[mythtv-users] IVTV Problem

Torsten Schenkel torsten.schenkel at web.de
Sun Oct 26 05:34:15 EST 2003


On Sun, 2003-10-26 at 07:52, Jarod C. Wilson wrote:

> So people successfully running an nForce2 board all seem to either have 
> a 2.4.20 kernel with APIC disabled, or a 2.4.22 kernel, in which APIC 
> actually works. Or a Red Hat 2.4.20 kernel, with APIC in an unknown 
> state. My presumption is that Red Hat backported the vital APIC stuff 
> from 2.4.22, so their kernels are safe with nForce2 boards. Either 
> that, or APIC is disabled. I'll have to look into that (as well as 
> whether APIC is enabled or disabled in my BIOS)...

Hi Jarod,

no the 2.4.22 is NOT NForce2 save. You still have to disable local APIC
in the Kernel. I have two NForce2 machines running. One with 2.4.22 WITH
APIC stable for two months uptime (new machine so only two months), MSI
K7... board (don't know the exact number, have to look it up on monday,
if you are interested, the boards no longer available). Because of the
good performance of this machine, I decided to go for another NForce2
machine, despite of the annoying binary drivers. The second machine (MSI
K7... Delta, the sucessor board to the other's) installed and came up
nicely, but heavy DMA traffic made it freeze, which, being in a number
crunching environment, led to a maximum uptime of 30 minutes. Changed
the board to the ASUS A7N8X Deluxe, no change. Disabled APIC in kernel
and BIOS and this second machine got stable.

> For the record, I've had one other off-list contact that has had plenty 
> of lockups with Mandrake 9.1's latest kernel on an nForce2 board. He 
> had problems still w/APIC disabled in a custom-built kernel...

The problem with NForce2 seems to be that NVidia is not very thorough
with their revision numbering, with changes WITHIN one minor revision
which are not being documented. I heard stories of changes in the
endian-ness of the chipset that weren't documented and didn't lead to
other denominations, don't know if that's true, you'll have to ask Allan
Cox, I take it he's really pissed of by the NForce2.     

So, while everyone is going from VIA to NVidia, those chipsets aren't
stable either (the other way round, never had problems with VIA, except
ivtv). Hmm, the only really stable board in my park, that has no known
chipset issues is the ASUS Dual Athlon MP with AMD chipset (don't know 
exactly which one, but NO Via southbridge). I don't want to go back to
Intel, but if this situation won't change, there will be no choice.

Torsten
  



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