# Time for new hardware, but how to deal with it? [SOLVED]

## m.s.w

Hi all.

It happened, that my old hardware starts to do some crazy things. I just recovered from a system malfunction.. well, this means i did fresh install. But still, as far as I can see again bad things happens so for me it is clear that hardware should be replaced. What I thing about is Core 2 Duo based system. I want to replace only the minimum set of hardware (money, money... ). It is clear that for this new CPU I need new motherboard, new memory, new graphics (because of lack of AGP on new motherboards). What I am concerned about is that my DVD drives all are IDE (PATA). As far as I understand (i read a lot of posts here) there is a problem because new chipsets like 965 and 975 do not support IDE, just SATA. There are motherboards that have IDE connectors based on JMicron chipset and the problem is that none of Gentoo install CD is supporting that. My question is - is it going to be any better in near future? Is the JMicron support aviable in new kernels (>2.6.1 :Cool:  a good thing or will it be necessary to throw away my LiteON dvd and Plextor dvd-r and buy a new one with SATA connectors?

Do you have more experience with that new hardware?

ATM i have Pentium 4 3.06 HT - is it possible to compile new kernel with support for the new hardware so when I put system HD in the new box it will work? At least in the minimal way that will allow me to work on it to fix possibly broken stuff?

Any help is really appreciated. I need to do it asap, and I would like to do something that I will not have to change for a long time so I want to do something relatively new. From the other hand - i have to have Gentoo so it can't be something that will not run Gentoo.

Regards,

m.s.w

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## BitJam

I just bought an ASUS M2NPV-VM motherboard and had no trouble installing Gentoo on it.  It has a built-in Nvidia GeForce 6150 graphics chipset which works fine for me (two large LCD displays, dvd viewing, but no gaming).  It supports both IDE and SATA drives and I was able to boot off of a standard CDROM/DVD drive with no problem.  There were many earlier problems using Linux with this board but they have all been resolved.  I didn't need any special boot parameters.

It fits AMD CPU's, not Intel but maybe they have something similar that works with Intel.  Also, the northbridge seems to run hot so I am planning on adding an aftermarket northbridge heatsink.

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## seifn06

m.s.w. - 

If you have a USB memory stick with a few hundred megabytes of space lying around you might try using the "LiveUSB" boot method:

http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml

You might be able to avoid buying any new CD-ROM drives by booting from a USB stick instead of a boot/live CD.

You might also look into the 5.25" USB enclosures for your old CD-ROMs. 

http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&DEPA=0&Description=USB+enclosure

If your new CPU uses similar/the same instructions as your P4 3.06 CPU I would think you could compile a new kernel on the old CPU for the new setup. Why not compile the new kernel on the new machine, though? I'd do that so I was not tracking down missing drivers, kernel options, etc. twice: once when I compile the thing on the old machine and once on the new machine. Furthermore, the kernel could get a bit bloated if you have to compile drivers and such into it for both machines.

Good luck.

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## vibrokatana

Some of the newer intel chips usually support 1 IDE channel, a controller card usually costs < 12 bucks for one that is fully supported by the kernel and will grant 2 additional channels (just note you will need a loooong cable depending on the case)

I forgot which one I had in my old computer (needed another controller for a second hard disk) but the transfers were great on it.

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## m.s.w

Thank you all for the replys and ideas.

 *seifn06 wrote:*   

> m.s.w. - 
> 
> If you have a USB memory stick with a few hundred megabytes of space lying around you might try using the "LiveUSB" boot method:
> 
> http://www.gentoo.org/doc/en/liveusb.xml
> ...

 

But this needs from new Motherboard the ability to boot from USB wright? 

 *Quote:*   

> Why not compile the new kernel on the new machine, though? I'd do that so I was not tracking down missing drivers, kernel options, etc. twice: once when I compile the thing on the old machine and once on the new machine. Furthermore, the kernel could get a bit bloated if you have to compile drivers and such into it for both machines.
> 
> 

 

My idea was that because it is possible that I will not be able to boot my box from IDE devices I wanted to compile kernel using my current hardware, than changing hardware and boot from my old HDD just to be able to boot my new computer. But the idea is actually not good, because i need to replace HDD too..  :Sad: 

I need to dig for the support of booting from USB.

