Author Topic: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !  (Read 22111 times)

Pete

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Re: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !
« Reply #15 on: April 13, 2015, 04:08:33 am »
Hi All

I was going to start a new thread but this is closely related... Greggory may want to include some of this in his "current mainboard roundup".

Having had 2 systems overheat over the Easter weekend due to the AMD socket 940/AM2 cpu cooler retention bracket breaking I have just repaired 1 mainboard with an Antec Kuhler 650 - no more worries about inadequate brackets breaking as this bolts directly to the bracket on the underside of the mainboard replacing the retention bracket. Only had this running for a day but no leaks so far and the cpu certainly runs cooler then with the usual fan and giant heatsink - and with less noise  :-)

Sadly the other system overheated so badly that it does not even post. Ah well, I was looking for an excuse to try a new mainboard and cpu - the Mrs frowns on spending money to replace items that are working OK.

I ended up purchasing a Gigabyte GA-990FXA-UD3 mainboard (AMD990/SB950 chipset) - seems to be current production -  with an AMD FX-4300 cpu (Black Edition) and 2 sticks of 2Gb DDR3 ram. While assembling the system I noticed the lack of floppy and ide connections on the mainboard so if you rely on those devices this is not really the mainboard for you.

Having inserted an ATI X550 graphics card, connected drives and various cables it was finally time to power on and see what happened. However, before attempting to boot I entered the EUFI BIOS settings and made sure that a "Legacy" system would be able to boot and also set the boot order. I saved the settings, the system rebooted and displayed the AirBoot Boot Menu. I booted my eCS2.1 installation, updated with various drivers from eCS 2.2beta2.

The only problem encountered has been network - I cannot seem to find a Realtek RTL8186E driver that works - I've tried the eCS Multimac driver builds 1.2 and 1.3 and the Genmac rtl8186 package.

So far networking is a no go. Using the MultiMac 1.3 build seems to give the best results: Checking lantran.log all looks good, running setup.cmd gives no errors, File and Print Client completes without errors - all looks good until testing connectivity: there is not any. PMPing cannot ping any ip address except for 127.0.0.1

I guess the option is to turn off the onboard network and insert a nic: Recommendations, Please.

Apart from the networking problem this seems to be a good board, system seems stable and happy - and fast  :-)

Obviously I am not expecting SATA3, USB3 and 1394 to work with eCS - but am hopeful that USB3 and SATA3 drivers will appear in the fullness of time.

Yes, a good chance that this system will also end up with a watercooled cpu in the near future - will keep an eye on the recently converted system for a few weeks before making a decision.


Regards

Pete



ivan

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Re: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !
« Reply #16 on: April 13, 2015, 01:18:02 pm »
Hi Pete,

Are you sure the network is an RTL8186E chip?  A friend has one of these boards in his gaming computer and it has an RTL8111E lan chip - at least that is what is shown using specky (a windows third party program that shows everything that is installed).

Pete

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Re: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !
« Reply #17 on: April 13, 2015, 10:24:18 pm »
Hi Ivan

It may not be an 8186E - I may have misread the exact model in the Windows INF file containing many variants including 8111E - but it is a 10EC:8168&SUBSYS_E0001458 which equates to a Realtek RTL8168 chipset used by Gigabyte.

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Pete



Greggory Shaw

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Re: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !
« Reply #18 on: April 14, 2015, 12:24:55 am »
Hi All

I was going to start a new thread but this is closely related... Greggory may want to include some of this in his "current mainboard roundup".
...

Regards

Pete


Good info thanks Pete !  I'll add it over the next couple of weeks I need to reorganize & redo those pages anyways.

Oh, how is the ATI X550 graphics card with SNAP & WarpOverlay ? What's your setup with that and the monitor(s) used ?


Greggory
« Last Edit: April 14, 2015, 12:28:25 am by Greggory Shaw »

Pete

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Re: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !
« Reply #19 on: April 14, 2015, 04:59:14 am »
Hi Greggory

I'm still using an old "square" monitor - Dell 1707FP, 17", 1280 *1024 @ 60Hz - which still works very well and has the added attraction of having a 4 port USB2 hub built in; no reaching under the desk to plug in a usb flash drive  :-)
I also have the Dell Soundbar addon for this monitor which clips on under the screen and provides powered stereo speakers - helps reduce desktop clutter.

SNAP - accelerated mode - and the ATI X550 seem to get along fine. Of possible interest: I tend to use graphics cards with passive cooling as I have often found that graphics card cooler fans tend to fail causing graphics cards to overheat and require replacing. I am currently considering a cpu and vga watercooling system which should keep things cool enough.

WarpOverlay... Why would I use that when vlc/2 and mplayer both provide snapwrap.dll? - both players work fine :-)


Regards

Pete

Pete

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Re: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !
« Reply #20 on: April 14, 2015, 06:21:21 am »
Hi All

I suspect the network problem is MAC related: it looks like the MAC address is ffffffffffff (output from BS_Info) or 000000000000 (output from netstat -n).

I know that I have seen posts about this MAC address problem somewhere but if anyone has an answer I'm interested  :-)


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Pete

Pete

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Re: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !
« Reply #21 on: April 14, 2015, 09:00:25 pm »
Hi All

Just spent a couple of hours rummaging through boxes some of which have old computer bits in. I was hunting for an old Intel PRO/100 nic that I knew I had somewhere.

Found it, installed it and am now online with my new system  :-)

If an updated rtl8110/8186 appears it will not be too difficult to swap nic drivers to test - I would rather use the onboard rtl8186 nic as this mainboard only has 1 PCI slot now full of intel PRO/100 nic.


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Pete

Pete

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Re: VOTE - for the top 3 OS/2 motheboards !
« Reply #22 on: April 15, 2015, 04:26:52 am »
Hi All

Having got online using an old Intel PRO/100 nic I discovered a much later Multimac Realtek driver in the eComStation Betazone - requires a login at ecomstation.com.

Having installed the driver, Changed nics in MPTS, powered off, removed Intel PRO/100 nic from system, powered on system and Enabled onboard nic in BIOS I booted to a working *connected* Desktop  :-)

The eCS Realtek Gigabit 8111/8168/8169 driver (MultiMac32) Version 1.0.0 seems to be working fine.

Regards

Pete