More about the 9500S-4 issues with the MoBo and FreeBSD...

[Olaf Greve]

Hi,

>  Did you remove all the cards and clear the CMOS on the motherboard yet?  

The former: yes, the latter: no.

> There should be a jumper you short.

Hehehe, "shorting the MoBo", eh? ;)
No problem... However I didn't have the documentation yesterday, so I 
have just requested it. If all goes well, I should have it tonight, and 
then I can check to see if there are CMOS reset jumpers. If supported, 
that should be a dooze. I hope it'll do any magic then.

BTW: in your opinion would you also suspect the FireWire controller to 
indeed be clashing with the 9500S?

 > That will reset all the IRQ stuff.  Then disable
> everything in the BIOS you can.  Then plug in the 3ware card.  That might shift
> around the IRQ's.  You almost might change the setting about "Plug and Play OS"
> to see if that has any impact.

Good plan. Switching the PnP OS around is about the only thing I haven't 
tried yet. Might indeed be a good plan to try that too.

>   You might also set an IRQ in the BIOS as reserved and see if that makes any
> difference.

I tried doing that for various IRQs, yet it seemed that it always simply 
skipped those IRQs and reassigned multiple devices to the same 
(different from the previously selected IRQ). E.g. if previously the 
RAID and display controllers were set to IRQ 12, and I then set that one 
to reserved in the BIOS, afterwards both controllers would e.g. be on 
IRQ 11...

 > I don't know the exact impact of that as it relates to the
> motherboard, but it's possible that will keep motherboard devices (such as the
> fire wire stuff) off those channels and allow them to be used by cards?  I don't
> know, but it's worth trying.

It looks like there may be a further issue there. AFAIR these settings 
can only be made for IRQ0 - IRQ15, whereas the possibly conflicting 
controllers were at higher IRQs (like IRQ16 and IRQ18). Perhaps these 
are shared, but I won't know for sure until I can read up on it in the 
MoBo docs.

>   I know you aren't going to like to hear this, but perhaps a motherboard brand
> chance is in order?  In the long run, it may save time/money. 

I hear you, and what's more, I hear you really well. If I cannot get 
this combination to run VERY soon, I'll recommend them to do so, as a 
different MoBo should be a lot cheaper (and a better solution in the 
end) than me having to spend a lot of hours on it. ;)
Yet, personal pride and perseverance prevents me from throwing the towel 
into the ring all too easily; I just can't stand it when I can't get 
anything to work. But then, that might just be a personality issue. :D

 > In my experience,
> a big part of building a good, stable server is to buy the right hardware out of
> the gate.  For AMD CPU's, I only use Tyan here.  I run the Tyan boards on my
> servers and Workstation and they are some of the most stable boards I have ever
> used.

Definitly, and indeed I have heard a lot of good things about the Tyans. 
I'm not certain if they're very common over here, but surely they must 
be obtainable from provider that deliver server parts. I don't think the 
client's provider has them, but if Asus doesn't do the trick; Tyan it'll 
be...

Cheers,
Olafo