 *Quote:*   

> Some of the newer intel chips usually support 1 IDE channel, a controller card usually costs < 12 bucks for one that is fully supported by the kernel and will grant 2 additional channels (just note you will need a loooong cable depending on the case)

 

vibrokatana, could you please show me what you mean? A link maybe? Are you talking about something like IDE-PCI cards? I know that on motherboards there are IDE slots, but, as I said before, they are controlled by JMicron (or sometimes Marvell) controller which is not supported by any Gentoo installation media. Another idea the comes to my mind while I write this - is it possible to compile add a custom kernel to existing gentoo-minimal CD?

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## suicidal_orange_II

Your in the same spot I was not long ago - old drives in a new motherboard.

I opted for an Abit fp in9 sli fatal1ty motherboard, as it has 2 PATA sockets and no jmicron to worry about.  While not the cheapest board its far from the most expensive either, and I've been running it for 3 weeks with no major problems.  The only minor problem is only having 2 pci slots so I need to getnew tv and wireless cards.  The standard gentoo install CD booted and detected both onboard PATA and the onboard SATA (I have too many drives  :Laughing: )

You can backup your old install using http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Custom_Stage4 and then unpack it onto your new hard drive, a core 2 cpu will quite happily run your p4 gentoo install although it could be better optimised.  All you have to do is put the new motherboard drivers in the kernel and reboot with the new motherboard, you wont even notice the difference - apart from the speed   :Very Happy: .  

vibrokatana was indeed talking about a PCI IDE card, these are usable just as easily as onboard ports in Linux but they do cost extra and use up a pci(-e) slot.

Hope something I said will help, any questions just ask

Suicidal_Orange

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## m.s.w

suicidal_orange_II, thank you for your input. Unfortunately, in my country it seems that it is really hard to buy such a motherboard. Also, do you know that you are possibly the only one person running this motherboard on this forum?  :Smile: 

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## m.s.w

OK. One more question. PCI-to-IDE controllers are quite expensive. Maybe it is better to buy new SATA dvd. Is it possible to boot from SATA dvd?

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## i92guboj

 *m.s.w wrote:*   

> OK. One more question. PCI-to-IDE controllers are quite expensive. Maybe it is better to buy new SATA dvd. Is it possible to boot from SATA dvd?

 

That's entirely up to the BIOS, since no OS is loaded at that stage. Check the docs from the manufacturer of your motherboard/BIOS.

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## suicidal_orange_II

m.s.w where do you live?  PCI IDE cards are far more expensive in the UK than the US it seems (cheapest I can find is £10, about $20 + p&p) but you really do want the cheapest one you can find that works.  The expensive ones do hardware raid, which is all very nice but not what you need.  No packaging will ever declare it to work in Linux though, you have to lookup the chipset in the kernel config to check.  

Booting from SATA dvd drives should work with any newish motherboard, but I've never done it so can't be sure.  I highly doubt it would work with windows XP (if you care) at least not without a floppy drive with the drivers on.  I would keep looking for an nforce based motherboard (maybe not the same as mine if its so rare  :Laughing: ) as its guaranteed no hassle.  I can't believe there are none, wherever you live.

Of course, if you can backup your old install you wont be needing to boot from a CD at all, although at some time in the future you may need to so planning ahead is a good idea.

Suicidal_Orange

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## m.s.w

Thanks to suicidal_orange_II I wonder if nForce chipsets are well supported? Maybe this is reall solution for all the troubles.   For example, I found P5N-E SLI, and ASUS motherboard. Anoyone is using this? Chipset is the same as in suicidal_orange_II's Fatal1ty. I wonder if ATA controllers are the same...

Anyone has an experience with nForce chipsets? are they any good or have they some disadvantages that has to be considered before buying motherboard based on this chipset?

The real questions is C2D E6600 with for example P5N-E SLI something that is worse or as good as C2D E6600 with other motherboards but based on Intel's chipsets (965 or 975).

m.s.w

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## pdr

I recently replaced my workstation and went to c2d (e6300). Got the Asus P5L-MX (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.asp?Item=N82E16813131041) which uses the slightly older 945 chipset but is a micro-atx. Onboard sound works fine (spdif); only problem I have (had? haven't checked for drivers recently) is that the onboard NIC was not supported; bought a USD30 pci-express x1 NIC for it - works like a champ. Threw in a USD72 nvidia 7300le video card and works like a champ for multimedia/workstation.

Have a lite-on pata dvd hooked up to it - no problem.

