Sarissi Posted November 13, 2003 Report Share Posted November 13, 2003 I didn't get the cpu or ram i really want for my new chaintech mobo, but, I want to make sure everything is working before I invest that much money. I bought an Athlon XP 2500+ and 4 x 256MB DDR333 (4 slots) for testing and interim purposes. As soon as I get some things copied, I will be shutting down and tearing this one apart to do the mobo/cpu/ram swap and fresh install. I hope this solves the annoying problem that this mobo has with mandrake and promise ultra100 controller (mandrake wants ultra100 first while mobo see it second). Mobo is made by asus, though not asus brand. Some asus mobos have a problem with pci eide controllers, but I never heard of any problems with Chaintech boards and these controllers. There is even an issue in windows with this mobo and the promise controller. I will be back to report on any issues and/or successes, probably tonight or tomorrow. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
DragonMage Posted November 14, 2003 Report Share Posted November 14, 2003 Well.. just because you never heard of any problems with chaintech boards doesn't mean that the board is problem-free. Chaintech is not exactly as big a company as asus, so their users are not as numerous as asus'. Plus the fact that 80% of enthusiasts who buy "power motherboards" are strictly windows users (most of them are strictly windows XP users) so the chance of the problem known under linux in general is much less, mandrake linux in specific is even less than that. Anyway, I wish you luck with the board swap. I await your news. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Steve Scrimpshire Posted November 15, 2003 Report Share Posted November 15, 2003 You would *think* that users who build their own systems and use 'power boards' would want to use the 'power OS', Linux. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarissi Posted November 15, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 15, 2003 I'm baaaaaack! Interim report number one: Before I start, The Chaintech 7VJL Deluxe Apogee comes with Thiz Linux 6.0. After a couple of and I got the system to post. One must be careful to set jumpers correctly and make sure the pins are connected. I was trying to get the cpu clock set to 166 and missed a pin on the jumper, and, totally disabled the cpu clock. Of course, no post. Duh! The same problem that showed up with the Promise Ultra100 card in the Asrock system, showed up here as well. No big deal, as I was half expecting it to. Mandrake puts the Ultra100 card first and the onboard ata133 controller second, while the bios has them in the correct order. This makes for a smooth install, but NO linux boot (wrong drives and partitions). I miss my Windows games, so I decided to go back to a dualboot setup. I happen to use Partition Commander 6 and System Commander Personal Edition. This version only supports ext2 and linux swap (older version of software). It does come with a bootable rescue/partitioning diskette, so I decided to use that to do faster partitioning and formatting for win98se. I decided to check and see if it would see my entire 160 gig hdd, and it does. So I checked the manual, and found I can use this workaround to utilize drives larger than the win98 fdisk hdd size of 120 gigs. Better and better, as most of my 60 gig drives were for windows (4 drives of this size). I include this for you dual and multibooters who might read this. I am currently using my old nic and sound card for purposes of getting back online quickly. I did not get any kernel messages about an unrecognized chipset or southbridge. So I am hopeful about the onboard cmedia sound and onboard nic. Other than that, the important things are working (all 4 ddr ram slots). I'll be back later with a further report on the onboard sound and nic. Have to finish surfing tonight and shutdown, including the cable modem so it will reset properly for the onboard nic. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sarissi Posted November 16, 2003 Author Report Share Posted November 16, 2003 Final update: I should have known that with its own linux distro, this Chaintech 7VJL Deluxe Apogee would be fully compatible with linux. Both onboard sound (6 channel surround) and onboard Nic work in Mandrake 9.1 with no problems. This motherboard gets a huge thumbsup for compatibility with Mandrake Linux!!! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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