5.1 harware

[Dan Strick]

On Thu, 07 Aug 2003, pippo at bellnet.ca wrote:
>>>>>>
> I have been unable to install 5.1, 5 or 4.8 releases on MSI 875P-NEO-FIS2R
> motherboard.
> I am led to believe, from reading the documentation, that the Intel ICH5R
> chipset and the Intel 82547EI (CSA interface) for Lan are not supported.
> They are rather recent...
> Is there a foreseeable future when these will be integrated?
>>>>>>

I posted a similar question to freebsd-stable a couple of weeks ago:
>>>>>>
> Does anyone know if support for the Intel 875P/ICH5 motherboard chipset
> has yet made it into the stable branch?  (Is release 4.9 likely to have
> it?)  I am mainly interested in the IDE and "native" serial ATA devices.
> There is also a new Intel ethernet controller chip, 82547EI, that is
> designed to interface directly with the 875P chip.  The currently
> supported chip list only goes up to the 82546.
>>>>>>

Here are some of the responses.

On Thu Jul 31, Jamie Bowden <ragnar at sysabend.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
> I'm tracking RELENG_5_1 at home on my desktop machine, which has an Abit
> IC7-G for the motherboard.  The relevant bit here is that I upgraded that
> machine from RELENG_4 after I upgraded the hardware.  It's been almost 2
> months now, so my memory is hazy, but I think if you're going to run 4-S
> on it, you have to run ACPI.  I can tell you that 5.1-R right off the CD
> was just fine with it (I did a binary upgrade then CVSup'd the (very few)
> changes to avoid issues like back when things went from a.out to ELF).
>>>>>>

I think that by his reference to ACPI (an acronym for Advanced Configuration
and Power Management Interface; see www.acpi.info) he meant that I would
have to use the bootstrap BIOS to configure the xATA ports to run in
"legacy" mode.

Later on Thu Jul 31, Brent Casavant <b.j.casavant at ieee.org> wrote:
>>>>>>
> Funny you should ask.  Last weekend I obtained a Gigabyte GA-8IK1100
> motherboard with an 875P/ICH5 combo.  A number of devices didn't
> work on 5.1-RELEASE.
>
> The devices which didn't work are the Intel Ethernet, SMBus, audio,
> and USB 2.0 controllers, and the Realtek ALC655 codec.  I managed to
> get all of these working execpt the USB controller by doing some
> easy hacks to the source (not bad for my first shot at FreeBSD
> kernel code).
>
> There are various PRs for these issues, including:
>
>         kern/52927      Ethernet controller
>         kern/54176      Audio and ALC655
>         kern/55094      USB 2.0 controller
>
> I submitted a bug for the SMBus controller last night (before the
> USB 2.0 one listed above), but it seems a PR still hasn't been
> assigned.  I hope I didn't accidentally cancel my send-pr submission.
>
> If you'd like my patches for all of these (except the USB 2.0 one,
> which doesn't work and I think might be totally wrong), just let
> me know.  You'll probably have to stitch them into the source by
> hand unless you're running 5.1-RELEASE, but at least they'll be
> a reference to work from.
>>>>>>

Later on Thu Jul 31, Craig Boston <craig at meoqu.gank.org> responded:
>>>>>>
> Saw your post on -stable about this, and decided to take a look since I'm
> about to get my hands on a similar (82801DB) motherboard.
>
> If it's the USB 2.0 controller that's isn't being detected, shouldn't ehci by
> patched instead of uhci...?  You may want to give the attached, completely
> untested, patch a try.  I.e. it compiles on my box, but I don't have any
> hardware to actually test it on yet.  Might theoretically work depending on
> how closely Intel followed the EHCI spec.  Note that the patch includes
> entries for both the DB and EB variants of the chip.
>
> I'm not sure why the code to pick up generic EHCI devices didn't find it
> though.
>>>>>>
and included some c source patches.  (Check the freebsd-stable archives
if you want to find them.  The message id is
<200307312340.45844.craig at meoqu.gank.org>.)

Then on Mon Aug 4, David Schultz <das at FreeBSD.ORG> wrote:
>>>>>>
> With Intel's 875PBZLK board, I've had no trouble at all with 5.1-R
> or -CURRENT.  The GigE, PATA, SATA, and USB work for certain,
> although the SATA drives are detected as ATA-133.  But Gigabyte
> uses different chips for some of these components, and as you
> point out, there are problems with these.  The point is that
> there's nothing inherently incompatible about the i875 chipset
> itself.  Unfortunately, I haven't had a chance to try 4.X on this
> box yet, so I can't say whether there are any issues there...
>>>>>>

These are all the responses I have have collected so far.  If anyone
reading this has anything to contribute, I would very much like to see it.
My new motherboard, a Gigabyte 8KNXP, is sheduled for delivery in about a
week.  Like the MSI 875P-NEO-FIS2R, it uses the Intel 875P/ICH5R support
chipset with an Intel 82547EI CSA ethernet controller chip.

The 8KNXP also has an ITE GigaRAID IT8212 chip controlling two PATA ports
and a Silicon Image SIL3112 chip controlling two SATA ports apparently
hanging off the PCI bus.  The firewire ports are driven by a TSB43AB23
chip and the on-board audio uses a Realtek ALC655 CODEC.  None of these
parts are listed as supported by the FreeBSD 4.8 or 5.1 releases.
In anyone knows where I could get drivers for these devices or if they
are likely to be supported by the FreeBSD 4.9 or 5.2 releases, please
let me know.

Thanks,
Dan Strick
strick at covad.net