Motherboard for new Socket 939 fileserver

[Robert Marella]

On Tue, 14 Mar 2006 12:42:45 -0800
Andrew Fremantle <freebsd at skyhawk.ca> wrote:

> Hi all,
> 
> I've been tasked with setting up a new FreeBSD network file server.
> I've been spending the last day fighting an ASUS A8N-VM CSM
> motherboard, and I've given up on that hopeless battle. The ACPI is
> horribly broken, the ethernet and PATA/SATA aren't supported on
> FreeBSD 6.0-RELEASE, FreeBSD 6-STABLE recognises the disk controllers
> but then hits a bug that prevents it from using one of the disks,
> I've had enough. I was prepared to tough it out with the ATA/33 limit
> on the generic controller support, until a future release properly
> supports them, but this morning the machine started throwing "DANGER
> Will Robinson" messages regarding the SATA drives.
> 
> I have a preference for nVidia chipsets, but if there's something
> else that will work and has decent FreeBSD support I'll take it.
> 
> Here are my requirements
> Socket 939
> At least four SATA headers
> (preferably) At least two PATA headers
> PCIe Gigabit Ethernet

<snip>

> 
> Any feedback would be much appreciated. I'm desperate to avoid
> jumping to Linux on this one, because I know that will turn into a
> huge pain in the ass later on.
> 
> - Andrew

Hello Andrew

I am not sure if I can be of help but here goes. I purchased an A8N-VM
in December and have been playing around with since then. 

I disabled APIC in bios and then ACPI performed somewhat better. Taking
the system up to 6-Stable took the ATA hard drive from ATA/33 to
ATA/100 and I was then able to install FreeBSD on them. Before that I
had to use an old SCSI controller and disk. 

I only had one SATA drive to test with and it was the same story as the
ATA. It showed up as /33 and would not perform. It now can be operated
at /150.

My user guide does not show the CSM designation so I am not sure of our
differences. This system is not in production and if you would like me
to perform any tests/experiments, contact me direct and I will be happy
to oblige.

I am dual booting at this time. I have AMD64 on the SCSI and i386 on a
120G  Western Digital ATA drive.

I hope I can be of some help.

Robert