From Mandriva Community Wiki

Experiences with mainboards under Mandriva Linux, classified by chipset.

Contents 1 Intel Chipsets 1.1 i875P 1.2 i865PE 1.3 i845 1.4 i845E 1.5 82440 BX AGP 2 nVidia chipsets 2.1 nForce2 ultra 400 3 SiS Chipsets 3.1 730 (M810LMR) 3.2 735 (K7S5A) 4 VIA (Apollo) Chipsets 4.1 CLE266 + VT8235 CD 5 KM400 5.1 KT133 5.2 KT133a 5.3 KT266 5.4 KT266A 5.5 KT333 5.6 KT400 5.7 KT600 5.8 VIA K8M800/VT8251 Chipset 5.9 ASUS A8V-MX

[edit] Intel Chipsets

[edit] i875P

• ASUS P4C800E-Deluxe (JoeDullemond)
  • No problems with cooker, use SMP or enterprise kernel if hyperthreading enabled.
  • Promise PDC20378 SATA150 controller supported by mdk 2.4 kernel (pdc-ultra).
  • 2.6 series kernels work fine but SATA support is completely revised resulting in changed device names for any SATA hard drives.
  • ALSA sound module (i8x0) works fine for the onboard AD1875 audio, ALSA versions >1.0.1 support 4 channel mode.
  • Intel gigabit LAN module (e1000) is a part of the stock linux kernel.
  • kernel 2.4 series agpgart failed to initialize until the agp_try_unsupported=1 option was added to =/etc/modules.conf=.
  • kernel 2.6 agpgart works fine

• Intel Bonanza (PBZ) (SimonOosthoek)
  • Seems to be working ok with 9.2 , I'm not done configuring yet. This is a pretty bare MB, just USB and network (e1000) and firewire (which I haven't tested yet, since I don't have a device for it).
  • I've been having loads of problems with this board and the 2.6.x kernels so far on the cooker-snapshots/beta 1. Especially the BIOS (pnpbios=off Bug 6642) and SATA controller. The SATA addressing in kernel 2.6.x is different than in 2.4.x, which can cause some problems converting from a 2.4 system to a 2.6 system (clean install from Mandriva 10 should probably work eventually)

[edit] i865PE

• ASUS P4P800-E Deluxe
  • Works fine with Cooker 2006.1, use SMP or Enterprise kernel.
  • Marvell Gigabit Lan connector, USB, on board sound all work out of the box.
  • Note I have not tried the Promise raid controller, nor serial ATA (DickGevers)

[edit] i845

• Abit BE7 - works fine with 9.1 : NIC ok; Sound ok (AndreLabbe)

[edit] i845E

• *Abit IT7 (MariuszW)
  • Tested with Mandriva Linux 9.1 and 9.2:
  • Onboard LAN and Sound are detected properly and operational.
  • USB 1.1 - all ports are working.
  • Didn't test USB 2.0 and FireWire. No problems with AGP x 4.

[edit] 82440 BX AGP

• Soyo SY-6BB - works fine with 9.0 upto 10.2 ; agpgart untried though
  • One slight problem with 10.1/10.2 : hal-daemon does not run due to a kernel bug (see: http://bugme.osdl.org/show_bug.cgi?id=4241 ). Just don't put it in chkconfig, and there shouldn't be much of a problem (DickGevers)

[edit] nVidia chipsets

[edit] nForce2 ultra 400

• Lots of people are complaining about problems with agpgart when a recent Radeon is paired with this board. Proprietary, binary only drivers from nVidia are required to get the full functionality of this chipset.

