Atom 330 testing

[Warren Block]

Testing a mini-ITX Intel D945GCLF2 motherboard with Atom 330 processor.

The 330 is the dual-core HTT version of the Atom 270 found in all the 
netbooks.  Shows up as four processors on FreeBSD.  The board has SATA, 
IDE, PCI, onboard video, and Realtek 8111C Ethernet.


This board was shaky until I updated the BIOS from version 99 to version 
150.  Yay Intel for providing a bootable ISO ROM update image!

It still has two major issues:

1. Get to the FreeBSD loader prompt and type a few commands.  Just ?
    once or twice, for example.  It locks up in the middle of output or
    the screen goes black.  A hardware reset works.

2. It shuts itself off while the kernel is starting, usually just after
    "Starting network".  Disabling the onboard Realtek 8111C seems to fix
    this.  Note that it does sometimes manage to boot with re0 enabled.
    Works fine after that, including network.  An xubuntu 8.10 liveCD
    also shuts off during boot.  I haven't tried other OSes.

After it has turned itself off, keyboard numlock LED remains on, power 
and reset buttons do nothing.  AC power has to be turned off or 
disconnected to clear it and let it start up again.

Right now it has -current, although the problems seem the same as with 
7-stable.  I can try debugging or tests if problem #1 permits.

This board would make a very nice low-power server if it could boot 
reliably.

-Warren Block * Rapid City, South Dakota USA