DragonMage Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 Ok.. I just got a brand new ECS K7S5A with Athlon XP 2000 to replace my not so aging Athlon TB 900 with Shuttle MS21N. My question is, do I have to reinstall Mandrake after I change the motherboard, or is there some shortcut I can do to preserve everything I have? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 whatever you decide, backup data before you switch out the motherboards :) that's my only suggestion. i would re-install, just to be on the safe side. but that's just me Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ral Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 I would imagine that you need to reinstall. Changed video cards and mice... and I had to make the changes to the system setup manually. With a motherboard I don't think that would be possible. Best to back up data. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
fuzzylizard Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 Definitely backup, but it may depend on the chip sets of the two boards. Since they are both Athlon chips you may be able to do the swap without a reinstall if the chipsets on the boards are the same -- i.e. both boards use the VIA chipset. My advice would be to do a backup, do the swap, reboot and see what happens. Worse case is that you have to reinstall. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bvc Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 After the switch, have the kernel-source already installed>when you boot, boot failsafe>at init 3 compile the kernel>boot to the new. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ndeb Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 DragonMage, Backing up is always a good idea. But reinstallation is not necessary. Thats the great thing about linux. I have installed linux on one machine, taken the hard drive out and plugged it into another (with a different motherboard) and linux has booted fine. I don't see why booting ur kernel should be a problem. The way I see it, most of the peripheral device drivers (sound, network, modem) have modular support (in /etc/modules.conf) so can be easily reconfigured by the installer itself. As for detecting new hardware, the mandrake installer should remove old hardware and add the new hardware. Unless the kernel has a problem with the particular mobo, there should be no problem in booting. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
pmpatrick Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 My experience is similar to ndeb's but maybe we're just lucky. The one time I swapped out motherboards I was able to boot but I had to run the install program in upgrade mode choosing no software packages to get everything sorted. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mdg Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 I recently replaced my mboard, cpu and video card in one go. I let Mandrake loose on the new equipment and everything was detected and set up without my intervention. ( VIA KT333, XP1800, 440MX) Maybe I was just lucky, but I figured the worst thing that could happen, I would have to reinstall. It's only software, right? On the other hand, backing up is always a good idea Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted February 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 Well.. I just installed my mb.. Just to make sure I installed hardrake2. Well.. during boot, it prompt me to reconfigure my network card and the mouse. I have to do the sound by hand.. If after this reboot everything keeps.. I will just let it go.. The bad news.. this stupid motherboard seems to loathe having both of its SDRAM slot filled. It basically cut down my memory from 512 to 256 meg.. sigh.. I guess time to save money to buy DDR now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ral Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 No that board should be able to use 512 SDRAM... maybe you need to RMA the thing. Have used several ECS boards (K7SEM, K7S5A, KS76A and K7VMM)...good value but sometimes they brokem out of the box. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ixthusdan Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 I'm like ral. I have had some odd issues with ECS boards. I occassionally get parts from a local vendor when I'm in a hurry, and their value pile of refurbs and returns is full of ECS! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tyme Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 i had no issue with the ECS K7S5A i bought, but that might just be luck. it's running w/768MB of DDR 2100 right now. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted February 14, 2003 Author Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 Well.. I know that ECS has very poor quality control, but I figure for a $100 combo (US) with the motherboard and XP2000+ it's pretty good. The only problem is just that if both SDRAM (not DDR) slots are filled, it experience stability problems (after a minute or so, it will hang, even in just bios screen). I should shell out some money for DDR anyway to take full advantage of this MB. Oh well.. 512 mb of pc2700 should be about 100 bux or so. Oh, btw.. there is one more problem. The built in sound for this mb? It works, but with a quirk. The PCM section in any kind of mixer (aumix, kmix, the volume changer in xmms) doesn't change the volume at all. So to change the volume I have to change the master volume section only. Both this happen with the alsa and the OSS driver. Any solution? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest JaseP Posted February 14, 2003 Report Share Posted February 14, 2003 I'd recommend that you reinstall when switching MothrBs. As for the onboard sound, I picked up a new box a while back with an Athlon 2100+ with 512 MB of DDR RAM, also with onboard sound. I disabled the onboard sound BOTH in the BIOS and by the physical jumpers on the board, and it works fine with my SB Live! 5.1. I would recommend disabiling the onboard sound and buying a seperate (more supported) sound card... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest ndeb Posted February 15, 2003 Report Share Posted February 15, 2003 DragonMage, Regarding ur sound problem, what is the output of: cat /proc/pci cat /etc/modules.conf cat /proc/modules Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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