Edit: went googling, and it looks like the attansic driver will end up in something like 2.6.20-r8..

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## m.s.w

It's a bump.

But seriously  - are here happy Core 2 Duo users? Are there any motherboards that make no problems with ATA DVD-ROMs, booting, SATA drives? Are there Gentoo users with modern computers?

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## madisonicus

 *m.s.w wrote:*   

> It's a bump.
> 
> But seriously  - are here happy Core 2 Duo users? Are there any motherboards that make no problems with ATA DVD-ROMs, booting, SATA drives? Are there Gentoo users with modern computers?

 Gobs of happy ones: search the forums you'll find plenty of folks with no problems running C2D.  Also, the nforce chipset is, overall, very well supported in linux.

Not sure what you mean by "modern computers", but you can see the MB's I have in my sig.  All work great with linux, though they're mostly AMD64x2.  The laptop is Core Solo and works perfectly even with wacky Panasonic internals.  I boot both the M2NPV-VM and the AN8-SLI32 Deluxe from SATA drives without trouble.  In general, you're going to be better off not buying cutting edge technology.  That's the case regardless of your OS though.

You'll probably get better answers if you ask more specific questions.  Give us a couple MB's that you're considering.  We can probably help you go through the hardware and check for compatibility.  Honestly, though, linux drivers are excellent these days for everything except ATi graphics cards and the JMicron chip.

HTH,

m

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## sonicbhoc

My laptop has a core duo. Greatest purchase of my life. My only gripe is that the speakers don't shut off when you plug in headphones, and that the elongated touchpad screws up the synaptics driver so that 1/3rd of it ends up scrolling the page... but yeah, still kicks the crap out of everything else I've used. I'm strongly considering getting a usb sound card instead of fooling with this one.

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## m.s.w

Thank you for your response.

 *madisonicus wrote:*   

> Gobs of happy ones: search the forums you'll find plenty of folks with no problems running C2D.  Also, the nforce chipset is, overall, very well supported in linux.

 

Yes I know that. For exapmle:

Core 2 Duo and JMicron thread 1

Core 2 Duo and JMicron thread 2

Thread about hardware I want 1

and more. I just wanted to know if there are more recent informations about this.

 *madisonicus wrote:*   

> Not sure what you mean by "modern computers", but you can see the MB's I have in my sig.  All work great with linux, though they're mostly AMD64x2.  The laptop is Core Solo and works perfectly even with wacky Panasonic internals.  I boot both the M2NPV-VM and the AN8-SLI32 Deluxe from SATA drives without trouble.  In general, you're going to be better off not buying cutting edge technology.  That's the case regardless of your OS though.
> 
> You'll probably get better answers if you ask more specific questions.  Give us a couple MB's that you're considering.  We can probably help you go through the hardware and check for compatibility.  Honestly, though, linux drivers are excellent these days for everything except ATi graphics cards and the JMicron chip.

 

That is something I agree with, but the problem is that I need to deal with JMicron chip. If one wants to upgrade it's old hardware to Core 2 Duo which is not as cutting edge as it was an year ago, than he have to deal with JMicron or nForce chipsets. Thats why I was looking for some more informations. 

Anyway, this is going to be a different story now, since I just bought :

C2D E6600 and Asus P5B. 

I have two SATA HDD's and two old PATA optical drives (DVD and DVD-RW). 

I will post my story about dealing with this hardware.

Keep your fingers crossed for me  :Smile: 

Regards,

m.s.w

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## m.s.w

 *m.s.w wrote:*   

> 
> 
> Anyway, this is going to be a different story now, since I just bought :
> 
> C2D E6600 and Asus P5B. 
> ...

 

As promissed. Here is the story:

I connected DVD-R to JMicron PATA, and those two HDD's to ICH8 SATA controller.

1. First of all - many thanks to kernelOfTruth for small-gentoo which I used to boot my new system.

With that CD there were no problems. Everything was detected and operational. There was only few small issues that could be easilly fixed, like strange NIC interfaces numbering (mine was lo, eth2 and eth3). But the most important thing which means JMicron driver works good. 

2. SATA configured in BIOS as AHCI (not IDE). This is something i do not understand yet. With that configuration windows doesn't see any HDD's. If I want to boot windows i need to change SATA configuration in BIOS to IDE. (Why?)

Anyway - This set of hardware is very good and makes no problems during installation using kernelOfTruth live CD.

Regards,

m.s.w

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