feedback and request for help with x86_64 preview

[Warren Togami]

Jonathan Wakely wrote:
> also ensure my BIOS is up to date (possibly not).
> 
> So, my first question is has anyone successfully installed fc1_x86_64 on
> an MSI mobo?
> The list archives seem to indicate it's been tried on ASUS, Tyan and
> others, but no explicit mention of MSI or K8T Neo.

I own exactly the MSI K8T Neo-FIS2R Athlon64 motherboard, and it is the 
most problematic piece of crap that I have ever owned.  Using both the 
1.0 and 1.1 BIOS I have several strange issues, bad enough that the 
company that sold me the system is willing to RMA the motherboard and 
replace it with another brand.

Unfortunately I do not use SATA so I cannot speak for anything about 
that feature, but I have several other major issues with this motherboard.

1) Most of the time my USB keyboard is completely unable to function 
during post in order to get into the BIOS menu, or to choose settings in 
GRUB.  Setting Legacy USB options in the BIOS seems to not help the 
situation.  Sometimes the USB keyboard inexplicably works, then after a 
reboot it doesn't.

2) http://togami.com/~warren/archive/2003/rhel3amd64-panic.jpg
Booting any AMD64 Linux kernel almost immediately causes a kernel panic 
due to corruption of the RIP instruction register.  Whenever it comes 
back from the HLT instruction, the top 32bits are zeroed out rather than 
retaining the bits like they should.  Some kernel guys have said that 
they ran into this issue with Asus nForce3 motherboard which was 
resolved by a BIOS update.  MSI took nearly 1 month to respond to my 
initial query about this problem, and

3) Booting just gets STUCK during various stages of POST, sometimes in 
GRUB, or sometimes a random kernel crash during bootup.  Sometimes GRUB 
says an error like "Invalid Geometry".  This problem seems to occur 
randomly, sometimes refusing to boot for an entire day, and some other 
days working completely with 100% stability without any problems.  I'm 
totally confused by this behavior.

4) Various PCI cards like 3c905C-TXM or SoundBlaster Live Value render 
the system totally unbootable, getting stuck with the above problem 100% 
of the time.  These cards work perfectly all of my other systems, while 
I tested all PCI slots of the MSI Neo motherboard.  I seem to need to 
totally remove all PCI cards from the system in order to have any chance 
of booting.

As a whole I have been totally unimpressed by this motherboard due to 
these problems, and furthermore have been very unhappy about MSI's 
technical support.  I would recommend going for another brand of 
Athlon64 motherboard... although I hear that their dual Opteron 
motherboard based on the AMD8111 chipset rather than VIA is okay.

Warren