• Gigabyte GA-7N400-L motherboard (RickSisler):
  • Mdk 9.2 I had to set "nolapic" in etc/lilo.conf append line to avoid unstable system and IO errors from improper interrupts with kernel 2.4. Also use binary drivers from nvidia as stated above. I set NvAGP 1 in XF86Config-4 file for better frame rates.
  • For Mdk 10 and 10.1, kernel 2.6.8, required me to ADD "lapic" on the /etc/lilo.conf append line, this board is supported by this kernel using apic correctly. The 2.6 kernels have been very stable this way. Although its offered, I have not tested kernel 2.4 with these Mandriva versions. I use the AMD Athlon processor, I am not sure how intel and acpi may be effected.

• ASUS A7N8X-X motherboard (rob):
  • with NVIDIA display drivers (using Nvidia Geforce card) and Mandriva Linux 10: There have been lots of problems with people experencing crashes/lockups and weird bugs. There are two work arounds, disable apci/acpi or download and install the latest kernel version, 2.6.8.

• Epox 8RDA3+ Pro motherboard (CupkoPrckic):
  • I have had to set "pci=noacpi" option on the append line in /etc/lilo.conf , because my system was experiencing frequent and constant lockups.
  • I had also tried resolving the problem by trying "nolapic" and/or "acpi=off" options on the append line, which resolved the lockups, but introduced a new problem where all of my USB devices (mouse and digital camera) would stop working after some short period of activity, i.e. there was no I/O. It seems to me that completely turning off the ACPI (with "acpi=off" on the append line) causes the latter problem, at least on this particular motherboard.

[edit] SiS Chipsets

[edit] 730 (M810LMR)

• PC-CHIPS M810 systemboard (MatthewPROUSE):
  • Mandriva 9.0 - 10.0 works well with a PC-CHIPS M810 systemboard - SiS 730 chipset.
  • The onboard sound (SiS 7018), video (SiS 630) and LAN (SiS 900) devices are all detected during install, although there is no 3D accelleration available for the SiS 630 and the serial ports do not work at all. I added a Paradise 64MB GeForce2 MX card, no problems. This is a low-cost all-in-one mainboard and was quite common in an Australian barebones PC

[edit] 735 (K7S5A)

• ECS K7S5A (MikE):
  • Onboard sound (C-Media AC97 or Realtek ALC100) and LAN (<nop>SiS900).
  • LAN works fine and is picked up on install.
  • Sound was difficult to get working until the 2.6 kernel on MDK 10.0 / 10.1 and is then picked up on install.
  • I would recommend a quality power supply like an ANTEC Truepower. See Linux HOWTO as well as a helpful guide and forum.

[edit] VIA (Apollo) Chipsets

[edit] CLE266 + VT8235 CD

• Soltek SL-B6A-F1000 (MatthewPROUSE):
  • Small form factor mainboard with onboard VIA C3 1Ghz CPU. No problems with mainboard.
  • Some issues with x.org performance with the integrated S3 Unichrome video. Required to use VESA driver under x.org

[edit] KM400

• Abit VA-10 tested with Mandriva 9.2 (DerekJennings):
  • All works OK except on board video is not detected by Mandriva. It is necessary to edit /etc/X11/XFConfig-4 by hand and select the 'via' driver. This link (which?; reviewer) describes it (refers to CLE266 and via supplied drivers, but procedure is similar).
  • Another problem is the AGP bus does not work with the 9.2 kernel. A patch does exist for the 2.4.23 kernel which is currently (December 2003) in Cooker to provide AGP support for KM400. I have applied the patch and it seems to work. However even with a patched 2.4.23 kernel moving windows around the screen leaves artifacts on the screen and glxgears only gives about 380 frames per second.
  • At this time (Dec '03) it would be hard to recommend a KM400 based mobo to a newbie. The internal video does not seem very good, so an external card is required, but the necessity to use a patched kernel to get AGP to work makes external video difficult to use as well

[edit] KT133

• AsusA7V - no problems found. (AnneWilson)
• FIC AZ11E - no problems found (MaureenThomas)

[edit] KT133a

• Soyo K7VTA-Pro Had no problems with it. Early problems with the 686B southbridge seem to have worked itself out.
• ASUS A7V133 - No problems with 9.1 , onboard Promise PDC20265 works fine (JoeDullemond)
• MSI K7T Turbo2 works well. ACPI even works on this board (GregMeyer)

