OS/2, eCS & ArcaOS - Technical > Hardware

nForce 650i SLI Motherboard

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Dave Yeo:
I've picked up a Dell XPS 720 which has a nForce 650i SLI chipset I believe (could be a 680i). Anyone have experience with this chipset and ArcaOS? I understand that nvidia chipsets aren't recommended.

Pete:
Hi Dave

No experience with that particular chipset but had some fun with the nForce4/MCP61 chipsets and early acpi releases years back.

However, acpi is now maintained by David at Arca and the situation seems to have improved as the readme for acpi history section shows :-

3.19.10 - David Azarewicz
-------------------------
.
.
.
Removed temporary /NV switch. NVidia systems now work properly. The NVidia
chipset was never actually the problem. It was the BIOS.


If you encounter problems installing ArcaOS try using the acpi.psd /vw parameter in the pre-boot menu.


Regards

Pete

Dave Yeo:
Well, I thought to do my thing as a beta tester and tried to install 5.0.2.3 on the system as is. It has a copy of WIN 7 ultimate edition that bitches about not being genuine and hasn't been used.
Anyways, it got into a loop where both drives had partitions extending past the end of the drive. It has a 320 GB drive with a 100MBs used but not seen and the second drive is 1 TB and partitioned as C: with Win 7 installed. I repartioned the 320 GB drive thinking to install ArcaOS on it and that made the installer happy. It kept complaining about the 1TB drive and suggesting shrinking it. I did that a few times and the installer was never happy. Cancelling just led to a reboot and now I've given up.
Tomorrow I'll update my backups and swap drives and see what happens.

Doug Bissett:

--- Quote ---I've picked up a Dell XPS 720 which has a nForce 650i SLI chipset I believe (could be a 680i). Anyone have experience with this chipset and ArcaOS? I understand that nvidia chipsets aren't recommended.
--- End quote ---

Hi Dave. I have a couple of older DELL systems. They are mostly junk, especially in the video department, but I don't think they are NVIDIA based (at least it isn't advertised). I do have a NVIDIA video card in an HP computer, and it is also junk. However, they all work with ArcaOS, even if the video needs a lot of coaxing to work in the resolution of the attached screen. A 1280x1024 screen works okay, but my 1368x768 screen ends up working in 1024x768 mode (stretched). It appears that the problem is that both DELL and the NVIDIA in the HP, just don't tell Panorama what the screen is capable of, so it only offers the old standard sizes. Otherwise, they work okay.


--- Quote ---Well, I thought to do my thing as a beta tester and tried to install 5.0.2.3 on the system as is. It has a copy of WIN 7 ultimate edition that bitches about not being genuine and hasn't been used.
--- End quote ---

The windows "not genuine" problem is almost always caused because it detected that something changed, and wants to be activated again. Sometimes, it takes 6 months of trying to get it to go. So far, I have found that win 7 will always activate, if you try enough times. It always continues to work okay. XP Home edition, on the other hand will not activate any more (it seems that the activation server no longer exists).


--- Quote ---Anyways, it got into a loop where both drives had partitions extending past the end of the drive. It has a 320 GB drive with a 100MBs used but not seen and the second drive is 1 TB and partitioned as C: with Win 7 installed. I repartioned the 320 GB drive thinking to install ArcaOS on it and that made the installer happy. It kept complaining about the 1TB drive and suggesting shrinking it. I did that a few times and the installer was never happy. Cancelling just led to a reboot and now I've given up.
Tomorrow I'll update my backups and swap drives and see what happens.
--- End quote ---

The problem with the 1 TB drive, is that the geometry, as set up by windows, will not be usable by OS/2 (even smaller drives can have that problem). You must wipe it, and start over, using (mini)LVM to partition it. After you do the partitions properly, you can restore windows, as long as the restore program doesn't mess with the MBR (back it up first, of course). The only backup program, that I know of, that does it properly, is Acronis. If you have a Seagate, Maxtor, or Samsung, drive (even attached as an external drive), you can use the free version known as Seagate Disk Wizard. Just be sure that it doesn't mess with the partitioning, when you do the restore.

Dave Yeo:
OK, that explains the problem with installing along side windows.
Today I swapped my drives in and it booted up fine into VGA. As you point out, Panorama doesn't allow my monitors setting of 1600x900 with the included NVIDIA video card. I'll swap that next with an ATI one. The video card also screwed up the memory, needing a lower virtualaddresslimit for the system to work right, with squid not loading and perhaps causing the network driver not to ,load.
Currently most everything seems to work with the exception of the mouse wheel on my wireless mouse and running at 1280x800 resolution.
Nice seeing the 4 cores in xcenter.

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