Chianti and cousins

Status
  • The Chianti computer now runs as a storage server
  • The 2.6.12-rc1 kernel has drivers for the pcHDTV card, but we have no signal
  • Installation history
Updates summer 2006
  • Modified BIOS on Chianti and Prato
    • In the opening menu, press Ctrl-F1 to get Advanced settings
    • Advanced BIOS Features
      • enabled SMART
    • Advanced Chipset Features
      • set AGP aperture to 64 (was 32)
    • Somewhere else in the menu
      • disable serial and parallel ports
    • Power Management Features
      • Resume on AC on -- set to Full on (power on when power returns)
To do in spring 2006
  • Test if you can capture from all three card to the same drive
    • Disk I/O could be a limitation
    • Does it matter if I use the sata_sil drives vs the nforce3 drives?
    • Seagate vs Maxtor?
  • Tradeoff on journaled file systems -- see overview
To do in fall 2005
  • Prepare to move SATA drives into enclosures
    • get SATA to USB enclosures
    • if you want to add a PCI card (you have no space), get stackable SATA enclosures ($30)
    • get an eSATA (SATAII-compliant) external sata connector PCI card
      • Avoid the sata_sil PCI cards as they don't work with Seagate
      • By fall a suitable card may be available
  • Test the digital part of pcHDTV
    • Get the latest software from pcHDTV
      • You may want a more recent kernel first
    • See the March 2005 tarball in ~/software/tarballs
    • Check out the pchdtv-pvr project for hints
    • See /usr/share/doc/xine/README.dvb.gz for using xine to watch digital tv

Inventory

  • BIOS
  • CPU
    • AMD Athlon dual-core 4600+ (Chianti)
    • AMD Athlon dual-core 4800+ (Prato)
  • NIC
    • Marvell Yukon takes the skge or sk98lin (all)
      • hardware supports Wake-On-LAN, but the kernel's sk98lin or skge doesn't
      • marvell.com's own Linux driver has magic packet support, but the driver doesn't work
      • try "ethtool -s eth0 wol g" and "ethtool -i eth0"
    • nforce3 250 onboard takes the forcedeth (Chianti only)
      • misleadingly identified as a 100/10 ICS1883 PHY LAN in the manual
      • supports wake-on-lan
  • Sensors
    • it87: Found IT8712F chip at 0x290, revision 5 (from dmesg)


 Gigabyte K8NSC-939 Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939
Chipset
 nForce3 250 nForce3 250
Socket
 939 939
CPU
 Athlon-64 4800+ Athlon-64 4600+
PATA
 2 x ATA-133 - 40 pin IDC 2 x ATA-133 - 40 pin IDC
SATA
 2 x Serial ATA-150
(nforce3 250) 		4 x Serial ATA-150
(sil 3512 and nforce3 250)
RAID
 sata_nv  sata_sil and sata_nv 

GigaRAID ATA 133 RAID
Max RAM
 Dual channel DDR400/333/266 - 184pin
Up to 4GB by 4 DIMM slots		 Dual channel DDR400/333/266 - 184pin
Up to 4GB by 4 DIMM slots
NICs
 Marvell Yukon 88E8001 Marvell Yukon 88E8001
  ICS1883 (forcedeth)
USB2
 4 x Hi-Speed USB 4 x Hi-Speed USB
Firewire
 T.I. IEEE 1394a 6 pin T.I. IEEE1394a and b
Data bus
 1600MHz 1600MHz
Sound
 Realtek ALC850 Audio AC'97 Codec
7.1 channel surround		 Realtek ALC850 Audio AC'97 Codec
7.1 channel surround











Brand GIGABYTE
Model GA-K8NSC-939
CPU Socket Type Socket 939
CPU Type Athlon 64 FX/Athlon 64
FSB 800MHz Hyper Transport (1600MT/s)
North Bridge NVIDIA nForce3 250Gb
Memory
DDR Slots 4x 184pin DDR
DDR Standard DDR 400 (PC 3200)
Maximum Memory 4GB
Dual Channel Yes
AGP Slots 1x AGP 8X/4X
PCI Express x16 None
PCI Slots 5
PATA 2 x ATA 133 up to 4 Devices
SATA 2 x SATA 150
Audio Chipset Realtek ALC850
Audio Channels 8 Channels
LAN Chipset Marvell 88E8001
LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
Max LAN Speed 10/100/1000Mbps
PS/2 2
COM 2
LPT 1
USB 4x USB 2.0
Audio Ports 3 jacks
Form Factor ATX

The nForce3 250 chipset has a built-in ICS1883 nforce NIC which takes the forcedeth driver. This didn't work under Debian-Installer, but it works fine in 2.6.12-rc1. Cf. image of PCI devices seen by the BIOS at boot. And it turns out to be a gigabit card! Very cool.

The Silicon Image 3512 controller needs the sata_sil driver, which has problems with several Seagate drives, which means they are deliberately slowed down -- see http://marc.free.net.ph/message/20050310.044844.559a9ee7.en.html. My working Seagate drive is a blacklisted ST3200822AS.  The current BIOS is F10; you can update here.

Hard drive speed
22 May 2005, updated 3 June 2005: benchmarking SATA and PATA drives
hdparm -tT /dev/sda:
Timing cached reads:   3616 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1807.37 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:   64 MB in  3.03 seconds =  21.12 MB/sec

hdparm -tT /dev/sdb:
Timing cached reads:   3624 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1811.37 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  184 MB in  3.01 seconds =  61.22 MB/sec

hdparm -tT /dev/sdc:
Timing cached reads:   3624 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1810.46 MB/sec
Timing buffered disk reads:  186 MB in  3.03 seconds =  61.38 MB/sec

hdparm -tT /dev/hda:
 Timing cached reads:   3692 MB in  2.00 seconds = 1845.36 MB/sec
 Timing buffered disk reads:  186 MB in  3.00 seconds =  61.91 MB/sec
Looks like /dev/sda is the sata_sil chip with the crippled Seagate drive -- really not ideal as a capture drive.  The new PATA drive is just as fast as the SATA drives -- in fact a bit faster. Booting should be a bit faster now that it's on the PATA drive.

1 April 2005: I ordered an Abit AV8 K8T800 (Socket 939), but they sent us a Gigabyte K8NS Ultra-939. This is a more recent board (Q4 2004 vs Q2 2004), with a few more features. In brief, it looks OK.

System monitoring (ITE IT8712F-A)
  • Super I/O: ITE IT8712F chip (driver it87)
  • CPU and memory voltage, +3.3V and +12V
  • RPM of 3 fans
  • CPU temperature (by the embedded CPU sensor)
  • Board temperature (by the on-board sensor)
The system supports the NMI watchdog timer -- cf. the output of cat /proc/interrupts, which shows a non-zero value for NMI:
NMI:        666        783
See /usr/src/linux-*/Documentation/nmi_watchdog.txt for information about how to enable it -- you basically add the boot parameter
nmi_watchdog=1
to grub or lilo; cf. detailed instructions. The machine will then reboot if it gets seriously stuck.

See Netcell comments here and here -- superfast RAID!

  

 

CogWeb