2.1.8X boot hangs on 2940UW controller...

[Robert G. Brown]

On Tue, 10 Mar 1998, Daniel M. Eischen wrote:

> 
> > Daniel M. Eischen wrote in a message to Mike Bilow:
> >
> >  DME> It's not too clear from that last posting what BIOS he is
> >  DME> talking about (motherboard or Adaptec).  It sounds like
> >  DME> there is one SuperMicro BIOS version that has Adaptec BIOS
> >  DME> version 1.25, and that this one works.
> >
> >  DME> If it's not the motherboard, I'm clueless...
> >
> > I can tell you from direct experience that the Supermicro P6DNF (dual Pentium
> > Pro) is definitely *not* stable with SMP enabled and real AHA-2940UW cards
> > using Adaptec BIOS 1.25.
> >
> > -- Mike
> 
> I haven't heard anything good about SuperMicro motherboards in
> general.  If one searches the FreeBSD mailing list archives for
> references to SuperMicro, I believe you'll find nothing but
> problems (of course, that's usually what is posted to a mailing
> list, isn't it ;-) ).

It's funny, because on the linux-smp list they aren't really dissed that
much.  I've been using dual PPro P6DNF's, several with 2940UW's, with
various SMP linux kernels starting with 2.0.0 and on, for almost two
years now.  With the exception of the very first one in early 1996
(which may well have had the famously buggy Adaptec BIOS release and
which kept the system from running sanely even under DOS/Windows or NT
until I reflashed the card BIOS) I've had zero problems that I could
relate to the system motherboard itself, and linux was actually the only
OS I could get to run stably on the one buggy system.  The only problem
it had was that it would crash with a boom if I tried to access the
mounted dos partition; my solution was to just eliminate it since I
strongly dislike Microsoot anyway.

On this list I'd have to say Tyan cards take the most heat (mostly
because of their in-perpetuity custom memory problems), and that Asus
and SuperMicro boards take the least, although that's a very personal
and subjective appraisal of averaged list traffic over the two year
period.  I've heard VERY few complaints about Asus, and only a few with
SuperMicro, most of which were related to the particular hardware
combination and BIOS settings used by the complainers.

I DON'T want to start a FreeBSD vs Linux Holy War (I have a friend or
two who are highly religious on both sides:-) but one must wonder
whether the problems in FBSD were more in the kernel-specific BIOS
interface than in the boards themselves....

   rgb

Robert G. Brown	                       http://www.phy.duke.edu/~rgb/
Duke University Dept. of Physics, Box 90305
Durham, N.C. 27708-0305
Phone: 1-919-660-2567  Fax: 919-660-2525     email:rgb at phy.duke.edu




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