[edit] KT266

• Soyo Dragon Plus motherboard (DarkLord):
  • Has worked well with Mandriva Linux versions 9.0 and 9.1 , onboard NIC works great with the Rhine driver.
  • 5.1 onboard sound (CMI 8738 Audio chip) rocks with my Monsoon speakers.
  • Under v9.2 , I had some sound issues. I used "artsdsp" to get some software to run, mostly games though. Also, I had to point some software like XMMS and Mplayer to different audio drivers (Alsa instead of OSS for example). I did use the "acpi=off" option in /etc/lilo.conf for this board. I also flashed the ROM because of some trouble with higher speed AMD CPUs. Solid choice, IMHO.

[edit] KT266A

• ASRock K7VT2 with Athlon700, 256MB SDR and GF2MX400-32MB (SteveLunn):
  • Mandriva 9.2 correctly identified all Hardware (including built in net - rhine and sound - VT8235) and was installed almost correctly with default settings.
  • The only problem is with the apic=ht lilo append parameter (the default): the system doesn't auto power-off.

[edit] KT333

• I have heard rumours that the I/O APIC and ACPI needs to be turned off for this chipset too, but I cannot confirm.

[edit] KT400

• My KT400 based Soyo Dragon Ultra Black edition works great on Mandriva 9.1 with a few issues (CyberCFO):
  • The I/O APIC and ACPI must be turned off by booting the kernel with the boot parameters "noapic acpi=off". ACPI seems to work with the I/O APIC enabled, but the usb ports and the onboard VIA Rhine II NIC will not work. If you disable the I/O APIC, ACPI will not work properly because ACPI relies on the functionality of the I/O APIC.
  • Also, I have not tried real hard, but the onboard Highpoint ATA-RAID controller does not work as a RAID device. It works fine as a standard IDE controller though, and of course you can set up a Linux Software RAID using those channels

• Abit KD7 (DerekJennings):
  • This KT400 based mobo works great with Mandriva 9.2 : no need to disable APIC, but I do disable ACPI.
  • I do not have the RAID version
  • Sound works fine using the snd-via82xx driver. Mandriva did not do a very good job of setting up the sound drivers, but alsaconf did it fine. This sound chip does not work with Alsa sound driver in mmap mode. I had to disable mmap in the xmms alsa output plugin, and this page (which?; reviewer) describes how to get sound working in games like 'Enemy Territory'.
  • On board Ethernet worked perfectly, but died with a hardware problem after 3 months.

[edit] KT600

• Works fine on my Asus A7V600 motherboard under 9.2 , though at the moment I'm only getting sound from three of my five speakers (RobinTurner).

• A7v600 (PatrickPatterson):
  • Works well under 9.2 . I use an Audigy and it installed out of the box.
  • However there are problems wih the 3com drivers supplied by Asus. They install and seem to work for most things. However, I could not get it to connect to certain windows boxes no matter what I tried. The only hint of a solution I could find was that from a windows machine one program I ran indicated the mac address as a series of zeros. It has been reported by Tom Brinkman that the latest sk98lin driver works but I have already put in a dlink card which solved it for me. Once I have everything else working, I will try it and report back.

[edit] VIA K8M800/VT8251 Chipset

[edit] ASUS A8V-MX

• Does not work at all under Mandriva 2005 x64 or Mandriva 2006 x64 or 2006 Power Pack DVD .
  • It seems to install and recognize every thing but when you reboot after install you get a File System synchronization error with a kernel panic ending the experiment.
  • Fedora Core 4 installs and has limited support for IDE (no DMA) and no sound support. RedHat says the kernel update for ASUS A8V-MX will be out in January some time. I hope this will convert into Mandriva kernel update because after using Fedora Core 4 I miss Mandriva.