# Will Gentoo hate me if I switch mother boards????

## subzero349

Hello,

I had a ECS K7S5A motherboard (SIS chipset) and now I don't have it anymore.  I want to put in a Asus A7N8X motherboard (Nforce 2 Ultra chipset).

So if I just drop this new mobo in and turn on my computer (which WAS working great on Gentoo) will it be horribly mad at me or will it work ok?

I'm guessing I'll have to re-compile the kernel... anything else?

I would really appreciate any advice  :Smile: 

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## plasmagunman

i did it once and it worked. make sure you compile your new kernel correct. chipset support, agp-support, onboard-anything, ... i forgot some of them and it was quite unstable. but when your kernel is okay there should be no more problems...

well, obviously you have to recompile xfree, if you had anything onboard...

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## subzero349

Thank you... 

Can I just turn it on (with new mobo installed) and recompile the kernel? Or will I have to boot from the gentoo cd and compile the kernel from here?

Also, I plan on using onboard LAN... anyone know what driver to use for the realtec LAN on the asus motheroboard?

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## plasmagunman

 *subzero349 wrote:*   

> Can I just turn it on (with new mobo installed) and recompile the kernel? Or will I have to boot from the gentoo cd and compile the kernel from here?

 you should not boot a kernel with any chipset-support that doesn't match your actual motherboard. you can compile the new kernel with your old one.... you don't have it anymore, right? then it will be safer with a boot-cd.

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## subzero349

That's correct I don't have the old one anymore...

Ok... I'll boot from CD...

Anybody have any hints on kernel options I should select with my particular motherboard?

NIC driver?

Nforce 2 chipset?

AGP?

USB 2.0?

etc..

I need help... I am not great at recompiling kernels... I've only done it once before...

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## plasmagunman

for the beginnig: no usb, no agp, no 3d-acceleration, no sound.... you only want to boot your board. if you achieved that, then you can play around with the funny stuff and start a lot of little, cute threads...  :Wink: 

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## glawrie

One hint - avoid nForce motherboards if you can.

Just a quick search for nVidia in the forums will show you that there are major difficulties getting them to work with Linux (not just Gentoo) - the core system utilities (network, pci etc.) seem to be OK, but anything to do with sound or (nvidia) video is a nightmare.

Simple summary - nvidia sound only works if you tell Linux to pretend you have intel 8x0 sound chips - and then you only get 2 channels working (and the spdif won't work at all).  Various attempts have been made to get spdif working, but so far the only solutions appear to work but you don't get any software volume control (and still only two channels).

nVidia video suffers from nvidia not releasing the code for the graphics drivers to GeForce type graphics cards - generally graphics OK but still tedious to configure.

Simple summary is - buy another board if you really want to use Linux (unless you are building a server and don't want sound or video to be anything more than basic).

Gavin LawrieLast edited by glawrie on Sat Feb 07, 2004 12:47 am; edited 1 time in total

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## subzero349

glawrie... thank you for the heads up.

I was NOT planning on using the onboard sound... I have a nice soundblaster live that I willl be using... do you think this will work?

I have an nvidia geforce 3 ti200 - you're saying this will be hard to set up?

On my previous setup I just emerged the nvidia drivers and all went well... can't I do the same with an nforce board?

Please elaborate  :Smile: 

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## glawrie

You should be fine if you use separate sound / video cards.  The problems with nForce boards are when you try and use the integrated bits on the board itself - I've seen problems being reported for almost all components in various places - but mostly to do with sound and graphics.  Using extra cards for these functions good idea - but undermines point of using nForce chip set somewhat.

If you are happy with nVidia graphics currently, you should get same with new board.  Not used the AGP slot on mine, but imagine it works just like any other.

Good luck  :Smile: 

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## subzero349

Thanks... 

I'm pretty sure that my mobo does not have integrated video anyway... and as far as sound - it's hard to find a mobo withOUT integrated sound these days...

I went with the nforce mobo because it was farily cheap and I needed a new mobo...

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## subzero349

Just an update...

Last night I put in that nforce 2 motherboard... and booted up my computer...

I have a dual boot with win xp and gentoo... I tried win xp first... I figured it would work fine and just install the drivers and such - boy was I wrong... just keeps rebooting.,.. tried safe mode too... same thing... booo windows!

Than i tried booting into Gentoo... looks like there was a few weird things while booting... but it worked!! And I didn't even do anything! 

To get the network drivers for nforce 2 I booted with gentoo livecd mounted my drives and emerge nforce-net

Rebooted again and voila I was on the net and everything was working great!! Still playing games, still have sound... great...  :Smile: 

I was going to recompile the kernel... but I have no idea what else to put in it... can anyone suggest anything?

I have AMD and Nforce IDE support already chosen...

Do I need that agpgart thing? What is that exactly? Why would I need it?

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## subzero349

Does nobody else use a board with nforce 2?

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## pjp

Moved from Installing Gentoo.

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## floffe

If you run a 2.6 kernel, compile the intel8x0 sound support (alsa) as a module. Also try to get hold of the forcedeth patch, which will be included in the kernel, and you won't have to emerge nforce-net. I think you either can use the nvidia closed-source agp thing or the kernel agpgart. I use the agpgart, since that means I won't have to grab the nvidia package and install it manually  :Wink: 

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## derk

one thing to watch out for as I found out the hard way

the combination of an nforce board with and nvidia card and a mm-sources-2.6.2-r1  or /usr/src/linux-2.6.2-mm1  does not work ... at least at the moment with the nvidia-kernel /glx version 1.0.5336-r1 drivers 

for some reason networking is also a problem at the same time

the same board using development-sources-2.6.2 or /usr/src/linux-2.6.2 does work ..  with the 5336 version drivers .. and network connectivity is fine ..

??? any ideas why this should be ???

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## malloc

Well i don't know if you already recompiled your kernel, but if you didn't here are some important things you need to put in it. 

(I'm assuming you have an A7N8X Deluxe, if  you have you'll have 2 onboard eth controllers, one nforce and one realtek)

Well better yet i'll leave you with my 2.6.2 kernel config.

Get it here

This kernel works perfectly. A word of advice however, if you're planning on using vanilla-sources be sure to get the nforce patches that prevent lockups when apic is enabled.

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## subzero349

I'm trying the gentoo release 2.6.1 r1 for now...

I'll let you know how that goes...

I got the network working and nvidia drivers installed (emerging xfree now)

I don't have a deluxe board (but that's ok cuz I don't need the extra netword, sound or sata  :Smile: )

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## kwiqsilver

I have the a7n8x-e deluxe model. I went from a KT333 based palamino to a Barton on the new board and gentoo didn't even hiccup. The only diffirence at boot was a message that it couldn't load the drivers for the network and firewire cards, but that's to be expected, since the cards are now in another machine.  :Wink: 

For win2k I completely wiped and reinstalled. I've experienced windows trying to figure out a new chipset, it's faster to reinstall.

If you don't have one yet, I highly recommend the Deluxe. The soundstorm chip kicks ass (under windows at least). It encodes all my games to DD5.1 before outputing them across a digital line. I have it hooked up to my home theater in the living room, and the surround sound through real speakers is very cool!

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