host bridge: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686 [Apollo Super ACPI]
(rev 40)
00:07.5 Multimedia audio controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT82C686
[Apollo Super AC97/Audio] (rev 50)
00:0c.0 Ethernet controller: VIA Technologies, Inc. VT86C100A [Rhine
10/100] (rev 06)
01:00.0 VGA compatible controller: nVidia Corporation NV15 (Geforce2
GTS) (rev a3)


Module                  Size  Used by
NVdriver              628304  29
via82cxxx_audio        17120   1
ac97_codec              7648   0  [via82cxxx_audio]
parport_pc             22608   1  (autoclean)
lp                      5296   1  (autoclean)
parport                29312   1  (autoclean) [parport_pc lp]
via-rhine              10272   1



All in all .... pretty stable.  I have problems with lock ups but I
believe that to be the on board sound card (AC97 crap) as any time it does
lock (especially under Wine/Half-Life), errors are usually reported to the
effect of the sound card timed out or something.  That and it periodicaly
locked up in windows too (when I was running it).

Hope this answers your question.  Just make sure you have the latest 2.4.x
kernel as things are changing rather fast ... (so much for a feature
freeze .. heh .. :) .....  btw, what ever happened to the idea of creating
a database of what runs with what ?  Personally I think redhat did it
wrong with their update network thingy ... (it has NEVER been able to
login successfully .. heh ...).  But would giving the user an option to
send an email off after an install / upgrade basicaly listing what their
system is, be a good thing?   Something like what pine does? ....

Re: Question: Status of VIA chipsets and 2.2 kernels

[Robert Cohen]

Mark Hahn wrote:
> 
> >  a P3 machine with a ASUS CUV4X-E motherboard which uses the apollo pro
> > 694X northbridge and a 686B southbridge.
> 
> I haven't seen any reports of problem with this; it's the duals that need
> the noapic workaround at the moment.
> 
> > An athlon machine with an ASUS A7V motherboard which uses a KT133
> > (VT8363) northbridge and a 686A southbridge.
> 
> works fine.  my main workstation is a gigabyte version of this,
> and has never had any problems (and delivers great performance).
> 
> > An athlon machine with an ASUS A7V133 motherboard which uses a KT133A
> > (VT8363A) northbridge and a 686B southbridge.
> 
> this is the one that has some kind of issue, for which there are several
> workarounds.  it's not entirely clear whether the workarounds make sense/etc.

I was worried that the P3 machine with the Apollo pro chipset is using
the 686B southbridge and might
share the DMA problems. Anyone know if this is a problem?

--
Robert Cohen
Unix Support
TLTSU
Australian National University
Ph: 612 58389