Computers/Motherboards/BIOS

Linux Hardware Compatibility HOWTO
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# 2. Computers/Motherboards/BIOS

ISA, VLB, EISA, PCI, and AGP buses are all supported. All recent motherboards should work fine, although certain integrated controllers may or may not work well (or at all).

## 2.1. Specific system/motherboard/BIOS

Please note that this is by no means a complete list. Please send updates.

Manufacturer | Model Number | Description | Notes
--- | --- | --- | ---
Intel | STL2 | ServerWorks chipset, dual Socket 370 (PIII), integrated video (ATI), ethernet (eepro100), and dual-channel SCSI (aic7xxx) |
Intel | 815EEA, 815EEA2L | Intel 815 chipset, Socket 370 (PIII/Celeron), integrated video, audio, ethernet (815EEA2L only) | video, sound, ethernet, etc. are all supported, although they require recent kernels and XFree86
SuperMicro | 370DL3 | ServerWorks chipset, dual Socket 370 (PIII), integrated ethernet (eepro100), SCSI (aic7xxx) |
SuperMicro | 370DLE | ServerWorks chipset, dual Socket 370 (PIII), integrated ethernet (eepro100) |
SuperMicro | P6DGE | Intel 440GX chipset, dual Slot 1 (PII/PIII/Celeron) |
SuperMicro | P6DBE | Intel 440BX chipset, dual Slot 1 (PII/PIII/Celeron) |
Soyo | SY-K7VTA-B | VIA KT133 chipset, Socket A, integrated ATA/100 and AC97 audio |
Tyan | Thunder K7 (S2462NG/S2462UNG/S2462UNGM) | AMD 760MP chipset, dual Athlon MP, integrated video (ATI RAGE XL), dual ethernet (2 x 3Com 3C920), dual-channel SCSI (Adaptec AIC-7899W - S2462UNG/S2462UNGM only) | Early models apparently had bugs. Be sure you have a recent BIOS and a recent 2.2.x or 2.4.x kernel.

The following are old notes and are probably out of date.

- IBM PS/2 MCA systems

  Supported since kernel version 2.0.7, but only for the stable kernel releases. For information you can look at the Micro Channel Linux Home Page. Software for MCA systems can be found here. Information on the MCA SCSI subsystem can be found here.

- EFA E5TX-AT motherboard has a solvable problem with RedHat Linux 5.0 and possibly other versions of Linux. It spontaneously reboots while probing hardware. To solve, update BIOS to version 1.01. Get the BIOS update here.

- The Zida 6MLX motherboard with PII Intel LX chipset is mentioned only to work with Linux when the PII cache is disabled in BIOS. BIOS upgrade does not solve the problem. Symptom is random reboots during or shortly after system boot.

## 2.2. Unsupported

- Supermicro P5MMA with BIOS versions 1.36, 1.37 and 1.4. Linux will not boot on this motherboard. A new (beta) release of the BIOS which makes Linux boot, is available here.

- Supermicro P5MMA98. Linux will not boot on this motherboard. A new (beta) release of the BIOS which makes Linux boot, is available here.

- DataExpert Corp. ExpertColor TX531 V1.0 motherboard with chipset ACER M1531 (Date: 9729, TS6) and ACER M1543 (Date: 9732 TS6) seems to present not reproducible segmentations faults, kernel oops and kernel hangs under heavy load and tape access. The problem seems to be the PCI-bus, respectively the ACER chipset.

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