Spectre, a dual Athlon

25 May 2002: On recommendation of Zooko and Roger Dingledine, decided to order the system from KC Computers.

The configuration is as follows.

 Tyan Tiger MPX Dual Athlon Mbrd S2466N4                         $260
 AMD Athlon MP 1900+ (1.6GHz), 266, (256k),Sckt A , retail       $245
 AMD Athlon MP 1900+ (1.6GHz), 266, (256k),Sckt A , retail       $245
   512MB PC2100 ECC REGISTERED 266MHz DDR RAM DIMM , name brand ~$190
 Antec SX840 ATX Case w/ 400W PS                                 $150
 Western Digital 80 GB (800BB) ATA100 IDE, 7200rpm               $145
  MATROX: 32MB G550 DDR Dualhead AGP, DVI, TV Out                $110
 Mitsumi 104 PS/2 Keyboard                                        $15
 3-button mouse, generic scroll                                   $10
 Creative Labs PCI SoundBlaster Audigy w/ 1394 Firewire           $75
 Sony IDE 16x DVD/40x CD                                          $70
 Sony IDE CD-RW (Rewritable) 24x/10x/40x                          $95

 Front fan                                                        $10
 Front fan                                                        $10

I'll be running Debian GNU/Linux on it.

Initial install

Debian Potato installed without a hitch.

Networking is a problem. "modprobe 3c59x" seems to have recognized the card, and the light on the switch is on, but it's not working. It can transmit packets, but not receive them. I popped in a Linksys LNE100TX (modprobe tulip), and it's working. I think this may be a kernel problem. Basic network bootstrap: add "iface eth0 inet static" stanza to /etc/network interfaces, add nameserver in /etc/resolv.conf, restart networking. Actually, I tend to prefer manual ifconfig and route for initial bootstrap:

ifconfig eth0 63.206... netmask 255.255.255.248 broadcast 63.206
route add default gw 63.206...

Then set /etc/apt/sources to point to woody, apt-get update, apt-get dist-upgrade. Now it's a woody box. Hmm, kernel 2.4.15 (woody's default) didn't fix networking problem.

Setting up X (apt-get xfree86-xserver, xbase-clients, etc): choose "mga" driver, copy mga_*drv.so from Matrox CD to /usr/X11R6/lib/modules/drivers. Error message: Screens found, but none have a usable configuration. Disabling fbdev fixed that.

AGP: options agpgart agp_try_unsupported=1

Kernel

Needed to rebuild kernel to enable smp.

Always remember to turn on dma using hdparm (it's unclear to me what's the best place to set this).

2.4.18 kernel didn't fix onboard Ethernet problem.

Sound

Audigy. ALSA emu10k1 driver works. alsaconf failed, so I had to set up the modutils by hand.

USB

Firewire