[lug] sad hardware announcement :(

[D. Stimits]

I have used SuperMicro motherboards for years now, and recently picked
up a PIIIDM3, which at first seemed stable. I'm not sure how many of you
have noted sporadic reports of some server boxes locking up under high
i/o, but Redhat and others have made notes on this. I've found out that
this is a problem with all of the SuperMicro i840 chipset boards as
well.

The problem isn't entirely high i/o, but this tends to generate the
conditions that trigger it. The problem is an unknown IO-APIC, which is
a device responsible for reprogrammable IRQ steering between multiple
cpu's. When i/o doesn't lock up the system prior to logging failure, a
note is found as the last entry of /var/log/messages, "kernel:
unexpected IRQ vector 217 on CPU#0!" (or on CPU#1). In other locations
of the log, you'll likely see the entry "WARNING: unexpected IO-APIC,
please mail".

After speaking with SuperMicro, they simply state "it runs fine on NT",
and they won't help. In the past they were interested in Linux, but
SuperMicro has apparently changed its mind and is not interested
anymore. I've contacted Allen Cox to see what else can be done, but for
now, you should consider all i840 SuperMicro boards incompatible with
Linux (I also saw very similar reports on FreeBSD and other open source
o/s's).

The temporary workaround is to boot with the kernel option "noapic".
This removes irq redirection to the 2nd cpu, meaning all device i/o is
entirely on the first cpu. Additionally, some PCI devices which might
have been at an irq value will be changed or at an unreachable irq.
There is some explanation of this sort of problem in the kernel source
Documentation directory: "IO-APIC.txt".

At this point, I am looking for a new motherboard, dual cpu, with 4x
AGP-pro (I'm looking at high end OpenGL graphics cards) and 64 bit, 66
MHz PCI slots (required for ultra 160, which I plan to continue using).
Iwill has a dual slot 2 board, the DCA200, which unfortunately requires
rdram (expensive and increased latency, with no ability to reuse my
current pc133 ram), which might be the route to go if nothing else
appears. Anyone know if this board really is stable under linux? The
Intel OR840 would be a candidate, but it lacks 64 bit PCI. Does anyone
know if the Via Apollo Pro 133A chipset is a solution? Do any of the
133A boards have 64 bit PCI slots?

And is there anyone who is interested in buying a good non-linux
motherboard, a PIIIDM3 SuperMicro?

Thanks,
D. Stimits, stimits at idcomm.com