Tyan K8WE BIOS v1.03 and -STABLE

[jdow]

From: "Thomas Hurst" <tom.hurst at clara.net>

>* Damian Gerow (dgerow at afflictions.org) wrote:
> 
>> I tried updating the BIOS on my K8WE (S2895) yesterday to 1.03, but
>> after the update, FreeBSD (RELENG_6 dated March 26) would randomly
>> freeze after booting.
>>
>> As I was updating from v1.01, I suspect it may be the updates to
>> the nVidia SATA firmware that caused the issue, as things generally
>> froze shortly after the background fsck processed kicked in (with,
>> obviously, the exception of the first boot, and a few others).  It may
>> be worth noting that Windows, though booting fine, did complain that
>> the ATA driver was mis-matched for the firmware of the ATA controller.
>>
>> Is anyone else successfully running -STABLE with v1.03 on a K8WE?  Just
>> wondering if this is something specific to the options I've chosen, or if
>> it's an interaction issue between FreeBSD and this BIOS revision.
>> 
>> (No, I haven't tried just going to 1.02, as I needed the machine.  Though
>> that should be a fairly good test to narrow down what the problem is.)
> 
> I've not tried 1.03; I just tried flashing, but apparantly the only
> floppy I have to hand has died.  However, I've been running 1.02 for
> months without problems.  The only SATA issues I've encountered are
> non-functional hot-plug and the usual 4GB+/multiple drives lockup, which I
> "solved" by using a LSI MegaRAID for 6 of the 8 drives.
> 
> This is using the same SATA firmware as 1.03 according to the changelog
> on http://www.tyan.com/support/html/b_s2895.html so I doubt it's that.

I have one of those here, too. I have the 205H BIOS running. At the moment
the system is tied up being XP because that's where I earn my income. <sigh>
One thing I did discover is that the latest AMD AGP software that is
officially posted as of the beginning of the year is bad. I managed to get
a copy of an experimental AGP GART driver that works like a champ. There
might be a similar issue with the code for BSD to watch for. (It took
over a month to track that down. I could only run a single CPU with
cards in carefully selected slots with the release GART BIOS. With this
beta one I got I can go full bore and everything is basically cool.)

{^_^}   Joanne